So my grandma had this old MDG system with a pentium d, intel motherboard, and one gig of wam. She heard from my mom that my brother (6) wanted a gaming computer to play minecraft and cube world, so instantly she drove over to my house and dropped this computer off and told me that since I'm so good with computers that i can upgrade it and make it play games.
I'm only 16, so ddr1 and pentium d's are a little before my time. And i know i would be better off to build a new computer, but it would break her heart. So i decided i would try, so far i got a 420w power supply that i took out of my case when i bought it (so it's brand new) and ordered an Asus r7 250. Now all i need is more ram, that's where the problem is.
It's currently got two 512mb ddr sticks in it, and no spare slots. I can't find a two stick 4gb kit for the life of me, until this on ebay.
I want to know if it's a scam, or just what you guys think of it. And could you give me any advice, this is my first time working with ancient technology.
And money is an issue, my moms paying and said she doesn't want to go over 200; which is already spent up mostly by the card. (we can go over a little bit)
A pentium D and original DDR seem to be the bottom of the barrell in terms of system requirements for minecraft. That kit looks like it's what you are after. Remember that DDR will run at 266Mhz.. I don't have a system with DDR in it to see for myself, but I'd imagine that is going to be painful.
You could buy a much better PC second hand for 200.
Personally, before you buy anything, I'd test the system as it is.. it should be capable of playing it:
https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=minecraft+minimum+requirements
If you have no snags, then go ahead and buy that RAM if you want to do so. This isn't a classic car though, you can buy 4GB of DDR3 for the same price I bet.
Sorry if I seem negative, but I couldn't plough money into an antique like that, knowing what I could get for just a little bit of money.
I would advise you to research the motherboard a bit. It might be pointless to purchase that RAM kit especially if it can only take 512MB of DDR.
EDIT:
Might be better to build something like this:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HRnF6h
As for the OS, hopefully windows 7 is available on that machine then you can just grab the key and install it.
Not sure if 2gb sticks of DDR1 exist.
Largest I have seen is 1gb.
Though you should try to get something else, I wouldn't recommend under DDR2 for a usable system.
But yeah you could build a much better PC for 200.
You could even find something much better scrapped.
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Question: You sure it's a Pentium D? From what I remember, Pentium D had DDR2.
Intel D101 motherboard? 2Gb maximum if so.
Ram in eBay link was ECC so no good.
1 gigabyte ddr1 is rare and most boards will not support 1 gig sticks only 512 sticks. If it was a Aftermarket board like Soyo (anyone remember the Soyo Dragon boards?), Gigabyte, DFI, or Asus then maybe. As far as I remember the intel boards only supported 512 sticks. You will need 2 gigs of ram just to run windows now days, You will have to put XP on it if you want windows. I would suggest putting Debian on it instead. You could put Ubuntu but Not that new GUI it would have to be the older version.
Sorry if this is really negative but the only use for that PC is browsing the web or holding papers on your desk.
If your motherboard does support 1 gig sticks
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231036
Okay, that's kind of bad news. I might just buy a 5350 and throw it in the case, then tell my grandma it works great. Thanks guys
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On the happy side of things, i installed minecraft on it and my brothers playing it at 5 fps and having a blast LOL
even without a graphics card the 5350 would perform better than what you could have done with that system.
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