good choice for upgrade ?

hi all,

A good friend of mine wants to upgrade her system but does not want to spend much. Here is her current specs: (HP Pavillion btw)

P4 1.6ghz with some cheap mb
512 DDR RAM

Iam looking for around $150 for cpu/mobo (+ possible some RAm and PSU ?? )

what do you all suggest of best-bang for the buck upgrade ?

thx all
K

PS. It can be either AMD or Intel, however i think amd would be cheaper and wiser ?

I don't get it...you want to buy cpu/mobo ram and PSU with 150$ ???

First of all, it's an HP... which sucks because it's probably all proprietary and you have to replace everything. I doubt any of it is standard except maybe the RAM and hard drive. That means you need a case, power supply, cpu, motherboard. If the ram is PC3200, you can keep that maybe, if it's slower, it'll probably have to go too.

Assuming the case is a standard ATX and the PS is too and has an ATX12V and that the memory is PC3200... (doubt this... but you'll have to tell me)

Pick up a socket 939 athlon 64 for about 75 or so and an AGP motherboard off newegg, doesn't matter too much which, get a cheap one since you have to stay at 150ish (assuming her current video card is AGP). Use the current memory, case, ps. Add another 512 of PC3200 ram and you're done.

This gives you:

1 GB PC3200 RAM
Socket 939 Processor at somewhere around 2.0 ghz
current hard drive and video card
current power supply and case

This is really hard to do though because we just don't know enough about your current system.

It's quite possible that almost nothing in that current system is usable, as HP tends to use a lot of proprietary components (motherboard, case, ps, floppy, cd) may all be proprietary and video/sound may be on the motherboard. This essentially means you are left with a completely new build, being able to salvage only the hard drive and (maybe) 512 mb of ram if it's PC3200 and you go with a socket 939 or socket 754.

You can't do a totally new build that will be better than that PC for $150.