Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

I'm exhausted with upgrades...Do I need fans now?

Feb 12, 2010 12:53AM PST

I have a Dell Dimension 2400 that was made in 2003 with XP home. I have put in: Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet NIC; an Nvidia graphics card, I can't remember what kind but I know it's better than the integrated graphics; 2Gb of RAM; a 3.06GHz/533mhz P4. I am getting windows 7, a Western Digital 250GB WD2500AAJB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive w/ 8MB Buffer, and some thermal compound for my cpu. The more searching I do to find the cheapest but sufficient upgrades, the more exhausted I get. So far, that's $220 I've spent on upgrades. I can't sell this thing and get a better one, that's why I'm upgrading. With the new hard drive I'm getting, do I need a hard drive fan? Do I need another cpu fan? Should I even waste my time with upgrading to Windows 7 because I found out that MS invalidates your old key. So I can't use my W7 if I find another computer that's better than this, but still has XP. If I am able to sell this thing, would I get enough money out of it with the upgrades, or is it a waste of time? One last thing--I found a program to let me know the cpu temp because I don't have my thermal compound yet and the temp right now is 122F, but has gotten up to 126F while multi-tasking. Is this a safe temp without the thermal compound? Thanks everyone for your help.

Discussion is locked