upgrade or buy new?

[quee0849]

I have a laptop that does pretty much everything I need. But, I need to do some large math calculations (in GAP and MAGMA), which I dont really want to do on my laptop since it gets too hot. I have recently aquired an old system :
HP VL420 MT
Pentium 4 1.6?GHz
256MB RAM
ATI Rage 128
40GB HD
etc..
I need something much better than this - I am looking for somthing with at least 2GB of ram and I might want to go up to 4GB. I dont have much money to spend. Maybe $4-500. I want to get a good processor too. I dont care about HD space - the 40GB one will do, and graphics are not important either. Would I be able to just buy a new motherboard, and ram and CPU. I dont know whay the best processor would be either - from what I've read I'm not sure whether my software would benefit from a dual core system....?
If anyone knows of a good deal around I would appreciate it. Should I upgrade, or would I need to pretty much get rid of everything?

[HermanAB]

I would just add a bunch of RAM to that one. Go to Ebay.

[jrusso2]

Its pretty hard to do upgrades on a laptop so you would need to buy new.

You can add memory to the old one and give it a bigger hard drive.

Some you can upgrade the cpu, but its better to buy new at that point

[LaRoza]

Upgrading may be difficult, but if you do decide to get a new one, look for an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It is a very good CPU.

My new laptop, a Lenovo R61i ThinkPad, has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2 GB of RAM, but cost about 1000 USC. It is a cooler processor than the Pentium Series, and much better.

[quee0849]

Thanks for the advice. I havent been clear - the HP Vectra is a desktop - the most RAM the current motherboard will take is 1.5GB and it would cost me at least $150 to do just that.

[jimrz]

Thanks for the advice. I havent been clear - the HP Vectra is a desktop - the most RAM the current motherboard will take is 1.5GB and it would cost me at least $150 to do just that.

still the RAM is the most important ... I concur with the statement above about the core2duo proc, my E6600 really flies (super pi20 <16 seconds) running ubuntu

[-grubby]

I don't think you can get 2-4 GB of RAM in a laptop for $400-500USD. Is there a specific reason you can't get a desktop to do this?

[HermanAB]

$450!??? Get your RAM on Ebay, or just ask around and get it for free. I have various kinds in my junk box...

[LO Matt]

You could get a cheap tower for $4-500. I'd probably buy a mobo, cpu and ram for that kind of dough. Get a duo vs. single core, the duos are faster cores than any single core you can buy anyway and they're cheap. The core2 duos don't draw that much power, so an older power supply for a P4 should have enough juice. Get a mobo with integrated graphics and available PCI-E slot (these days AGP videocards are becoming more and more obsolete, and new integrated video is probably better than that ATI), and get 2GB of ram.

then when ya get more dough, you can upgrade much easier than if you buy some cheap dell tower . . . throw in a good video card, better hard drive, power supply, more ram.

[HermanAB]

HP Vectra 512MB RAM goes for about $60:
http://www.edgetechcorp.com/memory/upgrade.asp?cid=27877

If you add only *one* of those, the machine will work fine and with two it will zoom circles around any laptop with twice the clock speed. (Laptops are always slow, since they got to conserve battery juice, so if you compare a laptop with a desktop using approximately the same processor, the desktop will be at least twice as fast.)

[SunnyRabbiera]

there are cheap ram sets out there if you know where to look for them, even for laptops.