[CS-FSLUG] Upgrading a Northwood CPU...

[Timothy Butler]

OK, here's a weird question for you. Almost nine years ago, I built a Shuttle SB62G2 computer for an Open for Business review. While these days it is quite old, it was a very nice system for the time -- SATA, AGP 8x, RAID support, a fast processor, etc. Well, the computer I have in my church office is an AMD Sempron 3000+ system that, I believe is actually slower than my little old Shuttle. The Sempron also doesn't support the resolution of the nice 19" LCD I salvaged from another staff member who left.

So, I thought I would upgrade my little Northwood-based Shuttle a bit and see if I couldn't make it into a decent system that I could live with for awhile. (Ideally, until the church is in the black again and could justify replacing my system with a nice little Mac mini :-)).

Long prologue finished: Here's what I've ordered in upgrades... 

- 2 GB of ram for $31, moving up from 512 MB. 
- A 120 GB SSD for $34 (Amazon special)
- A GeForce FX 5200 with 256 MB of RAM for $21 (new on eBay)

Maybe this isn't the best way to go about getting a workable system, but it's kind of fun and I think it might actually be a decent little system. 

The big question: I have a Northwood (HyperThreaded) 2.6 GHz CPU in it. On eBay I see used Northwood and Prescott Pentium 4 3.2 GHz's and Pentium 4 Extreme Editions that in theory should be compatible with my system and cost $7-$15. Do you think the performance gains are enough to make an attempted upgrade worthwhile?

Blessings,
Tim

________________________
Timothy R. Butler
Discipleship Pastor
Grace Presbyterian Church
timothy.butler at gracepca.net

"The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God." -- Martin Luther

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