Upgradinging HP m7760n and hardware salvage AMAP

[Goodgenie4u]

Hello,
At 66 I am educating myself to be prepared to upgrade this Vista home premium HP m7760n 32 bit desktop Vista Home Premium bought in 2007. Need 5 years of new life for expensive parts like MOBO, CPU and cards. It will keep my brain if not by body active.

It is a micro ATX set up. The link is to provide details of this PC, if you need details to advise me on what hardware I can retain, including HD's 2 X 250G is OK. Have 2TB ext). Will consider adding boot SSD. Keep the DVD,front panel I/O, USB mouse /keyboard and memory card ports. No existing or future need for gaming. Have 2TB WD ext USB 3 enclosed HD for archiving.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883107286

New needs are Win 7 Home Premium 64
USB3, SATA III, 64bits, RAID 1 to safeguard non archived content(existing 2 @250G HD's), WIFI n, HDMI, and a betterTV tuner that receives HD over the air channels with 1080p resolution. ( My spouse gets first dibs at the real TV). Is there good midi capabilty? for guitar and keyboard apps?

I am taking a course on computer hardware. I have opened up mine and am familiar with PSU and HD/DVD connected hook ups for power and SATA, also headers that light up and connect front panel power button and A/V/USB/Memory card units, battery for CMOS. Original 300W PSU died a week ago. Will replace with 400W this week.

Most grateful for listed upgrade strategy. I am a conservationist and hope the front panel port units can be upgraded or retained if necessary.
Have the time, not the money!

Thanks

[lasvegaswireman · Accepted solution]

Here are the specs for your HP Pavilion Media Center m7760n Desktop Computer and its HP OEM ASUS P5LP-LE Leonite-GL8E Motherboard.

I think you are trying to push the machine past its useful limits. The motherboard has 3 PCI slots and 1 PCIe x16 slot. The 3 PCI slots are already occupied with the modem, wireless b/g, and TV tuner cards. We can toss the modem and install a USB 3 or SATA III card. Toss the wireless b/g and install a b/g/n card. Toss the TV tuner and install a new TV tuner that gets o-t-a HD. Install a graphics card with HDMI. So we are shy of slots... we can maybe use a USB TV tuner and/or wireless b/g/n card to compensate for the lack of slots. I would get a Corsair CX430 or CX500 power supply.

You may lose the use of HP included software with the upgrade to Windows 7.

Let us know if you are still interested in tackling this project.

Frank

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

I agree with Frank's suggestions, assessments and recommendations for your potential project.  You really need to add up all of the costs and see if that is in your comfort zone.

One potential issue that I have seen with a couple of different PCs that have memory speeds slower than 800 mhz is HD 1080P video stuttering.  Routing the broadcast video stream (1920 by 1080i) internally is where you might run into this issue.