I had the dual monitors with my old computer and found I didn't really need them. I went thru a couple of video cards with my old computer, don't really them,
Some people like it some people don't. It was an example of why a person would want to stay away from on board graphics. Not really a rule of thumb.
I have professional quality sound cards, they are made obsolete by the new computer, so I don't need them anymore either.
Doubt if you had a professional sound card. Most professionals use sound boards with the ability to control something along the lines of 512 different frequency ranges. I can see that it may have studio quality with 24 bit sound. But that is sill far from professional.
My old computer had an ASUS motherboard with 6 SATA ports, but I don't need them anymore, and something was wrong with it and it wouldn't accept any more that 1 gig of memory, I get 4 gigs upgradable to 8 on the new computer.
Six SATA ports is a decent amount, the point was that modern and top of the line computers in the last three years come standard with more than that, for the fact of everything is running SATA now and for the ability to have many eSATA ports. With the RAM it sounds like you where trying to run RAM faster than it wanted to run. That or it could have been a BIOS issue. With eight GB max RAM, that should be more like twenty four to thirty two minimum, if not sixty four. With a 64 Bit Windows system four to eight is the minimum you should be running.
The old mother board was designed to work with Vista, and Windows 7 upgrade drivers are not available from ASUS.
That is irrelevant to running an OS, especially Windows. There are not Windows Vista or 7 drivers for a Dell Dimension 4550, though it will still run Vista and 7, because they both have drivers for all the hardware built in to the OS. So it doesn't matter what the manufacture puts out, the Hardware can still run that OS.
I had to buy a bigger power supply that would heat up the room, don't need it anymore. I had to buy a special cooling fan for the Intel Core2Duo because the stock one was junk and kept falling off the motherboard and the new one made lots of noise, don't need it anymore the new computer runs very quiet and very cool.
Bigger power supplies put out more heat, that is just a fact of life. Not matter what, you start pumping a large amount of power through one spot it will make lots of heat. That is a faulty part and should have been taken back to be replaced. Parts of the same design and model type, regardless of the price, are to work properly, or it is broken. Broken parts from the manufacture cannot be a factor when talking about if a computer is obsolete, because there would be nothing but obsolete. The noise that the fan makes is all dependent on the model that you buy. You bought a fan with a high decibel rating, and so it was loud. Not the fans fault, the fan is running as it was designed to. You get what you pay for and if you wanted a more quiet fan, should have bought the higher priced one.
The old computer would lock up and shut down when it got warm, the new computer runs cool and hasn't locked up once yet. I had to buy and install a Windows 7 license to run the old computer, the new computer comes with Windows 7-64 bit already installed.
With just the statement that you let parts fall of of it, makes me wonder what other issues it had. If you run your car with out oil, it is not the cars fault that the engine fell apart. That would be the same thing, if there where not enough thermal compound or the attachments where shotty...there could be a million different reasons for bad performance caused by poor maintenance.
The new computer was all put together. I brought it home, plugged it in and it worked first time, no monkeying around needed. The old computer wouldn't post at first because somebody set the power supply switch to 220 volts. Two days messing around figuring that one out.
Still that would be user error, not a problem with the computer itself. The computer doesn't have arms to reach out and change it's own input power ratting. That could have easily happened to the new one you got, if worked on by a chowder head.
All in all the new computer is cheaper than the old one and much more powerful. I say it's up to date because it has the second generation i3 processor that was just released a couple of months ago, I'm comparing that to my old Core2Duo which is many years old and now obsolete.
The old computer was one headache after the next and I've already gutted it for parts. It's not coming back---ever !!!
I know that I have had this discussion many time and especially with a member that will remain nameless. Age newer doesn't translate into better. Just like any Mac you will find, brand new $2000+ is still obsolete. There are still people using Core 2 Duos for application servers that I know of. Running Microsoft Office and three releases of Visual Studio, in a 200 or 300 user environment. That is 10x if not ore than what you are running, and they still barley hit 78% or 80% CPU usage. It's all about what you do with it and how much you are willing to work on it to get it humming just right. It is like anything in the world, you only get out as much performance as you are willing to put in work.
