SSD into old PC?

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suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I found an old Shuttle SS31T at work, and to my surprise it still POSTs. It's got a P4 3.0GHz processor but supported RAM is already maxed out at 2GB. (2 sticks of 1GB)

I have a spare Crucial M4 128GB SSD, and if I were to install this into the machine will I still notice significant improvements over a traditional HD? I'm thinking yes, but not sure if the 2GB RAM will bring the system to a crawl and negate the SSD's advantages. OS will be some flavour of Windows (just not XP) and machine will be used strictly for office work: Gmail, few browser tabs open, MS Office, reading PDFs, viewing JPGs, etc.
 
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Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
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Please don't inflict a Pentium 4 on anyone... ;)

I don't think its worth the bother. Pentium 4 in all varieties are not suitable for modern browsing. Even at idle on the desktop, you can easily max out those 2GB memory.

Its even got an SiS chipset. Stay well clear, they always had horrible performance and you're properly not going to find drivers for anything newer then XP (possibly Vista).
 
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Joeydubbs

Senior member
Jun 11, 2008
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I doubt the standard HD is the bottleneck in that system...how does the machine perform the tasks you want in its current state?
 
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suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Joeydubbs said:
I doubt the standard HD is the bottleneck in that system...how does the machine perform the tasks you want in its current state?
Click to expand...


Good question. I haven't tried to boot off the drive inside... If it works can I clone C: to the ssd and see how much faster it is? If it doesn't work, I'll have to get a new version of windows but as mentioned driver support might be spotty..
 
Charlie98

Charlie98

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Nov 6, 2011
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The answer is 'yes...' you can drop an SSD in there and see some real-world user benefits, but the biggest drag is going to be the processor and limited RAM. Having said that, go for it... you might be surprised. The only real gauge of usability is your experience with it... either it will work for you, or it won't. And it's not like you can't pull the SSD out of there...

I put an SSD in my daughter's old Dell dual-core AMD laptop... it did improve usability quite a bit, especially once I dumped XP for LinuxMint. And once it's time to move on, the SSD will come out and go into the next laptop. As an aside, I upgraded to 2x 2GB RAM on this machine some time ago, that was probably the biggest boost besides the SSD.
 
Carson Dyle

Carson Dyle

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Jul 2, 2012
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It will boot faster and load programs faster. Same as with a more modern computer.

But I agree with the sentiment expressed above. I'd take a hammer to the P4 before I'd use it. It's ancient. The used 128 GB Crucial M4 is worth at least twice what the rest of the system is worth.
 
sm625

sm625

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May 6, 2011
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A better upgrade would be a pentium E2200, overclocked to 3GHz. The latest bios supposedly supports it.
 
corkyg

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
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Mar 4, 2000
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Odds are it does not have AHCI either. No harm in playing with it as long as you got the time. :)
 
mistersprinkles

mistersprinkles

Senior member
May 24, 2014
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In all likelihood the thing probably doesn't even have SATA for crying out loud. Even if it had SATA (first gen 1.5gbps) it would viciously hamper the SSD's transfer speeds.

A Pentium 4 isn't even as powerful as my phone. Keep the chip as a collector's item but don't actually use it. It's such a bad CPU. Even for it's time it was a bad design. The oldest Intel chips that are decent in my opinion are Core 2 series chips. Anything older than that is junk at this point.
 
Torn Mind

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
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Having dealt with a P4 and a regular hard drive, I can safely say that the SSD will help, but there will still be lag. And I've dealt with an Atom and modern hard drive as well. The experience will be similar. The SSD will help, but lag will still be present in script-heavy sites. I did not actually use an SSD in either system, but it is clear when the hard drive is making its seek noises.

480p is probably the highest res video you can play on there without a discrete card.
 
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suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,575
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At least it's 7200 RPM :)

Definitely faster to boot up XP SP3. Will clear out all the installed applications, wish there was an easy way to 'restore' Windows without the original CD. And btw, the graphics cards is an Asus EN7300GS.

Edit: hold on to your seats, the machine got a 3DMark06 score of 658...
 
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suklee

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,575
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OK, so you guys were right, the Shuttle sucks even with an SSD :biggrin:

What is it good for then, can I set it up as a server of some sort? We could use a voicemail system in the office actually if it's even doable.. something like this maybe?

Since the Shuttle won't cut it, it means I'll 'donate' my old system to work, it's a bit overpowered though for office use: Q6600, 16GB RAM, 7970, plus the M4 SSD mentioned in OP
 
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Morbus

Senior member
Apr 10, 2009
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Don't spend money on an SSD for that machine: get a light linux distro on it and be done with it. 2GB of RAM will be enough, and it's safer than any Windows OS that you'll be able to run on that thing anyway.
 
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radhak

Senior member
Aug 10, 2011
843
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Actually, now that you have the SSD on it, wipe out Windows and load Linux. It's gonna be zippy enoug. And if you have not used Linux before, could be a fun toy to set up as a server or something, play with LAMP)
 
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