Gateway Parts

Can you reuse computer parts when building a new computer?

I have a 5-7 year old desktop that I built myself. It is finally starting to break so I am in need of another computer. My question is are there any parts that I can reuse to save money? Is it okay to reuse my old case and power supply? Can anything else be reused and not limit the new hardwares potential?

Public Comments

1. It would be best if you list all the parts. Yes the case will work, possibly the Power Supply, and possibly other parts as well. Depends on what you want your new computer to be used for and what the old parts are. If you list the part you have, and what you want to use the new PC for I will get back to you.
2. Case, optical drive (CD/DVD drive), and sometimes the power supply (depends on the requirements of the new system) can be reused.
3. You can reuse the case including it's fans and your power supply - as long as you don't care about the noise it will make and the efficiensy of the power supply. Just make sure it will all fit together and your power supply has enough power to power you PC, pay special attention to the voltage your GPU will need. Good luck and happy building!
4. yes but this is very risky there is a 90% chance that doing this will cause your PC to mate with these old computer components and make little evil robot baby's who want to rule the world,after 10 days the world will be taken by the robots. so please don't use the computer parts i prefer not to be anal probed.
5. As said a list of bit would be handy, at that age i think i would tempted to replace the lot, all depends what you are going to build really
6. Cases are universal, so can reuse that, as long as you are buying not too high level components. They might be bigger. Power supply will be worthless unless your old machine was a very powerful one at that time. But again depends on what type of components you want to buy. If you want to go the "cheap as hell" way, then maybe even the power supply will be reusable. If you go the way "new and decently powerful" - throw it away. Motherboard is useless, unless you intend to reuse the old processor, which will simply be too old, so throw it away. Only things actually worth reusing are the Hard Drives (the old one will probably use different connector than the new ones, but converter cables are very cheap and you can use it as a backup drive "in case". Same goes for the Optical Drive - DVD rom should work, but it is pointless to use the old one - new ones are very cheap and well, new is better than old. RAM memories are useless, as they will be too old to be used with modern motherboards. And too slow as well. So basically, if you want to save a few bucks, keep the old case, if the power supply is at least 450 Watt, you can keep that as well and maybe the old Hard Drive (for backup use only as it will be way slower than new ones so do not use it as main OS drive). Basically if the system is older than lets say 4 years(by middle to low range models. more if it was a hard core machine), there is no point in keeping anything apart the case. Everything else is actually very cheap as long as you don't try to make a hardcore gaming machine.
7. If your computer is that old the case, and CD/DVD drives are the only thing salvageable. The power supply is worn out, the hard drives are going to wear out from use sometime in the next several years (plus you can buy larger hard drives for very little), and yes, the graphics card is useless too if you plan on doing any gaming, and even if you don't, most computers use PCIe, and not AGP. If the card is a PCI, and you need it for a display adapter, it may be useable.
8. OK first, NEVER reuse a power supply. I don't care if the power supply is 6 months old. Good power supplies last about 5 years maximum, usually. AVERAGE quality power supplies will go 2-3 years if you are lucky. And when they die (not if, WHEN) they have a nasty habit of destroying other components. Always use a good quality BRAND NEW power supply for a new build...or even a major upgrade! If your computer is more than a year old, you might be able to reuse some disk drives. And yes, if your case is good quality, you can probably reuse that. For the most part though, if your system is more than a few years old it's better to start over from scratch. Case...cheap enough, do you really want to keep the old one? Power supply...NEVER use the old one Motherboard...won't be compatible with well, anything you want to use. CPU...You won't find a current motherboard to accept it RAM...You won't find a current motherboard to accept it. If you do find that motherboard, you do not want to buy it. Video card...Might not fit current motherboards, but is terribly outdated anyway. Get rid of it. Hard Drive...will slow down your new hardware, UNLESS the hard drive is much newer than the rest of your current system Optical drive...yeah, you could reuse it. but 5-7 years old? That's got to be close to the end of its useful life anyway (replace it for like 17 bucks) Basically, start over from nothing. Another reason you want to replace EVERY component is quite simple... Whenever you are building a new system, you want to have a COMPLETE, working system handy...in case you need to hop on the web to research something during the build process.
9. At 5-7 years old, don't bother. Sure, you could use the case, but newer cases have more USB ports etc. in front, which come in handy, plus even if your new motherboard supports USB 3.0, a case that old won't have 3.0 in front at all(they're physically deeper for one thing!) Optical drives are cheap, you can get an OEM SATA DVD burner for 19.99 or even less if you shop around for it. I might keep an IDE drive as a second drive, but I'd want at least one new optical drive(in fact that's what I did with my last build!) Even if the power supply was guaranteed to last a few more years, it won't have SATA power connectors. Also, as was pointed out by Dave, when power supplies go out, they have a nasty tendency to take other components with. The last one that failed on me took out everything but a floppy drive, RAM and the MOBO/processor combination(NIC, burner, a couple of expansion cards and a hard drive) If you're really looking to pinch pennies, shop around though, you're best off(IMO anyway!) getting the motherboard processor and RAM together, sometimes AS a combination package, but do a little hunting for the other components. Often one outfit will have the cheapest of of this component, but a competitor has the cheapest of that one, if you follow my drift. Keyboards or mice seem to last nearly forever, but they're pretty cheap too. Now might be the time to look into Linux, there's a BIG money saver. Both Fedora and Ubuntu have very user friendly installers(if you've ever installed 98, Millenium*shudder* or XP, you can even do it without a geek handy, lol) and the price is right, free. Don't forget to select for the 64-bit version, both are faster with 64-bit machines, especially the multi-core processors. http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download