Ok my computer is about 6-8yrs old and outdated. I have a Dell Dimension 2400 with 256MB and Celeron(R)2.4Ghz with a 33GB Harddrive with Windows XP. My mom and I have been thinking of upgrading it but I'm thinking that I should get a new one. So I need some advice

You can build a new one for far cheaper than it would take to upgrade that one to a respectable level.

If you need help with the build parts and how to do it, let us know. We'll walk you through it.

Tell her about the only thing you would be salvaging from an 8 year old computer would be the case, keyboard/mouse and possibly the PSU if you were doing a very light gaming machine build (Dell likely has less than a 400watt PSU). In other words, you wouldn't be saving any money by re-using components.

If you have your XP installer disc, that's one other thing you can re-use. If not, you'll have to salvage your slow (by today's standards) hard drive as well until you can transfer it to another drive.

I don't know how extensive you want to go with a build/upgrade and you may well be better off just buying another preconfig system (when you find a good deal on a good configuration). You can buy a very nicely configured pre-built for very little currently. There are plenty of good video cards in the $100 range as well to add to your pre-built if you need more performance for hardware intensive games.

If you're interested in building a new gaming computer from scratch, there are people here who can help you out.

Budget is a good start in determining the best build for your dollar. People can help with the sourcing as well (best price for best components with available funds).

Any initial questions, feel free to ask.

Upgrade, wait until Black Friday and you should be able to score a cheap upgrade at Office Depot/Max.

Although if you just want a little extra boost buy a gig of RAM that's compatible with your computer and slap it in there. 256mb is way to little to run XP effectively, just don't bother with upgrading the HD, Videocard because at this point it isn't worth it.

You can buy, prebuilt, a computer with Vista pro, a dual core amd(2x 3ghz processors, equivelant), a Radeon HD 3000+ PCI 2.0 16x, 3gbs of ram, 300gb hd, DVD burner/drive, mouse, keyboard, speakers, and modable case with a sick cooling system built in for 450 dollars plus shipping, off newegg.

It'll play anything, even crysis on medium settings, and if you wanna upgrade the power supply and graphics card, it'll play anything on very high settings for about the next 2 years.

Someone has a crystal ball. lol

But sure, for the sake of argument, it's safe to say it will be compatible with future PCIe2.0x16 cards to be released in the future to keep pace with the most hardware intensive games.

It's been a full year since Crysis was released and quad Crossfire (4870x2)/3x SLI (GTX280/260core216) are about the only video set ups that could be considered fully playable at 2560x1600 resolution with max settings.

Most users (not interested in building/tinkering) are better of picking up an inexpensive pre-config system and adding the appropriate video card later to match the gaming performance they want. Less headache, more playing, unless your idea of play is tinkering with hardware and system settings rather than gaming or even just having a computer that works.

Just get a new one a decent computer is about $400 without the screen.

But if your gonna be gaming on it you might have to pay alittle more.

Totally not worth spending money to upgrade to a reasonable level. Far cheaper to build a new system. Though you can salvage case, possibly power supply (depends if u want to game), hard drive and of course the monitor

For one I would like a faster computer, and building one doesn't seem to be a bad thing but how much is this going to cost me if I am building a gaming computer?

Depends on how powerful you want it. You can build a gaming PC on the cheap, just don't expect to max out many settings or have a very high resolution.

It would be easier on us if you had a either a specific budget or gaming goal in mind.