To start, I know little to nothing about computers but have noticed that the OzB community really seem to know their stuff.
In roughly 2009-2010 I purchased a HP Pavilion Elite HPE-190a from old mate Harvey Normans. This was well before I was an OzBargainer and from memory, I paid something ludicrous like $3k+ for it.
It was extremely excessive for my needs as all I ever did was download movies and use social media.
I think I put it away and changed to a laptop because I started occasionally getting that blue screen on start up(I downloaded a fair few torrents) and a laptop was more convenient for me.
I have just pulled it out of my cupboard as I would now like a PC for study and potentially to game on.
It started up fine with no blue screen when I plugged it in.
I am just wondering if there is anything I should do before using it (ideally I would like to delete everything except Microsoft Office and the original software and start new)
And also, does it still have decent specs for a gaming computer/ is there anything that you would recommend updating/changing.
Specs below
(as per https://support.hp.com/au-en/document/c01969877)
Mother board
MS-7613 (Iona-GL8E)
Manufacturer: MSI
Form factor: microATX - 24.4 cm (9.6 inches) x 24.4 cm (9.6 inches)
Chipset: Intel H57 Express
Memory sockets: 4 x DDR3
Front side bus speeds: 2.5 GT/s DMI
Processor socket: LGA1156
Expansion Slots:
1 PCI Express x16 slot for graphics card
3 PCI Express x1 slots
1 PCI Express x1 minicard slot
Processor
Intel Core i7 860
Operating speed: 2.8 GHz (up to 3.4 GHz turbo)
Number of cores: 4
Socket: 1156
Bus speed: DMI (Direct Media Interface) - bus speed not applicable for DMI
Memory
Amount: 8 GB
Speed: PC3-10600 MB/sec
Video Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260; and
Integrated Intel H57
TIA Any advice would be greatly appreciated :).
I would say the core system is borderline obsolete. You can keep using it for basic tasks, but it's not for gaming anymore.
For around $200~250 dollars, the Dell Optiplex 9010 / 9020 that everyone has been buying on the Ozbargain front page would make a suitable replacement PC.
GTX 260 is very outdated, since it was a card released in the DirectX 10 era (2008) and the driver support for it stopped long ago it's definitely something that should be retired by now. It's also a pretty power hungry card, definitely quite inefficient when you compare it to Nvidia's Pascal GPUs.
A GTX 1050 (the weaker, 2GB VRAM non Ti version) would easily run circles around it while running off just a PCIE slot with no 6pin power cable. This card costs $150.
An SSD upgrade would also give it some extra life; perhaps look into a 2.5" inch SATA SSD, and also a can of compressed air to remove dust and some thermal paste to maintain the PC.
you'll probably end up spending an extra $260 dollars if you want to refurbish your computer with the new parts I mentioned above, but it's all optional.