Upgrading PC

My Current PC is now around seven years old. I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and it is struugling a bit at times, so am looking to bring it a bit more up to date. I am not sure what I actually need.
The current spec is:
Pentium (R) Dual Core CPU E5800 @ 3.20GHz 3.30 GHz
4GB RAM- This is the max for teh board
500 GB Samsung SSD HD + a second 500GB HD as storage only.
Sound & Graphics built in to the Motherboard.

I use the PC for surfing and maybe watching U-tube videos so dont need a gaming spec machine. I am happy with the SSD and the HD for storage so will repupose them.
I havent kept up to date with the capabilities of CPUs etc, but suspect if I update the Motherboard, CPU and memory to 8-16GB, that would probably suffice along with a new case maybe.
What sort of CPU, Motherboard & RAM do i need to be looking for?

Thanks Baz

4GB is really not enough for Windows 10.
Was about to suggest more RAM but noticed you said it was the max for the motherboard.
Do you know that the board can only handle 4GB or have you just run out of slots?
4GB maximum seems very low...

I really wouldn’t bother trying to upgrade a motherboard as you could pick up a second hand 3 or 4 yr old PC, much better unit, for very little money.

4GB is the max the board will take or I would have upgraded it already. It is probably a 7 or 8 year old machine.
Cheers

Sounds like a newer machine is needed then.
I wouldn’t bother upgrading the motherboard. Just buy a newer machine.
If you avoid the latest tech, you’ll get a whole machine for not much more than a motherboard and CPU.
Keep your SSD as the operating drive obviously.

The laptop I'm typing this on came out of the factory about 12 years ago with Windows Vista. The motherboard supports a maximum of 2GB of RAM. It will run Windows 10 but not very well. Replacing the original HDD with a 240 GB SSD made it usable but it now dual-boots and runs Peppermint Linux from https://peppermintos.com/ very well. Web surfing with Firefox is good and GIMP for photo editing is both free and not too difficult to get used to. LibreOffice isn't completely compatible with the Microsoft version but it works and it's free. I started playing with it to relieve the boredom of being furloughed as I've got a better laptop and a fairly serious desktop machine both running Win10.

If you're going to start major hardware upgrades then what about a desktop with no OS and transfer your Win10 license? I buy hardware from https://www.cclonline.com/ and everything I've had so far has been fine. Transferring a license is something I've not tried but this article https://www.howtogeek.com/404525/how-to-transfer-a-windows-10-license-to-another-computer/ describes how to do it.

I was looking at something without Hard Drave and retain the SSD as the boot drive. Il look at the link. What sort of processor would be adequate?

Bear said:

If you're going to start major hardware upgrades then what about a desktop with no OS and transfer your Win10 license? I buy hardware from https://www.cclonline.com/ and everything I've had so far has been fine. Transferring a license is something I've not tried but this article https://www.howtogeek.com/404525/how-to-transfer-a-windows-10-license-to-another-computer/ describes how to do it.

Click to expand...

Ordered something this morning from CCL online