Hi
I'm new. Looks like a great place for help! Thank you in advance.

I am trying to speed up a Compaq Presario Model 5080US so I can give it to an elderly person. It just seems so slow to me and I'd like to bump it up some without spending a lot of money. It has 512MB Ram- 256 each slot now. Other than that I don't think anything else has been done to it. Still has the 20GB HD. I was wondering if I used a 40GB HD that I have, if it might help. I have reformatted and reinstalled already so the operating system is clean. I have put Windows XP Pro in instead of the ME that was there. Can't seem to find much info on the motherboard to know what CPU might be upgraded either.

Anyone have any ideas?

Product Specifications Compaq Presario 5080US Desktop PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

Unfortunately I can't find the socket number but only the processor. You need to know the socket number for a processor upgrade. It might say on the socket itself. From looking at the different celeron processor sockets on wikipedia it looks to me that it is either a socket m or socket 370 based on the specifications [my guess would be a 370]. There are links for each with technical specs as well as pictures. It could also be a slot. When you look inside the case a slot would be more obvious. There is a link to the Slot 1 page which includes a picture.

As for ram 512 mb should be enough unless the user is into heavy gaming or pc virtualization. It is also the maximum supported amount according to that page.

As for graphics there isn't a slot dedicated for a graphics card so there probably wouldn't be any advantage to upgrading that.

Short of figuring out what socket that board has and finding the appropriate processor, I'd say that you can't do much in the way of upgrades. A larger hard drive won't really improve performance that much but a faster hard drive might under heavy use. The question is what the user will need.