I will not use ebay or amazon, and will never do so.

Regarding amazon, they use slave labour and the owner is a complete asshole.

i will most likely get a cheap usb3 to sata 3.5 inch enclosure for the old hdd

Good idea, IMHO. Please also consider something like that:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L3W4G1I
I have two of them in my box and they are very useful to make backups on standard spinning drives.

You mean 500 GB, right?

This is for sure. I learned the hard way how important is doing regular backups.

Wise move, IMHO. Now, I have four backups and rotate them weekly.

Money is a big constraint, of course. One of the zillion things I like with free software is that we can do a better use of the resources, money and hardware.

Good luck

Hei!

I've got four PCs running, six if you include the laptop and mobile-phone, and the eldest is from 1999 (running on SuSE 9.1); I've built most of them myself so I kind of swap and change parts not working all the time, however, the original CPU and RAM is still in use in the oldest computer
I'm kind of a nostalgic person, so running and keeping a stock of old computers and components, as well as old software, appeals to me.

The only thing I keep in mind watching, and upgrading, are the hard-drives; the PC I'm using now is from 2007 (MB, CPU, GPU, RAM etc), all  my correspondence, mail, logs, student-projects and so on are kept here; my production PCs are far better, but I don't care changing my day to day PC to one of those as long as the current set-up works well.

As stated above, this PC is from 2007 and has no problem playing and watching «common» music and videos at all; forcing it to work with resolutions greater than e.g. 4000x6000 px (videos), might be a different matter though; I don't know.

Cheers,
Olav

Thats good but have you tried updating power supply on those older machines? I will still keep the old dell, i may be able to get a decent psu for it in the future.

I need to transition to more updated equipment before the hardware i have is obsolete or made obsolete, so ssd and newer motherboards and cpu on the horizon when i can afford it.

I have my personal hard drive from the dell im hoping i can just plug in and reconfigure.

I'm sure that you can do just that and it will work.

But ten years is a long time for a hard drive. Even if the SMART info is right, I will change the hard drive for a new one, most likely an SSD one, as they are nowadays very affordable and the benefits in speed will be very notable.

I've got four PCs running, six if you include the laptop and mobile-phone, and the eldest is from 1999 (running on SuSE 9.1); I've built most of them myself so I kind of swap and change parts not working all the time, however, the original CPU and RAM is still in use in the oldest computer
I'm kind of a nostalgic person, so running and keeping a stock of old computers and components, as well as old software, appeals to me.

The only thing I keep in mind watching, and upgrading, are the hard-drives; the PC I'm using now is from 2007 (MB, CPU, GPU, RAM etc), all  my correspondence, mail, logs, student-projects and so on are kept here; my production PCs are far better, but I don't care changing my day to day PC to one of those as long as the current set-up works well.

As stated above, this PC is from 2007 and has no problem playing and watching «common» music and videos at all; forcing it to work with resolutions greater than e.g. 4000x6000 px (videos), might be a different matter though; I don't know.

Cheers,
Olav

I havent looked at newegg so thanks for bringing that up i will check those out. Good to hear you had a nice experience, it always helps others when reccomendations like this come through.

Dual Core 3.2GHz... 4GB DDR4 (1x4GB)

Do you like to play with virtual machines?  For me, this is a little light on resources.  But then I don't know how close you want to stick with the $475 price you mentioned.
Will you be putting it together yourself?  If you are, then I would at least look at what Newegg has in the way of bundling.  Here are a couple of quick links for "DIY kits" that they currently have.  I saw one or two that were just under $700 and they came with a 6-core processor and more RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/DIY-PC-Combos/Pro … tore/ID-33

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi … =BESTMATCH

I just last month purchased a kit and assembled myself.  It works great and am very pleased.  I do not like the cases that they are pushing now as it does not have any optical drives openings on the front.  I chose the Corsair 200R case and I really love it.

So maybe time for a new desktop, nothing fancy but ive put together something online at a local dealer for just under $500, what do you think? I could get intel for a bit cheaper but want to try amd for a change.

Computer Configuration #114010         $475.00
AMD AM4 Athlon 200GE Dual Core 3.2GHz Radeon CPU YD200GC6FBBOX Vega 3 Graphics        
Cooler Master Hyper 212X CPU Heatsink and Fan PN RR-212X-20PM-R1        
ASUS AM4 MicroATX Prime A320M-K Motherboard        
4GB DDR4 (1x4GB) Crucial 2400MHz RAM Module PN CT4G4DFS824A        
MSI GT1030 2GB OC Low Profile PCIe Video Card PN GT 1030 2G LP OC        
* Add a Monitor from this List        
Casecom MicroATX CM13B Case with 550W PSU        
Integrated Power Supply        
Integrated Sound Card        
Integrated Network Connection