Looking to upgrade PC

oman19

oman19

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Hey fellow CAG's I'm looking to upgrade my PC. I built this one in 2009 and it's served me very well thus far but I'm thinking it's time to make a few upgrades to make it last another few years before I build from scratch.

CPU: AMD Phenom II Quad Core 3.0ghzv http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103471
MB: ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131343
GPU: SAPPHIRE Radeon 1GB 4850 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102802
RAM: 4 GB Patriot DDR2 1066 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220353
PSU: Corsair 850W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009
HDD: Wester Digital 7200RPM 640GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319
Case: Roswell Triple 120mm Fan http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147105

I think the 3 most obvious upgrades is to upgrade the RAM, Graphics Card, and get a SSD. I'm on a budget so for the most bang for my buck I'm thinking I will probably just upgrade the RAM to 8GB and get a new videocard.

My first question is can I get 4 GB of this RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147105 and be fine? I know you SHOULD try to have the same RAM but my current RAM is discontinued. Or should I buy 8GB of that RAM and sell what I have on ebay?

Question number 2 is will this video card http://www.amazon.com/R7850-2xMiniD...colid=16XHHMO3H8NSK&coliid=I2L6H17YVMMYO2work with what I have?

Thanks for any help you guys can offer.
 
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I could answer more if I could find the stupid manual and get the full system specs. So my comments are speculative based off of what I saw on Newegg. I have no experience with this board.

RAM - I've had issues with my Phenom with mismatched memory. Both sticks tested out fine by themselves. Not saying you will have the problem but I would probably sell and buy new. At those RAM prices I would simply not do that upgrade.

Video card - again since I do not know the full specs, as long as you can power it you should be okay. May not have the latest PCIe specs on the MB, but worse case is you lose a bit of theoretical performance.

I could not recommend a SSD for that system unless you are going to take it to you next system. While it will speed up access time, my guess is you are gaming and this is not going to speed up frame rate, which is what I assume you are running into. Nice upgrade but you have other issues.

Honestly I believe you are throwing money at a dying system for gaming. IMHO you are better off saving the money and starting / planning a scratch build. I see that you have a MicroCenter within roughly an hour drive....they have some great MB/CPU combo deals. I mean between the SSD, RAM, and GPU you have about $500-600 listed there since DDR2 ram is not cheap. 8GB DDR3 is less than half the cost of DDR2.
 
If you are purely interested in doing a small upgrade to your current rig, and possibly doing a full new build in the future, I'd likely go with a video card upgrade. You can get a 650 TI or a 7770 for around 100-110 and that will swap into whatever new build you do. I agree with jmbreci on the RAM situation... There is no point continuing to throw DDR2 into a machine, unless you just happen to have it sitting around.
 
[quote name='jmbreci']I could answer more if I could find the stupid manual and get the full system specs. So my comments are speculative based off of what I saw on Newegg. I have no experience with this board.

RAM - I've had issues with my Phenom with mismatched memory. Both sticks tested out fine by themselves. Not saying you will have the problem but I would probably sell and buy new. At those RAM prices I would simply not do that upgrade.

Video card - again since I do not know the full specs, as long as you can power it you should be okay. May not have the latest PCIe specs on the MB, but worse case is you lose a bit of theoretical performance.

I could not recommend a SSD for that system unless you are going to take it to you next system. While it will speed up access time, my guess is you are gaming and this is not going to speed up frame rate, which is what I assume you are running into. Nice upgrade but you have other issues.

Honestly I believe you are throwing money at a dying system for gaming. IMHO you are better off saving the money and starting / planning a scratch build. I see that you have a MicroCenter within roughly an hour drive....they have some great MB/CPU combo deals. I mean between the SSD, RAM, and GPU you have about $500-600 listed there since DDR2 ram is not cheap. 8GB DDR3 is less than half the cost of DDR2.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the heads up on Microcenter. I didn't know anything about them!

I was leaning no towards the SSD anyway and you definitely talked me out of it.

Sounds like the Video Card is what both of you guys think i should do. I'll definitely do that. Pretty sure the 850W should be plenty for it.

As far as the RAM goes. I've been watching ebay for some used ones of the sticks I was looking at. They are going around $40 per 2 x2gb. My thinking is I buy 8gb of that for $80 bucks take my stuff post it on e-bay and hopefully get around $40 for it.

So all together with the videocard and the 8 GB used RAM for $260 minus what i sell my RAM and old GPU for I should be looking at only sinking around $200-$220 give or take.

For $200 squeezing a few more years outta this rig I wouldn't complain about.

I do realize though this will definitely be the last round of upgrades for it but if it gets me to 2015-2016 I'll be happy
 
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I have 4GB of RAM and haven't yet had any game push me much beyond 3GB total usage. A video card and overclocking that CPU if you can will be your most worthwhile upgrades IMO.
 
I just don't think you'll see very much of a performance boost in throwing those extra 4gb of DDR2 into the machine, compared to the cost. Another minor 'upgrade' you could do is to use a USB stick or SD card for Readyboost (YMMV on this... I'd only recommend if you have a spare USB stick sitting around and want to try it out. It worked wonders for me on my old netbook, for example.)

I'm assuming this is likely for gaming...
I'd say you're at that point where you only have one viable cost-effective upgrade, which would be your video card. Or you can wait a month or so and replace your mobo + CPU + GPU + RAM for 350~400

An example build priced at 382 before shipping (free with shoprunner) with an additional 30$ in MIR:
CPU: AMD FX-4100 Zambezi 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 95W Quad-Core
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3 AM3+ AMD 970
RAM: G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866
GPU: DIAMOND 7770PE51G Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB 128-bit GDDR5
 
[quote name='deftrance']I just don't think you'll see very much of a performance boost in throwing those extra 4gb of DDR2 into the machine, compared to the cost. Another minor 'upgrade' you could do is to use a USB stick or SD card for Readyboost (YMMV on this... I'd only recommend if you have a spare USB stick sitting around and want to try it out. It worked wonders for me on my old netbook, for example.)

I'm assuming this is likely for gaming...
I'd say you're at that point where you only have one viable cost-effective upgrade, which would be your video card. Or you can wait a month or so and replace your mobo + CPU + GPU + RAM for 350~400

An example build priced at 382 before shipping (free with shoprunner) with an additional 30$ in MIR:
CPU: AMD FX-4100 Zambezi 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 95W Quad-Core
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3 AM3+ AMD 970
RAM: G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866
GPU: DIAMOND 7770PE51G Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB 128-bit GDDR5[/QUOTE]

Funny you should post that. I was looking at a very similiar package. Same MB and the next 4.0ghz FX AMD processor.

What I was wondering though is would it be more cost effective to sell my old rig and build a whole new system using those parts or just upgrade those things you have there, sell the old parts for what i can get for them on ebay and use everything else I have in my system with those upgrads? I love my PSU and Case. Would my case work with that MB?
 
I have never once sold a gaming rig, so I can't really say how much or how little you would get for what you have right now. I typically build or upgrade my own stuff and then hand-down the prior parts/build to my fiance. Typically, for me, unless my case or PSU is in bad condition, I keep those from build to build unless I find a good buy on something nice, but I think your case and your corsair PSU will be a fine fit with new gear.
 
Look so if you have a Microcenter near you, then you should go get the CPU / Motherboard COMBO to save on your stuff.

I bought a bundle of a AMD FX-4100 CPU with a Gigabyte H61? Motherboard for free with the CPU, came to $90. Bought 8GB DDR3-1600 Corsair RAM for only $30 bucks

So far the total was only $120.

We got a small SSD 64 GB for 50 bucks and then a 7770 video card from ebay for $80.

Total was $250!

He had the case, power supply, monitor and stuff from his older build. Everything worked out great. Dude trust me just sign up for the microcenter emails and you will be golden, watch for weekend crazy sale prices.

In November microcenter cleared out all of their Intel i5 2500K processors brand new for $99. I got like 3 of those...

Then they cleared out Samsung 830 SSD 256 MB drives for only $140...picked up one of those.

And then one day I walked in, they had 50% off all yellow tag items, and it included flat panel monitors so I found this Viewsonic 23 Inch IPS display for only $70 bucks. The store manager was kinda upset he didn't know they had it or he would have bought it himself. He reluctantly sold it to me.


Back 6 months ago I went from a Phenom II B55e (overclocked and unlocked to 4 cores) with some old Asus motherboard to a rocking build:

Gigabyte Z77-D3H Motherboard with i5 3570K overclocked to 4.6 GHz 256 SSD drive 32 GB RAM. All of that was under $500.

3570K was $170
Motherboard was $70
Memory $100
SSD (the samsung 830) $140

$480.

I spent a long time looking through craigslist for video cards and ebay. Just don't rush on buying anything quick.
 
[quote name='s0undwav3']Look so if you have a Microcenter near you, then you should go get the CPU / Motherboard COMBO to save on your stuff.

I bought a bundle of a AMD FX-4100 CPU with a Gigabyte H61? Motherboard for free with the CPU, came to $90. Bought 8GB DDR3-1600 Corsair RAM for only $30 bucks

So far the total was only $120.

We got a small SSD 64 GB for 50 bucks and then a 7770 video card from ebay for $80.

Total was $250!

He had the case, power supply, monitor and stuff from his older build. Everything worked out great. Dude trust me just sign up for the microcenter emails and you will be golden, watch for weekend crazy sale prices.

In November microcenter cleared out all of their Intel i5 2500K processors brand new for $99. I got like 3 of those...

Then they cleared out Samsung 830 SSD 256 MB drives for only $140...picked up one of those.

And then one day I walked in, they had 50% off all yellow tag items, and it included flat panel monitors so I found this Viewsonic 23 Inch IPS display for only $70 bucks. The store manager was kinda upset he didn't know they had it or he would have bought it himself. He reluctantly sold it to me.


Back 6 months ago I went from a Phenom II B55e (overclocked and unlocked to 4 cores) with some old Asus motherboard to a rocking build:

Gigabyte Z77-D3H Motherboard with i5 3570K overclocked to 4.6 GHz 256 SSD drive 32 GB RAM. All of that was under $500.

3570K was $170
Motherboard was $70
Memory $100
SSD (the samsung 830) $140

$480.

I spent a long time looking through craigslist for video cards and ebay. Just don't rush on buying anything quick.[/QUOTE]

How the hell havn't I heard of this place!
 
Yea I don't know but you should really look them up if you do have a retail store that is in reasonable driving range.

Luckily I live between 2 retail stores in my area, so if one doesn't have something, usually the other does.

But I have to warn you, check your emails with every micro center sale, somethings you read through them and you find just insane deals. I'm so glad the day I opened one up and dug through and saw the i5 2500k for $99. It wasn't listed in the title of the email. I had to reserve / pickup the CPU's as soon as I read that email. Sure enough, I got to the store at opening time and every single i5 2500k was reserved.
 
Just signed up for the subscription. I think you guys went ahead and convinced me to go ahead and just replace the Motherboard/Videocard/CPU/ and Ram route. Would also like to upgrade from Vista to Win8...what do you think that will run me?
 
[quote name='oman19']Just signed up for the subscription. I think you guys went ahead and convinced me to go ahead and just replace the Motherboard/Videocard/CPU/ and Ram route. Would also like to upgrade from Vista to Win8...what do you think that will run me?[/QUOTE]

There are several options out there for Win 8... But why not just go the Upgrade route and only spend 39 bucks?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/buy?ocid=GA8_O_WOL_DIS_ShopHP_FPP_Light
 
Been away a lot of the week....sorry for the push but I could not recommend you upgrading that if you had a MicroCenter close. I'm 3.5 hours away from one but know of it since I used to live in Kansas City. When I head back I always look at the ad. Heck, I even made a special trip there when I had a couple of items go out on my system because building new AND driving there was cheaper than getting the items from Newegg.

Best luck on the build and let us know what you get.
 
Will do appreciate all your guys help. Here is a question. For gaming does it matter what version of windows I'm running? I'm running Vista-64bit on my desktop and 7 64bit on my laptop. Would I get a performance bump upgrading to 8 at all or does windows now matter?

(If it was up to me I would just upgrade the desktop to 7 since I don't really seem to care for the layout of 8)
 
[quote name='oman19']Will do appreciate all your guys help. Here is a question. For gaming does it matter what version of windows I'm running? I'm running Vista-64bit on my desktop and 7 64bit on my laptop. Would I get a performance bump upgrading to 8 at all or does windows now matter?

(If it was up to me I would just upgrade the desktop to 7 since I don't really seem to care for the layout of 8)[/QUOTE]

You might get a increase going from vista to 8 but 7 to 8, not so much.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/09/windows-8-upgrade-diary-4/
 
Vista was a bad OS to begin with and a lot of games run slow - even video drivers run slow on Vista, so upgrade to 8 will be better, but if you could get Windows 7 x64 cheaper than 40 bucks then go that route. I am running Windows 8 and I think I'm going to revert back to Windows 7. I see very little improvement over anything and I hardly ever use the Metro UI.

But 40 bucks for Windows 8 is a great deal considering on Feb1st it will go up to $109.95
 
[quote name='jmbreci']Been away a lot of the week....sorry for the push but I could not recommend you upgrading that if you had a MicroCenter close. I'm 3.5 hours away from one but know of it since I used to live in Kansas City. When I head back I always look at the ad. Heck, I even made a special trip there when I had a couple of items go out on my system because building new AND driving there was cheaper than getting the items from Newegg.

Best luck on the build and let us know what you get.[/QUOTE]

Well after doing a bunch of research this is what I'm going to get for right now.

CPU: i5-3570k 3.4/3.8 Quad core http://www.microcenter.com/product/388577/Core_i5_3570K_34GHz_LGA_1155_Processor

MB: MSI B75MA-E33 http://www.microcenter.com/product/406650/B75MA-E33_LGA_1155_B75_mATX_Intel_Motherboard

GPU: PowerCooler Radeon 7850 2 GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131473

RAM: 8GB Crucial DDR-3 1600 http://www.microcenter.com/product/...l_Desktop_Memory_Kit_(Two_4GB_Memory_Modules)

Do you guys forsee any problems using what I already have combined with the new parts? This could change a little depending on pricing for the next month but it's pretty close to the ballpark I'm looking.

I did decide to hold off upgrading from Vista to 8. I really wanted to upgrade to 7 but figured I could hold off on the extra cost and wait a lil while down the road for that.

Also thought about going with 16GB of RAM but though it might be a lil overkill so dumped the extra cost into getting the 2GB Radeon 7850 instead of the 1 GB

I've only ever built from scratch. Will I have to reinstall windows if I'm using the same HDD?
 
You should reinstall. You may get away without it but you will probably have a lot of issues. Reinstalling is the easiest thing to do, plus with Vista it will probably ask you to enter a new key or reauthenticate.

My only head scratching moment is sticking with Vista. It is a bloated POS. I'd rather downgrade to XP or go to Win 7 or 8.
 
That's a solid build. You made the right call with the 16GB RAM vs 2GB VRAM. I'd go ahead and upgrade to Windows 8 because the price is going up after the 31st and the move from Vista is worth it. Don't forget the WMC addon for it too.
 
I would go with 7 over 8. 8 mostly adds useless crap / waste of space. Hopefully the next windows OS will be much better. (Seems to be their trend anyway: 1 good OS then a shitty one)
 
I disagree - you can disable metro UI in Windows 8 if you want and if you install the Pro version, you can turn off hybernate and it uses less space on a full install that Windows 7 - it boots up faster, and uses UEFI if your BIOS supports it (if you are upgrading then almost all new motherboards support UEFI now).

And in a year or so you will see Windows 8 being more of a standard, get better benefits using IE 10, more features in Direct X for gaming etc.....

$40 bucks is pretty good for an OS cost.
 
[quote name='s0undwav3']I disagree - you can disable metro UI in Windows 8 if you want and if you install the Pro version, you can turn off hybernate and it uses less space on a full install that Windows 7 - it boots up faster, and uses UEFI if your BIOS supports it (if you are upgrading then almost all new motherboards support UEFI now).

And in a year or so you will see Windows 8 being more of a standard, get better benefits using IE 10, more features in Direct X for gaming etc.....[/QUOTE]

I read/heard the exact same argument about Windows Vista and Windows ME.
 
[quote name='Megazell']I read/heard the exact same argument about Windows Vista and Windows ME.[/QUOTE]

Alright you got everyone beat with ME but both of those OSs were broken at release and were to a degree fixed. (moreso vista than ME) 8 is far from broken.

BTW-I feel your pain with ME. I had an ME computer that was so incredibly slow. I only briefly remember the specs but it was more than abundant to run XP but alas I was a toddler.
 
Even Microsoft admits Windows 8 is using Windows 7 Core with a new experience and better stability.

I like that...Even with Windows 7 SP1 you need to get somewhere around 80 patches. Windows 8 - there's about 15-18 critical/important patches. They took everything from Windows 7 and put it in Windows 8.

Anyway I'm not a fan of it, I don't like the metro UI but my wife does. I just like that when I installed Windows 8 - it took almost 10 Gig less of space on my SSD, and I had far more tools to use - especially hyper v.

There is just such a negativity about the metro UI but you can disable it and get to the program folder very easily.
 
Wow I just realized you said you were a toddler when Windows ME/XP was around. Haha, you didn't live through Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE hehehe....those were the good old days.

Anyway, any other tips you need on upgrading your PC?

RAM is soo cheap these days you should get on newegg / amazon / whatever computer store near you lists. The more RAM the better....it's cool in Windows 8 I was playing both SW TOR and NFS Hot Pursuit at the same time on two different screens with the amount of RAM I have. I had to wait for long que line in some arena in TOR so I just raced some laps in NFS.

I can't actually do that in Windows 7, it only allows me to play 1 game at a time, no matter what I've tried to do.
 
[quote name='s0undwav3']Wow I just realized you said you were a toddler when Windows ME/XP was around. Haha, you didn't live through Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE hehehe....those were the good old days.

Anyway, any other tips you need on upgrading your PC?

RAM is soo cheap these days you should get on newegg / amazon / whatever computer store near you lists. The more RAM the better....it's cool in Windows 8 I was playing both SW TOR and NFS Hot Pursuit at the same time on two different screens with the amount of RAM I have. I had to wait for long que line in some arena in TOR so I just raced some laps in NFS.

I can't actually do that in Windows 7, it only allows me to play 1 game at a time, no matter what I've tried to do.[/QUOTE]

I lived through 95 and 98 years after they were obsolete. My old school still had 98 computers as of last year.
 
Thanks for all the responses guys! The Metro UI is the reason I didn't want to go to 8. I might go for it with the $40 promo knowing I can disable it. If I do disable it does it work basically the same as 7?
 
[quote name='oman19']Thanks for all the responses guys! The Metro UI is the reason I didn't want to go to 8. I might go for it with the $40 promo knowing I can disable it. If I do disable it does it work basically the same as 7?[/QUOTE]

Pretty much but you need a third party start menu. I use Classic Shell 'cause it's free. :D
 
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