Finally upgrading my computer

[attworth]

I finally decided to drop some cash and start upgrading my PC. It's about 7 years old and was out-dated when I first got it. It's getting to the point where I'm scared to use it for fear of it blowing up or some other catastrophe.

I'm going to do this in stages, as I don't have a whole lot of money to throw around. I'm going to re-use my existing case, power supply, hard-drive and CD drive. My case will hold my new motherboard. The new motherboard will hold any AMD chip on the market right now. It'll also hold up to 16GB of RAM, so I think I'll be good there for a few years. It'll also take a PCIe video card (one of the current down-falls of my current board.)

Here's my new board, which I picked up Sunday afternoon.



I plan to put in a mid-high range quad core. I'm looking at the Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition. That chip should keep me up-to-date for a few years at least, unless something substantial happens soon. The board will accept a six-core with a bios update, so for the foreseeable future, this will do well for me.

I am going to run 2GB of RAM to start with and probably upgrade to around 8.

The board has a built in Radeon HD3300 video chipset, which should work fine for most of what I will do with this machine for now. Eventually I will put in something substantially more powerful.

Very excited to finally start this process. More pics as I progress!

[Rollingrock]

Looks good Tony, I built all my PC's until I moved to Mac.

My last PC I built cost me 3X what I could have walked out the door with on a pre built but it was super powerful and fast.  The problem with is, was yes.  Microsoft Vista.

That PC now sits out in the garage and its sole purpose in life now is to be on the Cafe while detailing and stream iTunes from my Mac to the stereo.   :)

[attworth]

Looks good Tony, I built all my PC's until I moved to Mac.

My last PC I built cost me 3X what I could have walked out the door with on a pre built but it was super powerful and fast.  The problem with is, was yes.  Microsoft Vista.

That PC now sits out in the garage and its sole purpose in life now is to be on the Cafe while detailing and stream iTunes from my Mac to the stereo.   :)

 

This one is going to cost me about 200$ up and running. Plus whatever I paid for my dinosaur 7 years ago. It won't get expensive til I get a good video card and more memory. New video is going to require a new power supply. Eventually I'm going to want a new case...... It can get up there real fast.

I'd love a Macbook for school work and stuff, just can't justify the price right now. My iphone takes care of portability for the time being.

[attworth]

The last of my important parts came in yesterday, so I did a little photo shoot.

Since the motherboard arrived, I got a steal on a new 500GB hard-drive. (29.99, free shipping.)

I had been scouring the pre-during-post black friday ads, and finally found what I wanted on Thanksgiving.

1 - 4GB (2x2) of Gskill RipJaws series RAM. This stuff is supposed to be the bees-knees for gaming and entertainment. Only 50$ (12.50 a gig... not bad...) Normally runs somewhere around 100$. Oh, and free shipping.



2 - The most important bit... The processor. I couldn't pass this one up. It is an AMD Phenom II X3 (tri-core) 740, clocked at 3.0ghz. After a quick read, I found out that this chip has a 'locked' 4th core, as it was made as an OEM for people like Dell to offer a lower, cheaper model. For geeks like my brother (my IT guy...) it just means a cheap quad core. All for the low low price of.... 68$... Free Shipping. It's basically equivalent to the X4 940 I was looking at... For 1/3 of the price.



3 - Only problem with the unlocking, is that it may take a bit more power than just the 3 cores. My current power supply would be struggling to keep up with the board as is, and I needed a new one anyway. So.... cyber monday rolls around... Found a 600W power supply for 15$ after rebate. Free shipping. It should be here by Friday.

Here's some more pictures just for grins. I'll get some more once she's all together.





Total tab right now:


Motherboard - 96$ and change with 2-yr replacement warranty
CPU - 68$
RAM - 49$
HDD - 29.99$
Power Supply - 15$

Total : 258$

I'm pretty ecstatic to be honest.

Oh, and I started making some beer the other day, so that's cool too. 

[Tdub]

I'm thinking about doing this with my 6yr old Dell 4600. I might just start with a new graphics card and some more RAM.

[attworth]

I'm thinking about doing this with my 6yr old Dell 4600. I might just start with a new graphics card and some more RAM.

Do it, don't look back. My brother sent me a video this morning of it running for the first time with brand new Windows 7. Woo!

He said its crisper (is that a word?) than what he's got with his fancy video card and such.

Super stoked. Should be getting it back tonight to play with it.

[Tdub]

Good to hear.  I'm not real savvy with PC repair but can probably manage.  Any ideas on what would be good upgrades for my system?  It has GeForce 5300 card right and only 1GB of RAM and running Windows XP.

[attworth]

Good to hear.  I'm not real savvy with PC repair but can probably manage.  Any ideas on what would be good upgrades for my system?  It has GeForce 5300 card right and only 1GB of RAM and running Windows XP.

Sorry, I missed this. What are the current stats on the computer? You may be in the same boat I was in that I had already maxed out that system, and it was just too outdated.

Chances are you could go buy a new motherboard, CPU and ram, and just put it all in your current case with your current hard-drive, video card and power supply. Depending on the route you went, you could be anywhere from 150-500$ (or more...) and have a basically brand new machine.

As you can see with mine, I spent 250$ and got essentially what would cost at least 1000$ for just the tower.

Post up some specs and I'll take a look and have my brother gander as well.

[attworth]

So, we got my computer up and running. It's a screamer.

My brother surprised me with a new case, which was pretty awesome of him. This will allow us to have a back-up now, since everything else is also being replaced.

First thing to do, attach the motherboard to the case. Looks tiny in there! The case is about normal size, the motherboard is just small.



Pardon the mess - IT guys are really cluttery if you can't tell from this picture.



After an hour or so and a beer or two, everything was in the case.




Some of you are probably wondering why it's so cluttered in there with wires.... I haven't had my way with it yet. That is to say, I haven't OCD'd on it yet.

After putting everything in the case, we booted her up and got Windows XP loading up. There was a problem with my old disk, so it didn't load properly and was very screwed up. My brother took it home with him, wiped the Hard drive and started over with a brand new Windows 7. It worked fantastically.

I snapped some pictures this morning for grins.





And something a little artsy....




All I really need right now is a video card. It's holding me back slightly, but not that bad. I played a few games last night and all of them ran about a billion times better on this machine than my old one. Thoroughly impressed to say the least.

The best part of the whole system - Windows 7. Definite win. Vista was horrible, 7 is amazing. I'd say on par with OSX - sorry RR.

[Rollingrock]

nice work...been running 7on my work laptop for 7 months, it has nothing on OSX...sorry but nice try.   

[attworth]

nice work...been running 7on my work laptop for 7 months, it has nothing on OSX...sorry but nice try.   

Disagree, but I'm pretty sure we use our machines for different purposes.

 

[BigSur]

  on Windows 7.  Just started using it on my work laptop.  I really like it so far...in comparison to XP.

Nice work on the rebuild by the way.

[attworth]

on Windows 7.  Just started using it on my work laptop.  I really like it so far...in comparison to XP.

Nice work on the rebuild by the way.

Thank ya!

XP was pretty good for me and what I needed it to do, but it definitely lacked pizzaz. Vista was a horrible mistake. 7 makes it all better, and makes me a happy Microsoft customer... for now.

[Rollingrock]

don't get me wrong, I applaud MS for 7, much better than Vista...Vista is pure junk. 

[attworth]

don't get me wrong, I applaud MS for 7, much better than Vista...Vista is pure junk. 

Screen shot saved.. .