maintenance worth it?

shadowcreaper · 28 May 2016 at 22:16

Hi all.

Been away with work for a while.... :rolleyes:

technology defiantly moved on a lot in recent years so looking for some advice.

Current pc i have at home been great although now defiantly seems to be out of date.

Its a old intel core 2 duo e8400 3.0 watercooled (very quiet and never had issues)
MSI 7850 card with 2GB (upgraded a few years ago and did help a lot)
windows vista 64.
Intel(R) X38/X48 Express Chipset PCI

Regards trying to get it upto date, is it worth it? it seems a shame to scrap pc as it runs well and haven't had problems, just getting old.

Cost wise too, whether upgrading vs buying new ect.
Advice be much appreciated.

Is it upgradeable?

mickyflinn · 28 May 2016 at 22:18

If your gaming and playing the latest games at 1080p then i would get a new build.

s452 · 28 May 2016 at 22:45

for a PC that age, new build is the only choice.
RAMand CPU can be upgraded slightly, but I would only make those if you obtain the parts for free (4GB sticks + a quadcore Q9XXX)

a graphics card upgrade could be viable at the moment, especially if you are willing to go 2nd hand since the nVidia 980 cards seem to be fairly cheap at the moment. (you might need a better PSU). You will also need to see if the card is compatible with your motherboard (might have something to do with minimum PCI-E gen requirements)

also if you havent already gone to an SSD, that would be a good idea

Vidar · 29 May 2016 at 01:01

+1 for a new build.

If you're adament you want to keep it going though an SSD would be the single best upgrade you could throw in there.

Personally I'd wait till broadwell processors hit the shelves and you can compare benchmarks with previous gens of CPU, performance hasn't really moved much in the past few years and you could save yourself quite a bit.

Cern · 29 May 2016 at 03:34

A SSD would breathe some extra life into your system, but other than that there's not really any meaningful upgrade you could do. A new build is the best route really. Oh and getting shot of Vista would be a very good idea.

BluD · 29 May 2016 at 10:26

Depends on what you use the pc for and what your budget is really. Like Cern says an SSD improves your experience no matter what your using the PC for. If your wanting to play AAA games on it then just start from scratch.

If you start a new thread asking for help chooing parts for a new build and give your budget and what you wanna use the pc for people will suggest parts for ya to get a decent PC put together.

Also toms hardware always does a best bang for your buck section which is great for picking parts.

ExoMale · 30 May 2016 at 12:24

cor2quad if your board supports it and get windows 7 at least oh and get an ssd, how much ram does it have?

if it serves you well and does everything you need then theres no real reason to just ditch it and replace it just improve it where it can.

jbh110tdi · 30 May 2016 at 13:13

ExoMale said:
cor2quad if your board supports it and get windows 7 at least oh and get an ssd, how much ram does it have?

if it serves you well and does everything you need then theres no real reason to just ditch it and replace it just improve it where it can.

I would agree with this.. what do you use it for? if it serves you well drop in an SSD for a system drive and windows 7. again depending on RAM drop some more in and it would give it a nice boost

andicole0 · 30 May 2016 at 13:20

shadowcreaper said:
Hi all.

Been away with work for a while....
technology defiantly moved on a lot in recent years so looking for some advice.

Current pc i have at home been great although now defiantly seems to be out of date.

Its a old intel core 2 duo e8400 3.0 watercooled (very quiet and never had issues)
MSI 7850 card with 2GB (upgraded a few years ago and did help a lot)
windows vista 64.
Intel(R) X38/X48 Express Chipset PCI

Regards trying to get it upto date, is it worth it? it seems a shame to scrap pc as it runs well and haven't had problems, just getting old.

Cost wise too, whether upgrading vs buying new ect.
Advice be much appreciated.

Is it upgradeable?

Love it, 'defiantly moved on'.

What do people mean by ect?
Andi.

shadowcreaper · 1 Jun 2016 at 22:22

Update looking like il be keeping thus pc as it is other than ssd upgrade and windows too.
Due to work il probably get a decent laptop and use that as gaming platform, still prefer pc exsperience but doesnt suit job so laptop route now ehere im going.
Cheers though, definitely will keep eye on new tech coming iut and compare

joeyjojo · 1 Jun 2016 at 22:26

If you're keeping it pick up a decent quad and you'll probably be fine for a while longer.

Q9450 to Q9650 (12 M cache)
Q9300 to Q9500 (6 M cache)
X3320 to X3380 (Xeon versions of the previous)
Q8200 to Q8400 (4 M cache)

I use an X3320 and like you still haven't seen the need to replace it.

Edit: basically these as long as your board supports them http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/26553/Yorkfield#@All