10 year old upgrade

yimpster

yimpster

yimpster

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9 Dec 2002
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622
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in a hole in the ground
Sorry it's been a while since i posted. I started buying from OCUK back in the Athlon 2 overclocked era.

My rig has been running 24/7 for about 15 years. It's done an amazing job and has been immensely flexible over the years. I have a decent full size case and decent PSU.

I think the motherboard and i7 are needing to be binned along with the graphics card before something fails. You can tell it's been a while since i've built a new PC.

It mainly acts as a plex server and stores my data, though i'd like the new machine to be able to cope with 4k content rather than just 1080p. Occasional photo editing and i think i've only ever done gaming on it for an hour in it's lifetime.

I'd like to keep the case, PSU and old SATA drives that store my data but upgrade everything else. Conscious that i'd like it to be "greener" if it's running 24/7/.

I think NVME are the new drives for the OS? Do I need to bin the whole lot and start again or what would you suggest? I plug in to a 4K TV Screen via HDMI but would like the ability to have a second screen. I've also always wanted to use my Oculus Quest 2 with my PC but it never enough ooomph.
 
sorry i think it might be helpful if told you what's currently in the machine. is there a tool i can run that will tell me the cpu and gfx card I have etc. it's been such a long time since i've done this. I really want to keep the total cost under £1k.
 
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yimpster said:
sorry i think it might be helpful if told you what's currently in the machine. is there a tool i can run that will tell me the cpu and gfx card I have etc. it's been such a long time since i've done this. I really want to keep the total cost under £1k.
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Download speccy

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Speccy will tell you everything about what's in the pc but you will have to tell us the make and model of the case along with the make, model and age of the psu.
 
Upgrade to a i5-13500 is recommended (it has 2 encoding engines and 4 more E-Cores), but OCUK don't sell it.

Spec is not intended for gaming.

Don't buy a -F (no IGP), since you'll need the IGP.

Reuse of PSU/case.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £582.91 (includes delivery: £7.99)​
 
i7 4770 Haswell
32Gb DDR3 (4x8Gb)
Asus Z97k
GeForce GTX 660

I'll have to look for the case info. I've got a feeling it was a full size Lian Li case . I'll see if i can get the PSU checked as it may have had an upgrade at some point.
 
OCZ ZT 550W
And seems to be a Corsair case with enough space for about 9/10 HDD's. I have 5 big SATA drives which may cause a problem for the mobo. I do have a NAS but it's only 2 drives. If needed i can buy a bigger drive or try and consolidate my stuff down.

Clearly not as old as i thought it was. Probably closer to 9 or 10 years old.
 
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pastymuncher said:
I would be replacing the psu as well. The ZT series came out in 2011 and weren't the top range so it's lasted well and now it's time to replace it.
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Is there a bundle I can grab? I searched the site but wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Is AMD something I should be considering?
 
I would certainly look to you update the PSU at the same time. This is a base build including a 6TB Ironwolf NAS drive. You can add more if you wish. I have included a 2TB NVME SSD with good warranty and high TBW and MTBF.

Rich (BB code): 
My basket at OcUK:


Total: £873.84 (includes delivery: £7.99)​


​

This comes to about £865. You can sell the Starfield key for £35 - £40 reducing the price to about £825.

If you don't want the HDD, take off another £160. You can use the balance to increase RAM to 64GB if you feel you need it. You could reduce the size of the SSD if you would rather get HDD's etc
 
Just saw the last post about your Meta Quest 2 and using it more right at the end of the post. Scratch the HDD sell the Starfield key bringing the outlay to £680.

You would need a discrete GPU for VR. In which case you have 2 choices. It isn't something I am something too familiar with but I understand Nvidia runs VR more efficiently than Radeon in which case the 3060ti (£330) would be great except for the 8GB.

This may mean the 12GB Radeon 6700XT (£299) is better equipped for the 4k option. Both will draw between 205w to 215w before an undervolt. Even though a 650w PSU is recommended, I think you could just get by with the 550w recommended above depending on exactly how many fans and SATA drives you have. A safer option would be a Seasonic Prime Focus 650w available for £20 more (£95) on OCUK bringing you to £1000 for 6700XT or £1050 with 3060ti
 
hi - thanks for all the replies. I think we can forget the VR stuff - it's not a big deal. I don't want to spend hundreds extra for using it once or twice a year. Thanks for that info though its good to know.

I'd consider going SFF if buying larger drives and consolidating my multiple 3Tb drives. Just looking for biggest bang for my buck and would like to keep the cost below £700. My daughter just passed her driving test first time so things just got a bit tight.

May seem like a silly question but can any of these CPU's idle at lower than 65W then ramp up when needed? Most of the time the machine will be waiting to be used or synching data.
 
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yimpster said:
May seem like a silly question but can any of these CPU's idle at lower than 65W then ramp up when needed? Most of the time the machine will be waiting to be used or synching data.
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The 7600 or 13400/13500 should both idle well under 65 watt with no graphics card installed.

Intel have had lower idle and lightly-threaded power consumption than Ryzen for quite awhile and I think that still applies to Zen 4 and 12th/13th gen.

With Zen 2/3, Ryzen would idle a lot lower if the memory was 2666 or lower (no XMP/DOCP), I'm not sure about Zen 4 and I don't know if DDR4/DDR5 changes anything with 12th/13th gen.

Motherboard choice is still important too, regardless of platform, with ITX and ASRock usually having the lowest and high-end boards (e.g. Z790/X670E) the highest.
 
Tetras said:
The 7600 or 13400/13500 should both idle well under 65 watt with no graphics card installed.

Intel have had lower idle and lightly-threaded power consumption than Ryzen for quite awhile and I think that still applies to Zen 4 and 12th/13th gen.

With Zen 2/3, Ryzen would idle a lot lower if the memory was 2666 or lower (no XMP/DOCP), I'm not sure about Zen 4 and I don't know if DDR4/DDR5 changes anything with 12th/13th gen.

Motherboard choice is still important too, regardless of platform, with ITX and ASRock usually having the lowest and high-end boards (e.g. Z790/X670E) the highest.
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Thanks all. I'm heading away to the coast this evening so will have time to read into this more and build a shopping list. May and probably will come back to this thread with questions when i get closer to pulling the trigger.

I do really want to build an power efficient rig. But have some power there when i need it. Just thinking if I go for SFF with larger drives this might help too. Guess i just need to balance upfront cost with function and long term running costs.
 
are the on board graphics much good on these motherboard? as i'm not really gaming could i get away without one? most complex thing it would be doing is streaming Plex ideally i'd like to up the resolution to 4k but not the end of the world if i can't at first. Also, some occasional photo/video editing as long as it's as good as what i have now i'm happy.
 
yimpster said:
I do really want to build an power efficient rig.
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Choosing parts with decent power efficiency isn't that hard, because you can find plenty of benchmarks for app/gaming loads, but getting idle power down needs a lot more research. NAS/Server forums are usually the place to go for that.

yimpster said:
are the on board graphics much good on these motherboard? as i'm not really gaming could i get away without one? most complex thing it would be doing is streaming Plex ideally i'd like to up the resolution to 4k but not the end of the world if i can't at first. Also, some occasional photo/video editing as long as it's as good as what i have now i'm happy.
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Zen 4 and 12th/13th gen graphics are fine for non-gaming use and the Intel IGP is actually pretty good for media stuff. If you think it's going to get serious use then I'd buy the 13500 I suggested (not the 13400).

Photo/video editing it depends on the software and exactly what you're doing, because some of these tasks are GPU-accelerated now. It'll be fine for light-use though, either way. The demands on the viewport, again depends on the software.

I'm not sure if Zen 4's IGP can compete with Intel in media use (Quick Sync, etc), since I haven't seen any benchmarks, but I believe it has the same features as RDNA 2 (so, pretty much everything needed, except it only has AV1 decode, not encode).
 
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