• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

How much would I need to upgrade an OLD machine?

paintguy

paintguy

paintguy

Soldato
Joined
13 Feb 2003
Posts
2,812
Location
Sheffield
Hi fella's,

Cast your minds back to when an XP2500M Barton and an Abit NF7S were pretty much the bees knees, and 1GB of RAM was considered 'plenty'. Well 6 years or so on, I'm still running the same system :o so I think it's time for an upgrade!

Unfortunately times are hard, so I don't have a great deal of cash to spend ( not much over £300 ideally), and I'm clearly well out of the loop as far as current hardware is concerned, so I could do with a bit of advice.

I don't need the latest and greatest kit, but a noticeable improvement in performance would be nice (and probably not hard given what I've got, lol). I'm no gamer, but I'd like something that would at least let me try out some of the recent stuff, even if it's at low settings. My 9700pro has just died, promoting a change to PCI-Express

I have all the peripherals I need (monitor runs at 1680x1050), I don't mind keeping my current case (Antec 1080), and I've got an Antec 480W PSU, which I hope to reuse if possible.

So after all that, the question is: do I need to spend more than £300 on CPU/ Mobo/ RAM/ Graphics to get a worthwhile upgrade? And what would you guys recommend?

Thanks in advance,
Andy.
 
you could do with pushing to 400 to get a "good" new system, look at this, you can easily swap the CPU for something like an E7400 though and save yourself £55 there

400core775.jpg


That'd run pretty much anything nowadays
 
Thanks for the reply.

After poking around plenty of 'spec' topics over the last few days, that's pretty close to what I'd come up with myself, but wasn't sure if I really needed to go that far.

I can't imagine me making full use of a quad in my day to day stuff, so maybe the E7400 is a better bet for now :)

Edit: And I've just realised I haven't put this in GH where I intended it to go. Sorry, I'm a bit rusty on here!
 
Last edited:
Yeah thats a spec I did for someone else last week tbh, they needed a quad for their uses, most dont, so yeah substitute for a C2D at whatever level you want E5200<E7400<E8500, you can substitue in the akasa 965 cooler too, nearly as good and save £8 there - it all counts, lol
 
Thanks again.

Having looked at it in more detail, I'll need to spend a few extra quid on the DS3 version of that board, as I need Firewire for my video camera. I'm also considering the E8500, and could do with a bit of extra storage space while I'm at it.

Looks like the budget's going to have to go up a bit! :D

Once you start, you just can't stop :o
 
paintguy said:
Once you start, you just can't stop :o
Click to expand...
Hi paintguy,

It's quite easy to get carried away with spec'ing up a new box . . . especially if you have been out the hardware scene for a few years and base your purchasing knowledge on half a dozen hardware review site articles and several dozen forum posts made by foaming at the mouth hardware geeks! :p

There is virtually no limit to the budget you could spend and the PC hardware industry has become a fine tuned marketing machine aimed at seperating you from your hard earned cash . . . the buggers! :o

I've built a lot of systems for myself, friends and clients over the years and have had the chance to play with a lot of hardware samples and perform plenty of A-B testing to see how things stack up in the real world.

Here is a sample spec of an approx £300 System Core that I would use if knocking up a multi-purpose build today. As per your intructions it does not include Hard Disks, Optical, Case, PSU, Monitor or Operating system

paintguypu6.jpg

Total : £319.06 inc Shipping

That system will absolutely blow you away coming from a socket A Barton set-up and will breeze through most tasks with little effort. It's not an uBer high-end gaming machine but it costs less for the whole system core above than a uBer high end GPU (let alone Crossfire/SLI uBerness!). Having said that using the spec above will provide a very playable gaming experience in titles such as Counter-Strike:Source, Team-Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2 at high quality settings 1680x1050

e52003500mhzeerp6.gif
sapphiregpuzlp5.gif


Feel free to make adjustments but in essence this is what your looking at. If you really feel the Radeon HD4670 isn't gonna cut it then step up to the Radeon HD4850 . . . it really depends what games you play and whether you consider yourself a Casual Gamer or Hardcore Gamer

Once you ordered your parts and got your new system core installed you then have the option of selling off your older parts, surprisingly there is still a good demand for quality used components but you tend to get a better price at auction instead of our own members market! :p

  • XP2500M Barton (£15-£25)
  • Abit NF7S (£25-£45)
  • 1GB of RAM (£10-£15)
£50-£85 Approx resale value
 
Cheers Big Wayne - you're speaking my kind of language :)

You've picked up on a few of my most important points ("I don't need the latest and greatest kit" and "I'm no gamer, but I'd like something that would at least let me try out some of the recent stuff"), and captured the whole point of my question: "Do I really need to get carried away and spend a small fortune?"

I'll certainly take your advice on board, as the graphics card sounds plenty powerful enough for my mediocre needs, and the savings made there may let me go one notch up the processor tree to give me a bit of headroom for the future.

Also, it's nice to hear that my old stuff isn't actually worthless. I have several of those Barton machines hanging around (from my SETI classic days), so together I might make enough money to upgrade my storage and get a shiny new OS :D

Thanks again.
 
Another question for you Big Wayne...

I've only just looked closely at your CPU-Z image :eek: I'm guessing you were using a much better cooler to reach those sort of speeds?

The 965 is out of stock at the minute, so is there anything else you would recommend? I do intend to OC, but probably not to that level, as quietness is fairly important to me. I knocked my Barton back to 2.2GHz a while back just so I could slow the fans down a little :o
 
Hey paintguy,

actually that overclock was done using a stock Q6600 cooler! :o

If that Akasa heatsink is out of stock at OcUK then you could always source it from another eTailor, also if quietness is important to you (+ the ability to overclock more) you may consider spending a little extra for a real premium heatsink such as the Thermalright Ultra-120 (extreme), this heatsink is so good I don't actually attach a fan to it and it's cooled using only the airflow from the case fans! :cool:

asusp5qdlxandcorsair3px3.jpg


The TRU/E will cost twice as much as the Akasa budget heatsink so it may not be worth it when all is said and done, it's a personal choice I guess! :)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom