Requesting help/advice on an upgrade

shrunkensimon

shrunkensimon

shrunkensimon

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6 May 2010
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My current system motherboard (MSI K8N Neo4) fan is about to fail, the geforce 7600gt fan sounds like its packing in too, and i feel like upgrading my system as i have some money to do so. I don't really play games anymore, but i may reinstall Simcity 4 or C&C possibly.. all i really use my computer for is browsing and some video editing. Part of the motive is also i wish to get Windows 7.. still using XP lol. Hopefully what i have in mind will last/meet my needs for the next 4-5 years. I'd appreciate all comments and help :)

I have an Aspire Discovery-X case, with 2 front Vantec Stealth fans and 1 rear 120mm one. The side fan is off. Nexus fan controller at the front.

Mobo - MSI K8N Neo4
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 3600 Dual Core + Zalman Fan
1 GB Ram
Seasonic PSU (can't remember the wattage)
Geforce 7600 GT
Audigy (original oldschool version :D )

I would like to keep the case and fans obviously..

==

What im thinking:

Mobo: ASUS M4A79XTD Evo (Socket AM3) DDR3
CPU: AMD Phenom II x2 Dual Core 545 3Ghz AM3
RAM: Corsair Dominator XMS3 4Gb (2x2Gb) DDR3
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB Sata II 64Mb
GPU: Asus Geforce 210 512mb
PSU: OCZ Stealth X-treme 500W
CPU Fan: Zalman CNPS9500 AM2
+a new optical drive as the old one is IDE.

My initial questions are.. will this combination work? Is the PSU wattage enough? Will the Zalman AM2 fan cover the AM3 chip? Will the original Audigy i have work in this setup/is it even worth it? Is this setup overkill?

Ideally i wouldn't like to be spending more than 500 on the hardware. Hopefully this has painted a sufficient picture for you to help me (noob) out :D

Thanks for you time, Simon
 
It will certainly last long enough for your wants.
PSU will be fine, not overly sure about the fan - Ill look it up when I get some more spare time.
You might be able to get by fine with C&C on the onboard gfx. Infact, the onboard is almost as good as the 210 iirc so that card is pretty much a waste of money :p

Is the Audigy PCI? If so should work absolutely no problems
 
Since you don't game and are considering an Nvidia graphics card I would consider getting a Crossfire motherboard a bit of waste of money TBH!

I would probably go with the Athlon II X4 630 or 635 and the Asus M4A88TD-M EVO/USB3 or Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 motherboards. Both these motherboards have USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 and even have IGPs with dedicated DDR3 RAM. The Athlon X4 processors are faster than the Phenom II X2 and Core i3 processors for video encoding:

http://anandtech.com/bench/Product/105?vs=120

http://anandtech.com/bench/Product/122?vs=118

Another motherboard to consider is the Asrock 880G Extreme3 which can do Crossfire, has USB 3.0,SATA 3.0 and an IGP with dedicated DDR3 RAM and is under £90:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=880G Extreme3

The HD4250 IGP in the 880G motherboards have UVD2 which means it can decode HD content.

BTW,the dual core socket 939 Athlon processors are still worth a reasonable amount of money on the famous auction website.
 
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Zalman have added AM3 to the support list.
I have the copper zalman 9700 on my AM3 phenom. always ran it at close to minimum speed and its kept my overclocked overvolted quad in the green (~55 degrees load) whilst not making a sound.
The only difference is the 9700 has a 92mm fan, and the 9500 has an 80mm fan. for a dual core athlon, the 9500 will be fine. only downside is that if theres some reason for you to make the fan run faster, it gets quite noisy.

psu is more than enough as well. if you wanna save 6 quid, this is also adequate and good quality:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-017-CS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=

If you wanna save a few more quid, one of asus/gigabytes 880G chipset boards will work just as well, but you'll lose out on the crossfire support. Tey also have integrated graphics that will be fine for your use, so you dont have to bother with an extra graphices card (that will provide next to no more performsnce than the IGP)

dont really know much about sound cards tho.

edit: seems CAT pretty much said what i said...

edit edit: you cant go wrong with optical drives. the speeds basically dont make a difference (ive never seen a 24x writable dvd for sale...), so the only thing to really fork out for is if you want lightscribe or not. What im saying is you'll be just as happy with a £15 one(http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-099-SA&groupid=701&catid=10&subcat=951) or a £25 one (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-040-OT&groupid=701&catid=10&subcat=951)
 
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Wow.. speedy and very helpful replies, thanks so much :D Im glad i asked, i could have ended up buying a graphics card that was on par with the onboard graphics (which i didn't even see!) *slap forehead*
 
OK, so here is my preliminary basket list..

ocforum.jpg


I will use the Audigy card from my current setup, the Sony DVD RW Drive (IDE), Fans/Controller/Case.. and maybe the HDD (SATA) as a spare 2nd HDD backup facility.

Cat: Do you have any information on how i would go about selling my old Athlon x2 3600 chip.. i probably don't have the OEM box it came in. What about selling the XFX Geforce 7600GT and Zalman CNPS9500LED (possibly in conjunction with the chip?)

Thanks again :)
 
I would probably get these parts:

Athlon II X4 630 ~ £83

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-259-AM

Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 ~ £103

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-402-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1782

OR

Asus M4A88TD-M EVO/USB3 ~ £85

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-403-AS&tool=3

4GB low latency 1600MHZ DDR3 RAM ~ £100

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-180-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply ~ £41

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-017-CS

This PSU is made by Seasonic and should be fine even with a graphics card like an HD5770 1GB IMHO.

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB ~ £58

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-082-SA

This is one of the fastest 1TB hard drives available ATM and will be faster than a Caviar Green which is a storage and HTPC drive.

Unless you are overclocking or need a quieter PC the stock cooler should be fine IMHO.

If you are going to get an aftermarket cooler I would look at one of the following:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-035-AR&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-008-TI&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395

Here is a review of the Corsair PSU:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/750

If you are a user of the famous auction site(not the rainforest related one) you can check the completed listings( "X2 3600 939" is a good search) and you can always get anti-static packaging from there too.
 
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ocforum2.jpg


I'd be pretty chuffed with all of this for just under £500.. again, thanks for your help Cat. I'm still open to more suggestions/comments if you or anyone else has any.. i put together my last computer, but only because i had people like you help me with the parts :)

I'm not planning on overclocking, so the AMD fan should stay reasonably quiet no? The rest of the setup should be pretty silent, so as long as the fan isn't like a hoover running at full power i'll be kool with that :D
 
The Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 does not do symmetrical Crossfire but TBH I assume this does not matter for you?

Apart from that looks a decent build for the price. AFAIK AMD Bulldzoer should be socket AM3 so you may have a decent upgrade TBH.

It looks like the motherboard also has an IDE slot so you should be able to reuse your old IDE optical drive for the time being:

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=umllTHNRm4IGqnbL&templete=2

You could also get a new case too such as the following:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-002-XG
 
Just looked up what crossfire is :D And no, that doesn't really concern me TBH.. i very much doubt i'll get into high-end gaming at any point.. i managed to quell a serious addiction to UT2004 awhile ago and i don't intend on going back to that 'state' lol..

As for the IDE drive.. just so long as i can get Windows 7 up and running, i doubt i'll be using that too much at any rate/doesn't seem worth replacing.

And as cheesey as it looks, i like my case :D
No hotlinking!
 
I just realised that this motherboard has a slightly faster version of the IGP than the one in the Asus motherboard:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=mb-251-gi&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1782

however it is out of stock atm.

also you might want to consider the retail version of windows 7:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=sw-124-ms

this thread discusses he differences between the oem and retail versions of windows 7:

http://www.computerforum.com/162215-windows-7-oem-vs-retail.html
 
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can i ask why you are wanting to sell the copper 9500, and buying the 9500Nt in its place?

they perform pretty much identically (the copper one should knock another degree off ifanything).
 
thingemajib said:
can i ask why you are wanting to sell the copper 9500, and buying the 9500Nt in its place?

they perform pretty much identically (the copper one should knock another degree off ifanything).
Click to expand...

Providing it fits the board (?) and i have the required bits (it's on a 939 socket using that cross bracket thing), i could use it then? As you can tell, im a noob..
 
if it claimed to work with AM2 when you first got it (which im pretty sure the mountion mechanism is identical to 939), then it will work on AM3
 
I've just looked at my PSU. It's a Seasonic S12-430w. Given that i made this system back in 2006, would it be worth keeping this or replacing it with a new PSU unit do you think?
 
Just wondering about the OCZ Gold RAM.. i've seen that they do an AMD Optimized version, but will this one (listed above) work on the ASUS AMD board? I've already ordered, but i'd rather check and rectify my concerns before plugging it in and possibly frying a part or something..

Thanks again :)
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The Seasonic S12 were a very good range of PSUs at the time. As long as the capacitors are fine the PSU should still do the job.
Click to expand...

Kool. I may replace it with the Corsair one anyway as the Seasonic is quite dusty on the inside, having been in my smoky room for 4 or so years :D

Could i please get your opinion on the RAM question, that is my main concern right now. Again, thank you very much for your time and words :)
 
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