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Sharpening up the old rig

Narj

Narj

Narj

Soldato
Joined
19 Feb 2010
Posts
13,258
Location
London
Well I've got my new beastie built but I think there's still some life in the old girl...

E6300 @ 2.4GHz
Arctic Freezer Pro 7
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 mobo
4GB RAM
Sapphire HD4890

I was thinking of getting hold of a second hand quad chip and a new cooler, plus new fans to quieten the thing down so my cousin can use it for some casual LAN gaming with me. I might get a cheap new graphics card for it as well.

Any suggestions for a budget of ~£200 ?

Many thanks!
 
I say you should just swap the E6300 out for a Q6600 (around £50-£60), and leave everything else as it is (provided that your PSU is up to the job...if not, then upgrade the PSU as well)

Arctic Freezer Pro 7 is only noisy because it is spinning at 2800~3000rpm at max speed without some sort of fanspeed profile set for it. See if you can find in your bios setting for lowering the fanspeed to may be around 1800~2000rpm max, and if you can't find it or it won't work, you could try downloading Speedfan software to see if you can set it to control the fanspeed there while you are in windows. A Q6600 won't be able to overclock beyond 3.0GHz stable on your board anyway due to chipst limitation, so you won't be adding much vcore on it (which add to the temp), so the Arctic Freezer Pro 7 at 1800~2000rpm would be fine for taming the Q6600 at 3.0GHz.

Save that remaining £140~£150 toward future upgrade instead.
 
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I agree with the above. The CPU upgrade (Q6600) will give a bit more life to the rig.

A GPU upgrade can be done though it is best saved for a re-haul. :)
 
Cheers chaps. I'll keep an eye out for a Q6600 :D

I wanted rid of the GPU in favour of something else because those 4890s are notoriously noisy. The PSU is a Corsair HX520W - will that be up to the job?
 
beejjacobs said:
Yeah that will handle the 460 I mentioned, or maybe look at a 6870:http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-174-OK&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1866

Obviously you can spend more if you wanted to, but they are both very capable cards
Click to expand...

Great - which would be the quieter card? Only the current system sounds like it was built by Boeing and I want to get the noise down... (Lian Li aluminium case doesn't help). :D

I'm determined to get rid of the Arctic Freezer, it's really not that great IMO - it may be getting noisier due to age I suppose.
 
beejjacobs said:
This is generally the budget cooler of choice:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-001-GD&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395

Out of stock atm though :(

I can't comment on the 6870 but I know the 460s are quiet, I put one in a PC for a friend and when idling it was whisper quiet
Click to expand...

Great, thanks muchly mate. I'd not thought of the Gelid.

I had a Titan Fenrir laying about somewhere but I think I must have got rid of it in a ruthless clearout. I hadn't thought about the Tranquillo. D'oh.

The old PC just has to run stuff reasonably at 1280x960 or whatever the screen res of the monitor is (Can't remember off the top of my head). :D
 
PianoBasher said:
Great, thanks muchly mate. I'd not thought of the Gelid.

I had a Titan Fenrir laying about somewhere but I think I must have got rid of it in a ruthless clearout. I hadn't thought about the Tranquillo. D'oh.

The old PC just has to run stuff reasonably at 1280x960 or whatever the screen res of the monitor is (Can't remember off the top of my head). :D
Click to expand...

Well at that kind of res either card should run anything! :)
 
Just a thought 4GB ram is top draw here

Is it DDR2 PC2-6400C5 800MHz or better, because memory speed here will have a performance gain (unlike the newer format i5/i7 rigs).
 
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