Smart ways to upgrade an old rig?

katie279

katie279

katie279

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Guys,

Looking for a bit of advice, can you think any smart ways to upgrade the following PC - primarily for gaming (or should I just replace)?

Lost track of what motherboard is compatible with what memory etc etc!

MB: Asus P5K SE
CPU: Intel Core 2 Q6600
RAM: 8GB DDR2 (PC2-5300 - 4 x 2 dimms)
GPU: Geforce GTX 285 1GB
HD: Maxtor 2tb 7200rpm

Just keen to see if there's any cost -effective ways I could improve performance.
 
An SSD will do you the world of good.

If you have an ok PSU then a better GFX card, overclock that Q6000!!!

Both SSD+GFX card can be carried over to a new build.
 
Depending on budget.

You could easily buy a nice new case, power supply, LGA-775 compatable all in one water cooler, 250+GB SSD, and a graphics card such as the AMD 280. And posibly overclock your CPU.

Though not in that order of course but if you have a poor case with no dust filters it can make a difference to an old build, offering better cooling, and a 240mm AIO support, what is the rest of your system, case, power supple etc? If you want a better graphics card it is worth having a decent 550w to 650w power supply with two PCI-E cables.

Those sort of upgrades one at a time would make future upgrading a little easier, improving your current system a bit at a time, until you would then only need a motherboard/cpu/memory.

If you do not use cd's or DVD's I recommend the NZXT S340 as a nice case for upgrading old systems, it offers good air cooling support, can take many CPU coolers up to 280mm AIO, just about any PSU modular or not, and great cable managment. With a window, which looks great with a budget RGB lighting system.

Superflower PSU's get good write ups.

A 250gb SSD such as the BX-100 from Crucial is another solid fave.

The Coolermaster Nepton 240mm AIO is LGA-775 compatable, and very quiet, you just need to be very carefull with the stand off's, check for burrs and make sure the insulators are in place, watch a few online video's regarding fitting. The Raijintek AIO has decent looks but I am not sure the pump is as quiet as the CoolerMaster.
 
Thanks for the tips - quick answers to your questions:

Case
Thermaltake Armor VA8000SWA Silver Aluminum ATX Full Tower
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133155
Bought one of these from OCUK a few years back, really like the case (plenty of room!)

PSU
Corsair 620W Modular supply

Yeah, I'm kinda trying to work out how much I 'should' spend on it - I guess if I dropped in a new GTX 970 of some flavour and an SSD, would this let me play pretty much all games at a decent res/fps or would the CPU be a bottleneck?
 
What resolution is your monitor and what games do you want to play?

GTX970 is a nice card but so is a cheaper R9 280 or 280X and either are MUCH more powerful than your existing card.

As for an SSD a 256Gb BX100 as mentioned above will be great. it will be held back by your motherboards lack of SATAIII ports but will still destroy an mechanical HDD.

Also a fresh clean install of your OS, latest drivers etc will be needed, then wipe the existing HDD clean and just use it as storage for music/pictures etc.
 
Katie, you have the advantage of 8GB of DDR2. If you only had 4GB then due to cost of DDR2 it maybe not worth keeping the memory/CPU/board, but as you have 8GB it's worth keeping and doing some form of overclock.

After that it's as everyone has said, SSD for OS / App drive with fresh install, then a better graphics card. You can take the SSD / Graphics card forward to new build in year or so if you wish.

As for CPU cooler you can always leave this for now, and add one later once you overclock and monitor temps from existing cooler, if temps to much you can upgrade the cooler then.
 
katie279 said:
I guess if I dropped in a new GTX 970 of some flavour and an SSD, would this let me play pretty much all games at a decent res/fps or would the CPU be a bottleneck?
Click to expand...

Personally I think the Nvidia 970 is a huge upgrade, so would a 290X be, but considering the extra outlay, especially when you consider any bottleneck caused by older hardware, is it a better choice than a £150 card?

The AMD 280 is basically the old AMD R7950. I used the R7950 for a while with an E8500 dual core, and it allowed me to play Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 3, Battlefield 3 etc, with no noticable issues on a 120hz 1080p monitor.
I also used that same GPU with a Q9550 cpu and got reasonable results.

I have two R7950, but would rather have 970's or 290x's now. But if I planned on keeping an old LGA775 system for a while, I would see no benefit in a 970 or 290X for 1080p gaming, the 280 is a fantastic card for the price.
 
Monitor - plan to get a larger screen also - prob 28" so would like to take advantage of the size if I can!

SSD - ok, so done here - although OCUK seem out of stock of the BX100 256gb, so might just get the 500gb one.

GFX - so sounds like a debate between lots not - AMD 280 / 290 / 290X / GFX960 /970 help!!

Play most games really - like high res 3d games though, so tend to stress the pc...!
 
28" doesn't mean much, the resolution is the important part as it gives you the total number of pixels the gfx card has to push.

If its 1080P then a 280X will do OK.

If it's 1440P then the 290/290X or GTX970 will be best. There is also a pre-order 780ti that's due on the 10th.
 
Heh, yeah just being lazy... ;) Yes it'd be a usual 28" res - prob 2560x1440 I'd imagine.

So sounds like GTX970 would be the right choice for now - as mentioned earlier, it's something I could carry over to new motherboard/cpu if I wanted to (and even sli it to squeeze more life out)
 
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First thing I would do would be to find out how far that Q6600 can go and make my GPU choice from that. No point in buying a card like an R9 290 if the CPU can't run fast enough to power it.
 
Yeah I know I'm not being that helpful re budget - guess it's just a cost/return thing that I'm trying to work out, so budget isn't really a limiting factor, more what is best use of budget.

I will be building an uber pc at the end of the year as I'll be getting an oculus rift/valve vive and building a dedicated VR room - so that'll need a heavily specced pc, so this is just for standard use.

If you told me that spending £400 on a gfx card would give me 10x the performance in games, then that'd make sense to me, whereas if it's going to be throttled by the cpu/ram etc, then it'd be a bit of a waste.

It sounds like the 970 is a reasonable return for cost vs performance gain if I'm following everyone correctly?

- GTX970
- 512GB SSD

I'll need to run a few benchmarks before and after and see who can guess the new performance... ;)

Is there any GTX970 worth getting - dizzying array of brands, ram sizes, types, fans configs and random acronyms as always!
 
Well assuming the cost of a GTX970 and 512GB SSD is £450~ and even the fastest Q6600 will bottleneck a GTX970 then you might not be spending the money the best way.


Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £194.99
Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £63.95
TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £44.99

MSI AMD Radeon R9 285 Gaming Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming Edition OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £175.99

PSU upgrade.
Asus Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £227.99
OcUK GeForce GTX 780Ti "NVIDIA Reference" 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £249.99
MSI Radeon R9 290X LE Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £249.99
 
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Well if your thinking of £450 with a Q6600 I think it's a bit eccentric, and you could easily put that sort of money toward a more middle of the road, yet extremely capable PC that also looks great. Then sell the old components.

I recommend the AMD 280 over the 285, even the PC comics state such, 3gb of memory versus 2gb etc. The 280 is currently the best card for £150 and will play most games maxed out at 1080p. Nvidia's 970 would be an option for 1440p.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £194.99
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280 Gaming 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x NZXT KRAKEN X61 280mm AIO Water Cooling Unit £119.99
1 x Corsair Force GS 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CSSD-F240GBGS-BK) £109.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £89.99
1 x NZXT Source 340 Midi-Tower Case- Black Window £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £44.99
1 x Aqua Computer Colour Work USB - Bluetooth Version £31.99
1 x Aqua Computer RGB LED Strip - 25cm £3.95
Total : £820.86 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
Oh lord! Getting confuddled now - I guess although it could be a bottleneck, there is the 'portability' - ie I could carry it over to the next upgrade of cpu/motherboard - although I've done this in the past and it always seems to end up that the gfx card, mb etc that I paid extra for to gain a bit of future use, is worthless within a year as another standard arrives or the relentless march of Moore's law means I can get equivalent grunt for £4.50.... ;)

Ok, sastusbulbas - thanks for the handy shopping cart - I guess I'm wedged between two awkward spots with that - if I'm gonna spend £800, then I might as well spend £1400 and really soup it up, or do I save £300-400 and just give it a wee boot up the rankings....

Oh dear, think I'll need to decide after a bottle of wine or something, all the clearest decisions are thus made....!
 
OP, I am in the same position. My conclusion...

£40-50 for an SSD.

Then wait and replace all once USB "C" connector equipped boards become available. I think USB "C" will be pretty big.
 
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