Smart ways to upgrade an old rig?

 
I don't want to hi-jack this thread but it is rather relevant to my interests. I'm currently in a very similar position to Katie with:

  • Q6600
  • GTX 260
  • 4 GB DDR2 Ram
  • 500W Tagan PSU
  • Already have an SSD

But what Jason said:
JasonM said:
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.
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makes me think I'd be best off jumping to i5. I managed to find 8 GB of DDR2 ram new online being sold for £60 (Yes I could buy used, but its getting the sticks to all be the same if I don't find 8GB in one go).

I just don't see the point sinking £60 into old Ram when it could go towards newer components. However upgrading the graphics card (to a GTX 780 ti for example) will require a new PSU.

Would you guys recommend upgrading the mobo/cpu/ram first, or the GPU/PSU first? I don't think i'd be able to afford to upgrade all of it at once!
 
katie279 said:
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....!
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Hi Katie276, the above was only a suggest group of components, those or similar could be bought over time bit by bit and used with your current PC components until you need a CPU/Memory/Motherboard, and that sort of spec could be the end result.

It is pretty much what I did with one of my old systems, my old case had no dust filtering, and I liked the abiliy to choose the lighting inside the case, so added a Phobya RGB strip similar to that above, in an S340 case, with an SSD and Nepton 240M CPU cooler, I was going to upgrade another PC of mine with a new PSU and GPU's, then add a 650w Seasonic PSU and R7950 to the S340 build.

I would recommend NOT deciding after a bottle of wine, if your anything like me the bottle will be gone, so will much cheese n crackers, half the time will be spent watching some old movie, and you will have picked an X99 system with 32gb of memory and a 1tb SSD, and spent money on a completely different case that looked great after a few glasses of Vino, but more like something out of a fairground when sober!

The best thing to do is think of actual use, actual benefit, and just upgrade small key components that will add benefit to what you have, I honestly think an SSD would be great, though around 250gb, an LGA775 compatable AIO cooler would update it all and improve cooling if your case can take 240mm AIO, and a GPU like the 280 will do great until the newer GPU's are out later this year, and still leave a great little system that can be upgraded any time.
 
lawz said:
I don't want to hi-jack this thread but it is rather relevant to my interests. I'm currently in a very similar position to Katie with:

  • Q6600
  • GTX 260
  • 4 GB DDR2 Ram
  • 500W Tagan PSU
  • Already have an SSD

But what Jason said:

makes me think I'd be best off jumping to i5. I managed to find 8 GB of DDR2 ram new online being sold for £60 (Yes I could buy used, but its getting the sticks to all be the same if I don't find 8GB in one go).

I just don't see the point sinking £60 into old Ram when it could go towards newer components. However upgrading the graphics card (to a GTX 780 ti for example) will require a new PSU.

Would you guys recommend upgrading the mobo/cpu/ram first, or the GPU/PSU first? I don't think i'd be able to afford to upgrade all of it at once!
Click to expand...

What case do you have?

You could simply plan an upgrade route, case, PSU, GPU, cooler, all suitable for future builds, then a CPU/memory/motherboard bundle is my usual choice.

£60 buys 8gb of DDR3 as you say, and I agree it is not worth spending on old tech.
 
sastusbulbas said:
What case do you have?

You could simply plan an upgrade route, case, PSU, GPU, cooler, all suitable for future builds, then a CPU/memory/motherboard bundle is my usual choice.

£60 buys 8gb of DDR3 as you say, and I agree it is not worth spending on old tech.
Click to expand...

Currently have the Antec P183 although the first one, not the V3 revision.

I would normally do a route, but the only reason I'd be getting the new PSU would be for the new graphics card so I can get more out of games. But then on the other hand, my computer is really struggling for Ram at the moment, hence the mobo/cpu/ram upgrade. Basically I don't know which to go for first!
 
Hi satusbulbas,

Great thoughts - thanks so much for taking the time to feed back here.

Sorry, stupid question - what's an AIO cooler?
 
Ah right - so all comes self contained rather than the old plumbing job.... ;)

What's the actual difference with water vs air? See reviews re this, but always tends to be sweltering folks from Arizona etc, so not sure how much applies to the balmy UK!

Should I expect a big reduction in temp? Is it's main benefit just to allow over locking or any other benefits? (Imagine it'd be a bit noisier?)

Know I've got a pretty decent non-stock air cooler on CPU that I bought at the time - also case has a nice big 250mm fan at the side plus plenty more - so in this instance would I expect a big improvement?
 
They (talking about the double size AIo coolers here) can achieve better results than the biggest air cooler can do.

If you have tall RAM they can clear these easily.

They arguably look better? not having a large chunk of metal in your field of view if you have a windowed case.

They can be quiet or loud (some have software to let you adjust the fan and/or pump speed).
 
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