Time for an upgrade

Humpty · 19 Apr 2010 at 23:44

Hi All,

Looking to upgrade my main system but it's been so long since I dipped my toe in that I'm feeling rather lost! Any help would be appreciated.

I am currently running an Atlon 64 3700 San Diego with 2GB RAM that I built from OCKU back in 2005. It is on 24/7, has had masses of use and has been rock steady. I have an original Antec Sonata Piano case (purchased 2003) and a Seasonic S12 500W Silent ATX2 PSU (purchased Sept 09) and was wondering if these could be reused in the new system?

I don't do gaming and mainly use the PC for office work, emails, web (of course!), photo' editing and some programming. Main requirements are silence (near as poss'), dual monitor support (2 x 1280x1024), stability and speed.

I was thinking about an AMD Phenom X2 and 6GB RAM with a WD black HDD but wasn't sure where to go beyond that. Motherboard with bluetooth ability and RAID possibility would be good.

Can anyone help get me on the right track? :confused:

Thanks!

Humpty · 20 Apr 2010 at 12:00

Can anyone offer any pointers? Am I all alone......? :confused:

Jae-So · 20 Apr 2010 at 12:05

I'd rather get 4GB of ram for dual channel with the phenom X2, a good well priced board is the GA-770TA-UD3

fs123 · 20 Apr 2010 at 12:11

The case and the Seasonic PSU would be fine to re-use in your new build. The psu is a very good quality brand.

Humpty · 20 Apr 2010 at 12:12

Thanks Jae-So. Why 4GB out of interest? Would there be no benefit to 6?

Humpty · 20 Apr 2010 at 12:13

fs123 said:
The case and the Seasonic PSU would be fine to re-use in your new build. The psu is a very good quality brand.

That's great news. Thank you.

Marine-RX179 · 20 Apr 2010 at 13:33

Humpty said:
Thanks Jae-So. Why 4GB out of interest? Would there be no benefit to 6?

Cause 4GB would be sufficient. The people that would get more like 8GB are such as those that do editing work with large files (graphic and audio etc). If you are only doing photo editing (not graphic editing), you don't really need that much ram.

I'm on a 64-bit Win 7 (which use more ram than 32-bit), with around 15 Firefox tabs on the background plus gaming, I still don't use more than 3GB of ram.

Jae-So · 20 Apr 2010 at 13:54

Marine-RX179 said:
Cause 4GB would be sufficient. The people that would get more like 8GB are such as those that do editing work with large files (graphic and audio etc). If you are only doing photo editing (not graphic editing), you don't really need that much ram.

I'm on a 64-bit Win 7 (which use more ram than 32-bit), with around 15 Firefox tabs on the background plus gaming, I still don't use more than 3GB of ram.

OP as said in this post 4GB will be enough and leaves you with the oppurtunity to add another 4 to keep dual channel shuld u need it later on

Humpty · 20 Apr 2010 at 13:55

Ok. That makes sense. Thanks for the feedback.

adrichardson81 · 20 Apr 2010 at 13:55

It also makes sense to only use 2 slots if you're overclocking.

Marine-RX179 · 20 Apr 2010 at 14:14

Humpty, one more thing you should know is that 32-bit OS/Windows can only read max of 4GB ram, and that's memory and graphic card memory together.
If I'm not mistaken, let's say you got a 1GB graphic card and 4GB of memory, in a 32-bit OS it will only identify the 4GB memory as 3GB memory, plus the 1GB graphic card memory. So do consider upgrading to 64-bit OS as well if you have not already done so.

Humpty · 20 Apr 2010 at 14:17

Thanks Marine. I was looking at probably going 64 bit but just trying to determine what other problems that would cause me.

cmndr_andi · 20 Apr 2010 at 14:21

Hi there. That PSU looks great and the case should be fine. Mind if I ask a couple a questions in regard to the upgrade?

Do you have a DVD drive you will be able to re-use too?

What is your current HDD? If you have the budget it may be worthwhile getting a small SSD, for the kind of things you are doing - it would give you a nice performance boost.

What OS do you have? Would you be interested in upgrading to Windows 7 if you don't already have it?

What kind of budget for the system upgrade are you setting aside?

I'd be happy to put together a spec for you to meet the needs that you outline.

Humpty · 20 Apr 2010 at 14:35

cmndr_andi said:
Hi there. That PSU looks great and the case should be fine. Mind if I ask a couple a questions in regard to the upgrade?

Do you have a DVD drive you will be able to re-use too?

What is your current HDD? If you have the budget it may be worthwhile getting a small SSD, for the kind of things you are doing - it would give you a nice performance boost.

What OS do you have? Would you be interested in upgrading to Windows 7 if you don't already have it?

What kind of budget for the system upgrade are you setting aside?

I'd be happy to put together a spec for you to meet the needs that you outline.

Thanks!

DVD drive - I was going to add a new one
HDD - Was thinking of getting a new large SATA drive. Are SSD worth the money?
OS - Was planning on getting Win 7. Not sure which version. In the past I have always gone for professional versions (NT4, Win2k Pro, XP Pro etc) as I have found the added business tools & potential for integration in a networked environment to be really beneficial.
Budget - Flexible. Not wanting to go silly but this will be my main machine for home & work so needs to be fast & stable

Thanks again!

cmndr_andi · 20 Apr 2010 at 15:03

How does this look?

Here is my thinking:

The AMD X4 620 is a great chip for the kind of things you plan to do, here is a review.

The massive cooler is so brilliant you can run the chip with passive cooling. Considering this test showed that the cooler can passivly cool a 130W i7, then a 95W Athlon X4 should be fine. However, just to be safe, I would still buy a cheap 120mm fan just in case the temperatures get a bit high due to your case.

The graphics card will be more than enough for image editing, general windows stuff and dual monitors. It is also passive, so no noise from the GPU

The SSD is a big expense, but it is amazingly fast and will speed up the things you are doing - so it is worth the money. Also, SSDs are inherently silent, so no noise from that either.

So long as you have a front and rear 120mm fan (might be a good idea to switch to some nice quiet ones like these) then you shouldn't have any problems with heat and very little noise.

If you like, I could put together a spec based on an i7 920. It will be approximately £200 more and will likely be a bit noisier but it will be substatially more powerful. Here is a comaprison of the AMD X4 630 and the i7 920 at stock speeds.

Edit:Updated AMD X4 spec to include OEM windows 7 Pro - which on OCUK is cheaper than the upgrade version

cbarker118 · 20 Apr 2010 at 15:07

Professional Win7 should meet your needs I would say. It is definitely worth going 64 bit at this stage so you can utilise all 4GB+ of memory and give yourself headroom for future upgrades.

In terms of value for money processors I would think AMD is the way to go if you don't want to shell out £170 and upwards for an i7 intel beast.

Humpty · 20 Apr 2010 at 15:32

Really appreciate your help here guys. You are tempting me with the SSD

How about this:

Based on the link that you posted cmdr_andi it looks like this processor would be a fair bit faster, particularly if I am going to stretch for the extra on the SSD. Would the SSD actuall make that much difference to the working of the machine given that I would also have to have a lot of files on a secondary SATA?

Also, I think that I will probably need a different cooler, the one you posted looks like it may be tto large to fit in the case! Any other suggestions? Perhaps I should try the stock cooler to begin with.

Additionally, I am guessing this mobo doesn't have bluetooth so I am going to need a card or USB adaptor?

cmndr_andi · 20 Apr 2010 at 15:58

Aye, that Phenom II X4 CPU is a good deal faster, I suppose compared to the price of the SSD - the extra price isn't too bad.

As for the usefulness of an SSD, it depends how you use it. 15GB will be used by windows. That gives you about 60GB to use for key applications and files. Do you think you can operate with this? I guarantee it will feel faster, but it is one of these things that is tough to describe in words, you probably need to experience it. Running a HDD alongside the SSD is fine - though it will add some noise, however if it is only called on for the odd transfer ( not running the system) then it should remain reasonably quiet.

Aye, you could try the stock cooler - I find the noise rather annoying tbh and it would ruin the whole "passive computer" idea

One option is to upgrade the case (heck, in for a penny, in for a pound). This one is great, costs £45 and definitely fits the megahalems. As the Phenom II has a similar heat output to the i7 - then it should still be possible to run it passively with the megahalems and preserve the low noise signature.

The motherboard doesn't have bluetooth integrated unfortunately. This is what I would suggest getting.

Humpty · 20 Apr 2010 at 16:15

Starting to get really expensive now..... Still very tempting though! :cool:

Might leave off the SSD for now and add one when the prices fall a bit...

Marine-RX179 · 20 Apr 2010 at 16:16

You can save yourself £60 by getting this motherboard instead and not having to get a graphic card...it got an intergrated HD4200:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-355-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1481

Also, I don't think that SSD is worth the money. Sure they are faster, but being so much smaller in storage size and so much more expensive than a HDD, I really just don't see it being practical. You should just grab a fast large size HDD instead, such as the Samsung F3 Spinpoint:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-082-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=

Also for a nice low cost decent CPU cooler, you can get this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...00-AR&tool=3&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395
It's out of stock now, but may be you can get it elsewhere or wait for it to be in stock again.