When should you let a rig die?

[Shicky]

Hello all,

not been this side of the forums for many years, when I was purchasing my first gaming rig to build actually. Since then I've unfortunately gone gay and when I actually get a chance to play games I use an xbox360 other than some tf2 on a lappy ( I don't get much time to play so a gaming rig is a waste of money, add to that travelling for work )

Anyway I let my parents use my rig for a few years (system is maybe 7-8years old now, probably more) and the gfx card gave away a few nights ago, at least this is my guess.

The system had been very slow lately even just for my parents use of browsing and definitely needs a clean anyway.

Its an amd athlon 64 3500+ socket 939, asus a8n-sli mobo, xfx 6800gt gfx card (now dead), 2gb corsair ram, hiper psu (the one that exploded on everyone.) All housed within an antec 900, the old one that can't even do sli because they screwed up the case design! This is off the top of my head but im fairly sure its accurate.

So my question is what do I do with it?

1) New gfx card, can maybe clean it up and get it functioning okay for home use?
2) Turn it into a server for home use/experimenting - with some new parts required.
3) Get a few parts for it and make it a mediocre gaming machine! And just general play around machine for when i'm home.
4) Dump it

*I have no real need for anything and a bigger to do list than austin powers wang but I seem to love little hands on projects!

 

[chipps101]

sell the mobo and memory (the cpu isn't really worth anything) and you will maybe get between £40 and £50 for them as people still want sli skt 939 mobo's and ddr1 ram (especially if it is 2x1gb dimms).

then buy a cheap 775 mobo, a core2duo and some ddr2 ram which you may be able to pick up for that money or not much more (second hand of course).

add a cheap gfx card and away you go

the main problem with the hiper psu (a type r 580w i presume) is that they had very weak 12v rails for a psu with that rated wattage and the 12v rail was actually more like a 400-450w psu's rating.

 

[cmndr_andi]

If your parent still need a home PC for basic tasks then IMHO that would be the most effective use of the parts - as a AMD64 CPU + 2GB RAM should be fine for basic tasks like browsing, emails, office etc. Therefore, you would just need to plonk in a cheap GPU (a HD 5450 costs £23 and can smoothly decode 1080p videos).

Perhaps couple that with a small, cheap(ish) SSD and a more reliable PSU (like this one - a seasonic design with a 5 year warranty) and it will be a really nice machine for standard desktop use.

With it revamped for home desktop use you could also have it running as a home server at the same time. This makes sense especially if you are no longer use the HDD as the primary drive, are using a lower-power usage graphics card and a more efficient PSU - so it could be left on 24/7 without a massive power drain.

However, due to the core system being so old I wouldn't recommend revamping it for gaming use. You would either need to restrict it to older games or entirely rebuild it (including new CPU/mobo/RAM) to allow it to play modern games - and if you are going to do this you may as well start from scratch with a good case and PSU.

 

[danjama]

Strange, I had a system very close to this go kaput recently (ath 64 3200+, 2gb, dfi lanparty ut and 8800gts died) - decided to replace it finally!! However, if i'd known then that it was only the gfx card gone, I would have kept it going.

Still, glad to be finally able to edit HD footage

I say revive the old beauty! Besides, I'm trying to sell 2x1gb Geil dimms on ebay and nobody is biting for £35.

 

[BarBrawllin]

Strange, I had a system very close to this go kaput recently (ath 64 3200+, 2gb, dfi lanparty ut and 8800gts died) - decided to replace it finally!! However, if i'd known then that it was only the gfx card gone, I would have kept it going.

Still, glad to be finally able to edit HD footage

I say revive the old beauty! Besides, I'm trying to sell 2x1gb Geil dimms on **** and nobody is biting for £**.

Your not allowed to talk about competitors on the forum and not allowed to talk about prices outside of the members market. I feel like a fag now for saying that lol.

 

[honosuseri]

Your not allowed to talk about competitors on the forum and not allowed to talk about prices outside of the members market. I feel like a fag now for saying that lol.

More importantly the OP doesn't even know what works to sell on! He is guessing it's the GPU, he really needs to find a spare GPU to test his theory

I converted my old rig into a HTPC. Ok it's higher spec than what you have (X2 555BE, 460 GPU (@900mhz). It's even gaming capable which is nice from a HTPC No reason you couldn't convert that rig to a similar purpose.

If they have a HDTV with even a very cheap dedicated GPU connecting it to the TV would be very simple and handle HD playback....maybe add a tv card and remote to get skyplus box features from the HTPC, CM_andi has also made some excellent suggestions too.

 

[craarc]

lol thats nearly an exact copy of what i had it was good in its day Its an amd athlon 64 3500+ socket 939, asus a8n-sli mobo, xfx 6800gt gfx card (now dead), 2gb corsair ram use it as a basic machine for dloadin stuff like movies ans music let it run till it drops and do option2 without spending any money on it just pop a nice big hdd on it and use it as storage

 

[Shicky]

Think I will opt to keep it alive for now, clean it out and maybe go the server route in future. Would newer gfx cards be compatible with a mobo and system this old? (sorry been out of the game for a good while now!)

 

[cmndr_andi]

Yea, that board uses PCIE version 1.1, since PCIE version 2.1 is backwards compatible with earlier versions then a 2.1 card like the HD 5450 should work fine in that much older board.

Just make sure you clear out all the Nvidia graphics drivers if you go down this route (this won't be an issue if you do a fresh windows install).

 

[Shicky]

I'm assuming it's pointless getting much better than your card suggestion as it will be held back by the rest of the parts?

 

[cmndr_andi]

The HD 5450 is a pretty cheap/low-end graphics card which is made for HTPC and basic desktop use. Therefore, if you want to play older games on it (those the AMD64 CPU can handle) then there are better cards which will offer more performance before being CPU bottlenecked. However if you want a new one of these then they are quite a bit more expensive than the 5450.