cheap quad upgrade?

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AgrFan

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I scored a q9300 tonight on ebay as a cheap upgrade of the e5200 box in my sig. I'm having regrets it's not worth the money or the hassle. I'm thinking 2GB ram is not enough for a quad core. It probably needs a new power supply as well. It's running a old Antec 350W one now. I was trying to avoid a new build and reinstalling everything. It's used for basic web surfing, WCG and iTunes storage. I was going to upgrade the family PC with it but ended up buying a Dell Vostro C2D box instead. Both boxes in my sig are secondary rigs for folding primarily and other stuff. Thoughts?
 
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A Q9300 is a very good upgrade on an E5200. The operating system and video can get along with 2 GB. You don't mention a video card so 350 watts should be fine.
Worst case back up your HHD to dvd, upgrade bios, try processor.
Used DDR3 should be easy enough to comeby.
As is a sale or rebates on a power supply. Is the CX430 still rebated?
If it doesn't work, or the thought is too stressing, sell it here. Its an adventure.
 
2gb is plenty for a web browser. I've run many a box off of 2gb in win7. It will work with1gb (2x 512) but not well.

PSU should be fine, however, grabbing an 80+ when it is on sale will pay for the purchase in power saved.

You should have a nice boxen with little to no work.
 
Kendrak said:
2gb is plenty for a web browser. I've run many a box off of 2gb in win7. It will work with1gb (2x 512) but not well.

PSU should be fine, however, grabbing an 80+ when it is on sale will pay for the purchase in power saved.

You should have a nice boxen with little to no work.
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Agreed, you'll be fine so long as you don't OC (you can probably undervolt a significant amount if the board supports it). That will get you up and running while you can keep an eye out for more cheap ram on the fs/ft forum. For the power supply, keep an eye out for the next time Corsair CX430's drop below 20 bucks after rebate.
 
Heck, this laptop I am using has 1gb of ram, and I do just fine on pretty much anything I do. Has a 1.86ghz core 2 duo. General computing works well.
 
I'm seeing over 1GB used on my AMD quad running WCG work units. I'll look for some DDR2 sticks if paging gets too out of hand with 2GB. Newegg has the CX430 on sale right now. I'll keep that in mind if the Antec SP-350 doesn't cut it. I have a Antec BP-430 $20AR special for my AMD quad and it does the job quite well.
 
The Antec SP-350 power supply looks to have bit the dust. The rear fan stopped running and the unit is now ticking. It's not hot and the system runs but the power supply is definitely dying. I had trouble getting the system to boot and had to disconnect a few drives to get it to run. It only has 10A and 15A on the 12V rails. I probably fried it at some point. Strange thing is it worked perfectly in my AMD Athlon quad-core box. If the 4-pin CPU power cable had been long enough I would have swapped it. I'm going to have 4 cores offline from WCG until it gets fixed. I'm waiting for a $20 special on another Antec unit from Newegg. I've always had good luck with Antec stuff.
 
AgrFan said:
I've always had good luck with Antec stuff.
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Except for this one that has now died? :p

If you're going ultra cheap, this is currently the best unit you are going to find. These regularly drop below $20 after rebate.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026

Here is an in depth review.
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=239

At a slightly higher price point, you can sometimes snag the Seasonic manufactured Antec Neo 620c for about 40 bucks.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371031
 
R-Type said:
I guess those are decent, I think doozer ran a 2p on one. Still, I'd buy either that or the corsair depending which went on sale first. I buy a cx430 each time they go on sale to have spares.:p
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How many spares do you have? :eek:
 
They end up going into rigs or being sold at cost to friends that have one die. Right now I only have 1 spare, I'm sure I don't catch all the deals. :p
 
R-Type said:
They end up going into rigs or being sold at cost to friends that have one die. Right now I only have 1 spare, I'm sure I don't catch all the deals. :p
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Whew... I thought we were gonna have an A&E Hoarders episode about you. ;)
 
I finished my quad core upgrade project today. I put in a new Antec power supply, installed the Q9300 (bios accepted it, flashed bios to latest version anyway) and replaced the hard drive with a Western Digital 6Gb/s drive (WD2500AAKX). The old hard drive was one of the first Western Digital 3Gb/s drives (WD2500KS). It was 5 years old and lasted through two builds. It always sounded like a popcorn maker and I could never figure out why. The new drive did the trick. The system is faster and quieter now.

Thanks everyone for the help :)
 
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