Convenient time for my 7+ y/o system to be dying

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Derfnofred

Gawd
Joined
Dec 11, 2009
Messages
606
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Little bit of modest gaming, office, photoshop, occasionally COMSOL which loves memory/bandwidth more than anything else

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

If we can cap this at $500, I'd be thrilled.

3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Portland, Oregon

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.

Looking at motherboard/processor/memory for the moment, and then I can worry about incremental improvements past that. (There are plenty to be made!) A low-cost HDD would probably be good since my platter drive is also 8 years old.


5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

Antec Mini-P180 (micro ATX)
Earthwatts 650 PSU
Sapphire Dual-X 280x
Samsung 840 EVO 120 gb OS drive
WD Black 1TB (from 2010!)
Gigabyte GC-WB867D-I Wi-Fi/Bluetooth
Some LG SATA DVD drive
Hyper 212 Cooler (adapters to fit new sockets?)
PS2 keyboard, usb mouse

Used market is a possibility, in which case I have 2x4gb GSkill 1333 DDR3 sticks in here.

6) Will you be overclocking?
Modest, if any needed.

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
24" 1900x1200 monitor for now.

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
ASAP, computer seems to be starting to misbehave, freezing up and having a difficult time POSTing.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.

micro-ATX is a must.

eSATA, audio, WiFi would be a bonus (card above could go in another computer), FW would be nice, will probably stick with SATA for internal drives.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Win7 Pro unlocked licence that I already rolled over to W10, not sure if that part is transferable?


My guess is either the memory or the motherboard is dying (cpu does fine under stress tests?) but system is occasionally doing the following: freezing, throwing errors on DX11 shaders, and POST locking up. Probably time to give it a proper upgrade, not sure how well the used market is versus just moving up to use some of the black Friday sales. Biggest $ hit will assuredly be the DDR4.

Was thinking:
Newegg: 1600x, ASRock AB350M Pro4, and 16 GB DDR4 (whose?).

Don't know if you could get a 7600k competitive for the same money (more on the z270 side!).
 
Was going to do same thing as you but fuck DDR4 price fixing, it'll be nearly half your budget if you go 16Gb.
I have had a similar predicament the last nearly year, ran a shitter i3 with the 290x/existing ram and just finally bought a 2600k and a Maximus IV Extreme Z used for peanuts recently. Will keep me happily tided over until Zen2, does fine at 1440p for me.

Supports 8tb drives and USB3. More than enough for my needs.

edit: previously was on a p67/2600k rig which died due to getting overvolatage to CPU connected USB ports, fucked the board and the CPU. Limitation was large drive support and few USB3 ports on P67, Z68 is a perfect upgrade for that.

By the time the 290x/2600k is struggling the whole platform will need to go anyway.
 
Thanks guys, it is godawful expensive, but went with a 1600, ASRock AB350M Pro4, and some G.Skill 3200 8x2 kit they had on sale for $155. Threw in a HDD for cheap to duplicate mine, because at it's age, I don't trust it. All said/done $450.

Should keep me in business for a good long time. I mean I have a i7-860 (Nehalem) right now!
 
Nice.

When you get it ready and want to stress test it may I suggest you do it for science also? World Community Grid is having a Christmas Race starting on the 1st that'll run until the 24th. Team with most points in that time frame will be deemed the winner.

We just held their Christmas race last week that lasted a week and placed 4th, almost got 3rd. Bunch of help from the AMD guys here on [H].

If interested, it's easy to setup. Just follow this quick guide:

Register an account here:
https://join.worldcommunitygrid.org?recruiterId=993628&teamId=BP5XNJBR9N1

Download this software:
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php - Download BOINC (9.56 MB)

Install.

When it asks you to add a project search for WorldCommunityGrid. Sign in using your USERNAME and password you signed up with on the link above.

Let it calculate how many cores you have and how fast they are. WU's should begin downloading.

Either way, we want to see pics of the new build when you finish.
 
Can do, Skillz, although I don't think I'll be OC'ing (other than memory speed) too hard (although 3.8 doesn't look like it needs much voltage on these chips?) until I can get the AM4 bracket for my Hyper212, which is out of stock on Cooler Master's website.

I'm all about the science (postdoc in a cancer research center), so it's an easy convincing. :)
 
As promised some photos -- I spent WAY TOO LONG obsessing about cables and figuring out how to appropriately snake a SSD into a case that precedes 2.5" drives being a normal thing (it's buried). Cooler will be upgraded. Running it bone stock other than the memory/bus at 2933. It's a tidy upgrade that will only get quicker with a modest OC.

I stress tested the old system with the new PSU and it was a champ, so the old PSU was what was failing -- no matter, it was good time to upgrade. That also means all that hardware can be shipped to my parents to upgrade their even more antiquated computer!

IMG_20171202_225732.jpg IMG_20171203_135301.jpg
 
Awesome. Glad you got it figured out. Now fire up WCG and help us win this race. We're in 1st place right now, but China is catching us.

Build looks pretty good, but man that cooler looks out of place. Haha.
 
Yeah, it'll be a lot better with the 212 in there for sure.

I'm up and running. We have pretty crappy internet, so I might be more limited there than actual processing power!
 
Yeah a 212 would look better. Going single fan or dual on it?

Bump your work queue up to 10 days in the computing preferences. So if your internet is down for a couple days at least your system will still be crunching work.
 
Single fan for now, the back exhaust case fan isn't that far away, and everything I've seen WRT the dual-fan setups is that they're marginal in benefit. I'd do much better replacing both my 120mm's (CPU and case) with something better/quieter. I'll have to check out the cooling subforum to see what people are recommending (Noctua still on top?).
 
horrorshow said:
Pretty much friendo.

Although I've had good luck with 120mm Coolermaster fans (if u don't wanna spend $20+ per fan)
Click to expand...

Noctua fans for me. I've been very happy with them. Spendy on the front end, but there are sales from time-to-time. I was able to score open box noctua stuff, hasn't given me any trouble.
 
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