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Curious on upgrade options

D

dlaxman31

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 29, 2007
Messages
315
Hello all-
My system specs are below:
Specs:
Intel Q6600 2.4Ghz L2 Cache 1066Mhz
Intel DG33TL Motherboard
4x1gb DDR-800 G.Skill memory
ATI HD 3870 OC Graphics Card
SoundBlaster Live! Audigy
CoolerMaster CM690
Antec Earthwatts 500w Power Supply

Multiple Hard drives:
1 (320 gb Seagate Hard Drive SATA) - OS only
2 (1TB Western Digital "Green" SATA) - Music and Movie/pictures
3 (1.5 TB Seagate Hard Drive SATA) - Backup (not really being used)

My computer is roughly 5ish years old and could use an upgrade. I'm mainly interested in upgrading the Hard drives to increase the speed. I'm curious on the option of a SSD for my main operating system.

Curious on your thoughts on the speed difference I could gain with a SSD. is it worth my time/effort to do a clean wipe or the system and install the SSD drive? Not really interested in upgrading the motherboard or processor at the moment (dont have the funs.

Thanks
 
Would you notice a difference, yes. Me personally, I'd save more money for a complete overhaul of the computer or just build a new one altogether.
 
With a system like that, I believe you're better off just buying basically an entirely new rig. You're going to need a new mobo to upgrade the processor, and if you're upgrading that you will need new ram, and the graphics card is outdated.
 
Do you need to upgrade at all? If all you're doing is movies and music, then you might as well sit pretty and save your money.
 
My vote is yes.

My main machine uses a similar mobo/proc, and swapping the OS drive to a SSD has been worth every penny. Every application is simply more responsive. (I'm currently using a 256 GB Crucial M4 for the OS. Music and other stuff are still on mechanical disks.)

Clarification: I am running Win 7 x64.
 
Last edited:
dlaxman31 said:
Hello all-
My system specs are below:
Specs:
Intel Q6600 2.4Ghz L2 Cache 1066Mhz
Intel DG33TL Motherboard
4x1gb DDR-800 G.Skill memory
ATI HD 3870 OC Graphics Card
SoundBlaster Live! Audigy
CoolerMaster CM690
Antec Earthwatts 500w Power Supply

Multiple Hard drives:
1 (320 gb Seagate Hard Drive SATA) - OS only
2 (1TB Western Digital "Green" SATA) - Music and Movie/pictures
3 (1.5 TB Seagate Hard Drive SATA) - Backup (not really being used)

My computer is roughly 5ish years old and could use an upgrade. I'm mainly interested in upgrading the Hard drives to increase the speed. I'm curious on the option of a SSD for my main operating system.

Curious on your thoughts on the speed difference I could gain with a SSD. is it worth my time/effort to do a clean wipe or the system and install the SSD drive? Not really interested in upgrading the motherboard or processor at the moment (dont have the funs.

Thanks
Click to expand...

For that system, although an SSD might speed up random accesses, its sequential read and write performance will be limited by the SATA 3.0 Gbps controller on that motherboard. Especially since the sequential read and write speeds of most good SSDs these days is significantly faster than a single SATA 3.0 Gbps channel can handle.

In the meantime, just save up for an entire new build at this point: The motherboard is now no longer supported any further by Intel. You see, Intel has always discontinued support for its own motherboards once they reach three years old. This means that there will be no official support for newer operating systems for those old chipsets, and Microsoft may pull the plug on support for older OSes any day. (For example, if you're still using Windows XP, be advised that Microsoft support for new bug and security fixes will end for that OS in April of next year, after which your PC will become increasingly vulnerable to new security and malware hacks and infections - and those threats will no longer be fixed for such older OSes.) And because Intel has officially discontinued support for that motherboard and all other 3-series chipset-based motherboards, your system will not run properly (if at all) with Windows 8. (This discontinuation of vendor support is the biggest reason why I retired several older systems rather early, and the DH61CR that I have since sold would be the very last Intel-branded motherboard that I would ever purchase.)

As for that Radeon HD 3870, be aware that AMD has officially moved all of its DirectX 10 GPUs to a much less frequently updated (read: semi-legacy) status: New driver releases will only be released for critical fixes. (This is as opposed to "legacy" status in which new driver development has ceased.)

Because of all those drawbacks, I would definitely not spend even a single penny on any upgrades for that system, especially when a single SSD that's large enough to hold all of your programs and games costs a lot more money than your entire system put together is currently worth (after depreciation due to use and age).
 
Last edited:
E4g1e said:
For that system, although an SSD might speed up random accesses, its sequential read and write performance will be limited by the SATA 3.0 Gbps controller on that motherboard. Especially since the sequential read and write speeds of most good SSDs these days is significantly faster than a single SATA 3.0 Gbps channel can handle.

In the meantime, just save up for an entire new build at this point: The motherboard is now no longer supported any further by Intel. You see, Intel has always discontinued support for its own motherboards once they reach three years old. This means that there will be no official support for newer operating systems for those old chipsets, and Microsoft may pull the plug on support for older OSes any day. (For example, if you're still using Windows XP, be advised that Microsoft support for new bug and security fixes will end for that OS in April of next year, after which your PC will become increasingly vulnerable to new security and malware hacks and infections - and those threats will no longer be fixed for such older OSes.) And because Intel has officially discontinued support for that motherboard and all other 3-series chipset-based motherboards, your system will not run properly (if at all) with Windows 8. (This discontinuation of vendor support is the biggest reason why I retired several older systems rather early, and the DH61CR that I have since sold would be the very last Intel-branded motherboard that I would ever purchase.)

As for that Radeon HD 3870, be aware that AMD has officially moved all of its DirectX 10 GPUs to a much less frequently updated (read: semi-legacy) status: New driver releases will only be released for critical fixes. (This is as opposed to "legacy" status in which new driver development has ceased.)

Because of all those drawbacks, I would definitely not spend even a single penny on any upgrades for that system, especially when a single SSD that's large enough to hold all of your programs and games costs a lot more money than your entire system put together is currently worth (after depreciation due to use and age).
Click to expand...

Great comment and feedback with this. I've noticed the issues with the graphics card and it being completely outdated. Even with this out dated machine I might just save up for a laptop since this desktop has such a large footprint.


Going in a different direction now with savng money, I have roughly 400gbs of music. Should I save up for the future larger SSD drives? Or just keep it on an old mechanical HD?

Thanks again for all of your quick replies.
 
Going in a different direction now with savng money, I have roughly 400gbs of music. Should I save up for the future larger SSD drives? Or just keep it on an old mechanical HD?
Click to expand...
It's my understanding that you'll want to store all of that on a regular hard drive (I think 3 TB ones are common these days?) and just keep your OS/applications/games on the SSD.
 
OrangeWolf said:
It's my understanding that you'll want to store all of that on a regular hard drive (I think 3 TB ones are common these days?) and just keep your OS/applications/games on the SSD.
Click to expand...

This.

There is no performance increase in using an SSD to store data. Even when accessing that information.
 
What exactly do you do with your PC? Actually, let me rephrase that. What do you WANT to do with your PC that your current PC can not do?
 
Skillz said:
What exactly do you do with your PC? Actually, let me rephrase that. What do you WANT to do with your PC that your current PC can not do?
Click to expand...

I used to play games back in college but obviously didn't want to constately upgrade everything all the time.

Honestly now about 5-6 years from my college days, its really used to play music, and do common email work (when I'm working from home).

I would like to have a smaller footprint (since the face is ungodly big) and if necessary upgrade a few peices. I think I've maxed out everything I can do/need right now.


I'm debating on saving for a laptop (just don't sit at the computer much anymore) and getting rid of this old rig peice by peice.
 
Well the CM690 isn't exactly a small case. If you want smaller, then just a smaller case. Very inexpensive upgrade. Although if you don't use it much to begin with, just put it some place where it's out of sight, out of mind.

If you want a laptop, no point at all in upgrading your current rig. Just save the money to get the laptop you want. You could then turn your current PC into something like a cheap router, nas, file server, media server, etc...
 
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