Please suggest upgrades to this rig

N

NeezyDeezy

n00b
Joined
Apr 24, 2006
Messages
18
(My apologies if this is in the wrong place) I've the rig below unchanged for four years now, and it's been running great, but now I find that things are getting a little bogged down though with torrents and browsers and a few other apps going. I would like to spend less than $400. I would really like to improve boot times too, so I may upgrade only HDDs this time around and wait for the next gen chipsets before I do mobo and processor.

I'd love peoples' thoughts on what I can bump up to get the most performance. I don't play games, so I plan to keep the 7600gt.

Opteron 165 @ 2835 dual prime 24h stable at 1.5V
Stepping: 0546mpmw
Thermalright XP-120
DFI NF4 Lanparty Ultra-D (Bios 702-1)
G.Skill 2GBHZ PC4000
BFG 7600GT
(2) Seagate 300GB in RAID 1
Antec P180 (84cfm fans whirring like mad)
Audigy 2zs
 
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GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P

Ram and BE 550 combo

Kingston SNV225-S2/64GB 2.5" 64GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD)

Total ~$420 shipped. Note the motherboard is capable of unlocking that chip to a 4-core. I also chose some more ram to bring you up to 6gigs (no sense in buying more than DDR2 800, because thats the fastest you can run with all 4 slots populated anyway. Performance of CL4 DDR2 800 is not that different from CL5 1066 anyway. The SSD will REALLY speed things up, so I highly recommend it for you.
 
Yeah for fast boot times, invest in a solid state drive.
Intel's x-25M gen 1 is now down to $229 to match the upcoming gen 2. Any indilink controlled SSD should also be fine.
Then upgrade your ram to 4 gigs, and you're pretty much done. I don't see much cheap upgrade room without changing your mobo/cpu combo. And that would be costly.
 
Original question retracted.

I agree to overhaul the mobo, cpu and ram.
 
I wouldn't invest in an SSD just for faster boot times. With that money, you could get 2 HDD's in RAID 0.
I would go with a new mobo, CPU, RAM.
 
Try this first instead. Get a set of 2x2gb sticks of DDR2 memory and back up your stuff and then do a format and re-install of the operating system of your choice. That in itself should make a big difference. If you haven't done a format and re-install in awhile you would be surprised in the difference it can make. If you are still jonesing for an upgrade after that then just get an AM2+ motherboard and the cpu of your choice and use the DDR2 memory that you just bought in it. The above mentioned solid state drives are too expensive still for your budget.
 
Roberty said:
Try this first instead. Get a set of 2x2gb sticks of DDR2 memory and back up your stuff and then do a format and re-install of the operating system of your choice. That in itself should make a big difference. If you haven't done a format and re-install in awhile you would be surprised in the difference it can make. If you are still jonesing for an upgrade after that then just get an AM2+ motherboard and the cpu of your choice and use the DDR2 memory that you just bought in it. The above mentioned solid state drives are too expensive still for your budget.
Click to expand...

ddr2 will not work with his setup.
 
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