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Dangman
Ninja Editor SuperMod
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2005
- Messages
- 46,056
It's time now.
The Background:
After receiving an Antec Truepower New 750W from Antec as part of my Antec Lanboy review a few months ago, it got me thinking: it's been a while since I've upgraded the guts of my PC. In fact, the last major upgrade was the PNY 8800GT I bought back in 2008. The main guts of the PC, the CPU/mobo/RAM/PSU was bought back in April of 2007. Since then it's just been HDD upgrades/additions.
Basically, I'm a tad overdue for an update.
But due to some unfortunate financial issues, I won't be able to do as quite of a large upgrade as I did back in 2007 in terms of costs and performance from a P4 2.53Ghz + 1.5GB RAM + 9800 Pro setup. So no $1000 to $1200 upgrade here sadly
My budget for these upgrades will be about $600 give or take. And yes I will be posting pics of these upgrades
However like Tiraides, I won't be upgrading just my PC. I also plan on upgrading a few other items while I'm at it. I'm aiming to do most of my upgrades throughout this month and the next.
The Plan:
My plans so far in no special order:
The Research/Execution:
Now for plan #2, I’ve actually started on that already: I recently bought a Phenom II X3 720 that was proven to be a stable unlocked quad-core for $80 shipped off the forums here. Also I jumped on that G.Skill 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM deal for $110 shipped from Newegg. Finally since A) I live in California where it does get a bit warm to say the least and B) I plan to overclock, I also picked up the Coolermaster Hyper 212+ HSF.
Now I’m missing one part: The motherboard. Here is where I’m undecided about. My motherboard requirements are the following:
The enthusiast in me say get the Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H AMD 890GX Motherboard for $125 shipped from Amazon.com (I have a $10 promo code there). It meets every single one of my requirements and has extra features as well: The SATA 6.0Gb/s for whenever I decide to get a SSD, the onboard video that’ll serve as both a backup video as well as output for a third monitor, shown to be a very good overclocker, two extra SATA ports, etc.
But the cheap-skate Asian in me says get the MSI 870-G45 AMD 770 Motherboard for $60 shipped from Newegg since it also meets most of my requirements. For something that cheap, it OC's relatively well and can unlock AMD CPUs. Saves me $60 that can help cover the costs of the video card upgrade.
Argh. Sucks to be near broke sometimes.
Anyway that’s all for now. I’ll update this thread when I start getting more parts in. Any thoughts/criticism are welcome.
Total:
$80 - Phenom II X3 720 CPU unlocked to quad-core
$27 - Coolermaster Hyper 212+ HSF
$110 - G.Skill 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM
----
$217 shipped
The Background:
After receiving an Antec Truepower New 750W from Antec as part of my Antec Lanboy review a few months ago, it got me thinking: it's been a while since I've upgraded the guts of my PC. In fact, the last major upgrade was the PNY 8800GT I bought back in 2008. The main guts of the PC, the CPU/mobo/RAM/PSU was bought back in April of 2007. Since then it's just been HDD upgrades/additions.
Basically, I'm a tad overdue for an update.
But due to some unfortunate financial issues, I won't be able to do as quite of a large upgrade as I did back in 2007 in terms of costs and performance from a P4 2.53Ghz + 1.5GB RAM + 9800 Pro setup. So no $1000 to $1200 upgrade here sadly
My budget for these upgrades will be about $600 give or take. And yes I will be posting pics of these upgrades However like Tiraides, I won't be upgrading just my PC. I also plan on upgrading a few other items while I'm at it. I'm aiming to do most of my upgrades throughout this month and the next.
The Plan:
My plans so far in no special order:
- Upgrade my video card. Fallout 3, BFBC2, Borderlands, and Batman: AA pretty much pushed my 8800GT to its limit at 1440x900. Unfortunately one of my 19” monitors died and I ended up getting a 20” monitor with a res of 1600x900 this past Black Friday. That's made things a little unbearable in the GPU department. So now I’m looking at the GTX 460 1GB, HD 5850, or HD 6850 as those cards are within my budget, depending on whichever is cheaper or is the better deal later this month.
- Upgrade my CPU/mobo/RAM/HSF. Again, Fallout 3, BFBC2, Borderlands, and Batman: AA pretty much pushed my E6400 @ 3.2Ghz to its limits. In addition, running two Eve Online clients was rather CPU and RAM heavy as well. So basically, I was looking at a new quad-core CPU.
- Turn my current PC into a Hyper-V server for learning purposes. Since I do want to cut down on power usage and because I want to use that 8800GT in my backup gaming PC, I'm planning on picking up an ATI X300 or X600 off eBay for $10 to $15 shipped. I already have a spare NSK4480 case, the Corsair 520HX, and a 160GB drive for the OS. I'll also be picking up a 1TB or 2TB drive depending on the sale and a PCI-E x1 Intel NIC for this Hyper-V server. Long-term wise, if all goes well with this, I’m moving my WHS server to the Hyper-V server.
- Add a gigabit switch. The Verizon FIOs router that I have only has 10/100mbps and that's just too slow for me. I constantly move files from my PC to my server every week.
The Research/Execution:
Now for plan #2, I’ve actually started on that already: I recently bought a Phenom II X3 720 that was proven to be a stable unlocked quad-core for $80 shipped off the forums here. Also I jumped on that G.Skill 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM deal for $110 shipped from Newegg. Finally since A) I live in California where it does get a bit warm to say the least and B) I plan to overclock, I also picked up the Coolermaster Hyper 212+ HSF.
Now I’m missing one part: The motherboard. Here is where I’m undecided about. My motherboard requirements are the following:
- Two PCI-E x16 slots so that I can A) do Crossfire, B) do that SLI hack whenever it gets updated for the later Nvidia cards, or C) Let me use 3-4 monitors via a second video card. No, I don’t particularly trust AMD’s displayport to DVD/VGA adapters.
- At least six SATA ports. I’m using 5 SATA ports on my current motherboard already and I use the 6th port to hook up other people’s hard drives when I need to test or pull data off it. So six minimum here.
- Six rear USB ports.
- One PCI-E x1 slot directly above the first PCI-E x16 slot for a future Intel PCI-E x1 NIC upgrade
- All six SATA ports must be parallel to the motherboard itself. With the way my P180 case is, having the SATA ports parallel to the motherboard makes it easier for cable management.
- Good overclocker.
- Support for unlocking my Phenom II X3 720
The enthusiast in me say get the Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H AMD 890GX Motherboard for $125 shipped from Amazon.com (I have a $10 promo code there). It meets every single one of my requirements and has extra features as well: The SATA 6.0Gb/s for whenever I decide to get a SSD, the onboard video that’ll serve as both a backup video as well as output for a third monitor, shown to be a very good overclocker, two extra SATA ports, etc.
But the cheap-skate Asian in me says get the MSI 870-G45 AMD 770 Motherboard for $60 shipped from Newegg since it also meets most of my requirements. For something that cheap, it OC's relatively well and can unlock AMD CPUs. Saves me $60 that can help cover the costs of the video card upgrade.
Argh. Sucks to be near broke sometimes
. Anyway that’s all for now. I’ll update this thread when I start getting more parts in. Any thoughts/criticism are welcome.
Total:
$80 - Phenom II X3 720 CPU unlocked to quad-core
$27 - Coolermaster Hyper 212+ HSF
$110 - G.Skill 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM
----
$217 shipped
Last edited:
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