Computer Upgrade

[Skyylya]

I've been thinking for a long time about upgrading my PC, but never really had a good excuse to do it. Now i do.

I've always been of the impression that RAM and video card are the most important things to upgrade, but since my current motherboard is a bit outdated (i can't do pci express) i am going to upgrade that as well.

I want something that's going to carry me for a long while, so i'm not to concerned with cost. I've been looking at a Intel Core 2 (duo or quad) extreme board/processor, and from what i've seen, DDR3 Corsair RAM seems to be good so i was gonna get 2 GB.

I'm looking at the nVidia gForce 8800 756mb for the video card complete with HD technology and whatnot. I don't want to upgrade everything so i'm trying to figure out what i absolutely need to upgrade in order to get the performance boost i want.

Other than what's mentioned i think i just need to get a better power supply, but am i missing anything? I know a decent amount about computers, but i'm a bit outdated myself.

Anyway, i appreciate any input i can get before i decide what exactly i'm gonna order.

[Carbon]

When upgrading, always something to keep in mind -- a computer is only as fast as it's slowest part.

[Belisarius]

What are you going to be using the machine for? If it's just Firefox and FFXI, probably even a storebought hunk of crap will suffice, although you'll be better off building it yourself.

Fact is, pretty much any combination of components that will fit into a PCI-E board will run FFXI; I think the PCI-E standard itself postdates FFXI, but I'm not checking my facts atm. Likewise, if you're going to run WinXP, you pretty much can't find parts that won't do the trick for you without going to a pawn shop and purchasing components that have probably been micturated upon.

If you want to be more demanding, the picture changes. Running Vista? 1 GB of RAM is your minimum, 2 GB preferred, and I'd strongly agree with your choice of a Core 2 Duo. Any Core 2 Duo should do, but be sure to read your reviews to make sure that you can get your mitts on enough active cooling. (My big regret is getting a Pentium D 840--bastard runs HOT....it hits 69C running FFXI for extended periods of time, and who plays FFXI for any other sort of period of time).

Running Linux? Get a nVidia card. ATi driver support for Linux is extremely dodgy, whereas it seems to be easier to get shit working with nVidia. I don't know or care if this is because nVidia writes Linux drivers or because more furry-toothed geeks like nVidia and write their own, I only know the end result.

I'd also recommend a MINIMUM 450W power supply, and it's probably a good idea to make sure it has a few SATA power connectors on it. Most new mobos only have 1 IDE chain, so you'll have to either replace your old IDE hard drives with SATA ones (and very few SATA hard drives come with Molex power connectors) or purchase a PCI-IDE interface card. Hell, they even make SATA optical drives (got a SATA burner in my own rig), so more SATA leads = better.

Lastly, I can't recommend the Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU fan strongly enough. I haven't tried the newer 9700s, but the 9500 is as close to an orgasm as a CPU cooler can come without going water cooling.

/stream of consciousness

[Skyylya]

I haven't touched my PC in a while, the most recent thing i got was a new hard drive with a faster cache, I don't think i need to upgrade that, but my processor and video card are at least 3-4 years old.

I mostly use my PC for gaming, not ffxi though i have that on ps2 and don't play anymore anyway. I just bought NWN2 though and that kinda made me wanna go ahead and upgrade since i've been wanting to anyway. And i wanna get stuff that'll last me another 3-4 years, so i'm getting top of the line stuff now.

I saw online one 1000w power supply that was recommended for the other cards i was looking at, but if you say 450 is all i need maybe i don't really need the 1000w.

I've alway's preferred nvidia for my video card, i've never had problems with the ones i've had in the past.

Here's what i'm looking at atm:

INTEL CORE 2 DUO EXTEME QX6800 2.93GHZ 1066FSB LGA775 8M BX80562QX6800
768MB GDDR3 memory; PCI Express interface; dual-link DVI-I and HDTV outputs; 600MHz core clock speed; ForceWare drivers
Corsair XMS3 DHX 2048MB Dual Channel PC10600 DDR3 1333MHz Memory
Ultra X3® 1000-Watt ATX SATA-Ready, SLI-Ready Modular PS

Assuming my hard drive is just fine, sound card is fine, peripheral things are fine. What else would you think i need to get, a cooling system? I'm not sure what would be good for one of those.

[Epical]

You better be working for Lucasfilms or something with a PC like that lol. That'll last you a good while. =P

But yeah, aftermarket cooling (ESPECIALLY with that setup) is pretty mandatory. The stock coolers on the CPU/GPU just don't do the trick, and unless you have a very nice case with good airflow, you can make some Easy Mac in your machine. For CPU coolers, check Anandtech.com... they have a good article on CPU coolers and how they stock up. Personally, I'm using a Scythe Ninja rev.2 with some AS5 thermal paste... works great. For GPU coolers, it's pretty much a no brainer: Zalman VF900-CU. It's absolutely amazing (brought my X1950XT from 100deg on load with stock cooler down to 50deg max) and it's EXTREMELY quiet. Best part is that it's CAD$50.

[Amastacia]

That's a bit overkill in my opinion.

SLI offers a very small performance improvement at a very large price premium. Unless you're obsessed with running games at native on 30" widescreen LCDs, it just seems hard to justify the cost. A single 8800GTX will give you like 85-90% of the performance of SLI for most things and cost half as much.

Also, with how overclockable the Core 2s are, the Extremes also seem a little hard to justify. You can get an E6600 or something in that range (any of the ones with the larger caches, really), slap a $50-70 heat pipe tower on it and overclock it like crazy.

Before you drop ludicrous sums of money on DDR3 RAM, take a look at the maximum supported FSB speed of your processor and chipset. Getting RAM any faster than that still means there's a bottleneck and you're not going to see worthwhile benefits. Even if you go for the Core 2 Extreme you're looking to waste money on, you're not going to see any benefit to DDR 1333 instead of DDR 1066.

Keep in mind that my perspective doesn't include unlimited funds to waste on frivolous expenses, I'd rather go for a maximum costerformance ratio even if I'm sacrificing a small amount of overall performance.

[Skyylya]

I appreciate the input, the reason i posted is because as much as i know about computers, there's a ton more i don't know. Like how to overclock something and whatnot. I can do simple stuff, like take out a card or drive and install the drivers and set up my platform, but I can't completely build the computer on my own and know what stuff goes with what. Like whether or not certain things are compatible with each other, or like you said whether or not i'm going to get more than i really need. I am just looking at stuff i heard about and read some good reviews on.

Basically I want to upgrade my PC to run absolutely any program/game without any lag or video problems and get something good enough to last me another 3-4 years.

If what i listed is more than what i need, could you suggest a combination of alternatives? I'm not completely unlimited on funds, but i was going to buy a laptop for about 2,000, instead of doing that i'm going to just put the money into my desktop to improve that. So i'm ok with spending anywhere from 2000-2500 to do the upgrades i need.

This is what i'm currently running:

Intel Pentium 4 2.4ghz processor
nVidia gforce 440 mx with agpx video card (oldest of what i have, only 128mb video memory)
and 1 gig of ddr3 ram

I have no special power supply and no cooling mechanisms.

[Amastacia]

There's no magic bullet answer because it's hard to predict just which parts and technologies will be completely obsoleted in 3-4 years (your whole PC will be, fear not, but for example, will anyone still be using PCIe then?).

However, that said, I can make some recommendations, and a lot of the stuff you're not sure on is relatively easy to learn (there's plenty of literature available on the intarwebs in regards to overclocking, for example).

CPU: Phenom by AMD is on the horizon, but there's been such mixed impressions of what people have seen so far that Core 2 is probably a safer and guaranteed-stable route. I'd probably recommend the E6600 if you do go with Intel, it's inexpensive (~$225), uses the latest architecture revision (Conroe), and is overclockable out the ying yang.

Motherboard: This is going to be disagreed with by a few people I'm sure, but I'd look only at Intel's P35 chipset, and any motherboard that includes it. You might want to wait a couple weeks as it's newly released and brand-support for it is just starting to show up, but if you're looking for long shelf life, it's going to have better legs than Intel's older chipsets. I'm a huge Asus fan, so of course I'll recommend that brand, but there are plenty of top-notch motherboard manufacturers. If you decide to go AMD on the CPU, nVidia has been putting out the best AMD chipsets for a while now, I'd definitely keep an eye on nForce boards.

RAM: 2GB is a good idea if you're looking long term. 1GB is sufficient in the present, but you want to look a ways out and predict what will be needed, and 2GB is a safe minimum bet. Plenty of brands to choose from (I've had good experiences with Corsair, Mushkin, and Micron, but I haven't bought RAM in a while so I'm not an authority on what's the best-of-the-best anymore). Don't bother getting RAM that's faster than your CPU's FSB speed, that's just wasted performance and in turn wasted money.

Video Card: This is likely to be the MOST obsolete part in 3-4 years time, you may need an interim upgrade at some point, just as a forewarning. Right now, there's really only one way to go. That way is nVidia. There's no real DX10 games out there to give a fair comparison of ATI and nVidia's cards' performance for the latest and greatest shineys, but the short version for what you can play now is that ATI's card is a stinker, and nVidia is the way to go. A single 8800 GTS, GTX, or Ultra should do you just fine, and not brown out the neighborhood.

PSU: 1000W is excessive unless you're SLI'ing. With a dual core CPU and a single high-end video card, you should be fine with a PSU in the 650-700W range. There are a ton of good brands to choose from, so as long as you stay away from generic brand crap, you should be fine. I'd personally recommend looking at Antec and OCZ power supplies, but I'm sure other people can make suggestions as good or better, so please don't take me as an irrefutable authority on this.

Cooling: The Zalman GPU cooler suggested above is absolutely a great, great idea. For a CPU cooler, I'd seriously consider a Tuniq Tower 120 or ThermalRight Ultra-120. Neither is particularly cheap or break-the-bank expensive, but they're the two best CPU coolers available. One warning is that both are LARGE. They are tall, heavy heatpipe tower designs, so if you have or get a small case, space may be an issue. They're definitely aimed at standard-size midtowers and larger. If you do a lot of LAN gaming, I'd be very careful how you move your PC, as there's a potential for some serious damage when nearly a kilogram of weight suspended from your motherboard bounces around. Hand-carrying should be safe so long as you're careful about not jostling it, but if you're transporting your PC by car, lay the case on its side so that you're not putting shear stress on the mainboard.

Other stuff:

If you have an old beige steel case, that should probably go. You will see significant heat savings (and thus part lifetime improvements) by getting a case with good cooling. You don't need to go extreme here, there are plenty of reasonably-priced case options from a wide variety of manufacturers in both steel and aluminum which will work wonders in keeping your parts cooler.

If your hard drives are all parallel IDE, you may have problems if you have more than 3. Most contemporary motherboards have only 2 IDE channels, which gives you enough space for 4 devices (and one or more of those will be an optical drive or drives). New hard drives are going to have to be SATA, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but if you were planning on schlepping a large number of hard drives over, you're going to end up incurring extra costs and have to take the time to transfer data from your PATA to your SATA drives.

Onboard sound has become quite good, and sound cards are typically slow to grow truly obsolete (I use an Audigy 2, and while newer cards are better, they're not so much better that my card is useless. It has an onboard digital sound processor, it supports 6.1, the only thing it doesn't handle is EAX revisons later than 2, which isn't a big deal to me as I don't have a surround sound setup at the moment anyway), so either way you're in good shape there, but I'd take some time to test which is better.

Lastly, there's plenty you can do to make choices given suggestions by looking at sites like http://www.anandtech.com There are a goodly number of PC sites out there, but in my opinion AnandTech is at the top of the heap. Their articles are well-written, their tests are fair and generally representative of real-life conditions, they aren't tied to any brand's nuts, and while they generally focus on a pure-performance slant, they always make sure to include information aimed at those on a tighter budget. I'd do some reading there in regards to any parts on which you have questions or aren't sure about.

The people here at BG can offer you a lot of really great suggestions, but I'd be willing to bet most of us who'd be posting here read AnandTech anyway, so for stuff like case choices and whatnot, it might not be a bad idea to read through some of their articles and draw your own conclusions based on your own aesthetics and thoughts on what is most important to you.

[Skyylya]

MassCool NexTherm CS-ICS8200 Black ATX Mid-Tower Case wioh Built-in Air Conditioning

Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi Intel Socket 775 ATX Motherboard / Audio / CrossFire Ready / PCI Express / WiFi / Dual Gigabit LAN / S/PDIF / USB 2.0 & Firewire / Serial ATA / RAID

CP2-DUO-E6600 :: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz / 4MB Cache / 1066MHz FSB / Conroe / Dual-Core / OEM / Socket 775 / Processor

Lite-on SOHC-5236K / 52x32x52x CD-RW / 16x DVD-ROM / White / Combo Drive - Retail

Corsair XMS3 DHX 2048MB Dual Channel PC10600 DDR3 1333MHz Memory (2 x1024MB)

EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX / 768MB GDDR3 / SLI Ready / PCI Express / Dual DVI / HDTV / Video Card


This is what i've come up with after reading your last post. I am pretty sure that it is all compatible, and price wise it's well within my range. All i gotta do is get the parts and get it put together. Only thing i might need to do is get a hard drive as well, what would be a good one without going overboard, i don't need like 300gb of space, 100-150 would be more than enough. Get one with good cache speed right?

[Epical]

I would comment further, but Amastacia pretty much nailed everything. The only thing I could specify for you is the case: right now, the Antec P180 is just incredible. Like previously mentioned, if you're a LAN gamer, it's not the most travel-friendly thing (does weigh a good bit, and it's rather large), but if you're a stay-at-home gamer, it's godly. Airflow is exceptional, loads of room (and I mean LOADS, goes hand-in-hand with that huge CPU cooler you're going to get), and a coated outer layer (helps a lot with static, which can kill your machine in an instant) with two removable filters at the front of the case. I'm petting mine right now as I type this with one hand.

I'm also a huge ASUS fan. I'm currently working off a P5W DH Deluxe, and while it's a tad overkill, it's just beautiful. ASUS has a lot of selection (and they're all great mobos), and they're tried, tested, and true... so I would definitely check them out before going with a less-heard-of company.

Uh, and I'll also just double-reinforce the E6600 and nVidia card choice. With the price point that the E6600 is at compared to how it performs versus other dual-core CPUs, it's more than a front-runner. Overclockability is off the charts, and it's comparable/able to beat to AMD's FX-62 (which is their high-end stuff) in pure processing power. Along that line, go with a nVidia card as well. That whole AMD/ATI side of the market is smoking the good stuff at the moment. They both went from powerhouse manufacturers to second-rate computer hardware suppliers. =P I have a personal bond with ATI cards (as they have been in every machine I've ever owned and done me good), but this X1950XT I have in here will be my last ATI card. Not because it sucks, but because the stuff nVidia is putting out for their price point just flatout makes more sense than ATI's equivalent cards.

Meh, either way, just some stuff to think about. Good luck!

[Belisarius]

Just want to add one thing: If you're going to overclock, stay away from Intel motherboards. They're difficult if not impossible to overclock.

I want to underclock my current rig to try to bring my case temp down, but I have an intel board, so it's a no go...and if you can afford it, I'd reccomend getting the 1kW PSU, that'll save you from having to get a new one in a couple of years down the road.

[Skyylya]

This is what i finally ended up going with:

PC Pitstop Optimize Improving the Performance & Stability of any PC running Windows

ZEROtherm / CF800 / Socket 775 / Copper Base / Heatpipes / CPU Cooler

Ultra / X-Pro / 750-Watt / ATX / Dual 80mm Fans / SATA-Ready / SLI-Ready / Active PFC / Power Supply - Black

MassCool NexTherm CS-ICS8200 Black ATX Mid-Tower Case wth Built-in Air Conditioning

Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi Intel Socket 775 ATX Motherboard / Audio / CrossFire Ready / PCI Express / WiFi / Dual Gigabit LAN / S/PDIF / USB 2.0 & Firewire / Serial ATA / RAID

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz / 4MB Cache / 1066MHz FSB / Conroe / Dual-Core / OEM / Socket 775 / Processor

Lite-on SOHC-5236K / 52x32x52x CD-RW / 16x DVD-ROM / White / Combo Drive - Retail

Corsair XMS3 DHX 2048MB Dual Channel PC10600 DDR3 1333MHz Memory (2 x1024MB)

EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX / 768MB GDDR3 / SLI Ready / PCI Express / Dual DVI / HDTV / Video Card

I talked to the guy on the phone when i ordered it and everything is compatible, no problems there. I didn't express deliver it so i'll get it sometime later this week. Then I can have the fun of putting it together.

Thanks for your input, i look forward to playing with my new PC.