$500 gift card in my wallet

[HeianJodan]

Hello folks,
I have this $500 VISA gift card to anywhere burning a hole in my wallet. I was thinking it could be a jumping off point in building a new system.

• Use of the new system: Web Development and Gaming
• Budget: $500 to start, can go over depending upon the need but looking for bang for the buck vs top of the line
• Country: US
• Preferred CPU: Intel (or AMD if it can work well with my GTX 260), my current CPU is an e6750
• Preferred Case: Antec. My Antec Solo will not fit my fat gtx card so its either a new case or a dremel tool.
• Parts to re-purpose if possible:
  • ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
  • OCZ Agility Series 60GB SATA II SSD
  • GeForce GTX 260
  • 1Tb Hitachi HD
  • Custom Heatsink/fan
  • Monitor
  • Keyboard and Mouse
• Will overclock if my Heatsink will fit or buy a new one if it makes sense
• Preferred gaming res will be 1920x1080
• Will build once I have all the parts. I am willing to wait if there are deals coming up though

Thanks for all your input folks.

 

[mfenn]

Is the gift card to any particular store, or can you use it anywhere?

Your GTX 260 will work fine in an AMD system, in fact, that probably what you want to go with for bang for the buck. What CPU do you have now? The below may or may not be an upgrade.

Phenom II X4 955 $160
GA-770TA-UD3 $95
4GB Ripjaws 1600 $110
Antec Three Hundred $100

That'll be pretty close to $500 and be a nice upgrade

 

[HumblePie]

My address is

7759 Sendme Giftcard Ave, San Antonio TX

If you need new pants for the burnt hole in your pocket I can send those back to you.

 

[Fayd]

$500 gift card to where?

 

[Reincus]

Mfenn gives a good recommendation (as usual!), just be aware that with that upgrade you become GPU limited at that point.

 

[superccs]

One thing I notices about upgrading hardware. There are up-front costs and realized costs ineverything you buy... people always try to future.proof their new box by adopting a new mainboard or memory technology. The thingies if you get the fastest stuff that fit in the existing mainboard you can usually save upfront and then have great opportunity for resalelater.
I could recommend maxing out the Asus board with a CORE2 QUAD SOME RAMM and a 200-300$ gpu.
This Is open for argument but I think it makes sense if you are at all savvy on CL or ebay. Peoplealways have some part of their PC die on them beforethey are ready to upgrade and the fastest CPU for s given socket is alwaysgoing to carry a premium when there is a floods market of early adopters lowerend components available.

 

[HeianJodan]

Thanks for the feedback lads. I think if I go with mfenn's suggestions, I will be set for a while. I will probably throw in an OEM Windows 7 Home Premium for another $90 and finally close the book on XP.

 

[mfenn]

Thanks for the feedback lads. I think if I go with mfenn's suggestions, I will be set for a while. I will probably throw in an OEM Windows 7 Home Premium for another $90 and finally close the book on XP.

Sounds good. The 955 should be a nice upgrade from an E6750.

I noticed that the Three Hundred has gone down quite a bit in price since the last time I looked, so it should only cost you $60. Newegg is offering free shipping right on it right now, which is a really nice discount!

What PSU do you currently have? It should be OK since you're using the same GPU, but you are increasing the TDP of your CPU by 60W.

 

[HeianJodan]

What PSU do you currently have?

I have had this one since 11/4/2008 when I originally ordered it:
PC Power and Cooling S75QB 750W ATX12V / EPS12V

 

[HeianJodan]

My current PS is 750 so I hope that will suffice.

 

[HeianJodan]

I just bought all my gear from Newegg. Have any of you purchased their extended warranty on CPU's before? $29 for 2 years which is 1/5 the the purchase price of the CPU.

 

[mfenn]

I have had this one since 11/4/2008 when I originally ordered it:
PC Power and Cooling S75QB 750W ATX12V / EPS12V

That PSU should be plenty.

I just bought all my gear from Newegg. Have any of you purchased their extended warranty on CPU's before? $29 for 2 years which is 1/5 the the purchase price of the CPU.

Don't bother with extended warranty on a CPU. The CPU itself is very unlikely to fail.

 

[HeianJodan]

Woohoo my gear arrived today! Thanks for the suggestion on not getting the extended warranty.

After a scolding from the wife for buying yet more electronics, I am prepping for moving over to my new machine. Question I have before I do this is...

Q. If I install the 64 bit version of windows 7 on my new SSD and I place my existing hard drive in there as a slave, will the new OS being 64 bit be able to RWE files from my slave drive which was based on a 32 bit XP?

I know I will have to re-install all my applications etc...

All the best and thanks in advance.

 

[mfenn]

Woohoo my gear arrived today! Thanks for the suggestion on not getting the extended warranty.

After a scolding from the wife for buying yet more electronics, I am prepping for moving over to my new machine. Question I have before I do this is...

Q. If I install the 64 bit version of windows 7 on my new SSD and I place my existing hard drive in there as a slave, will the new OS being 64 bit be able to RWE files from my slave drive which was based on a 32 bit XP?

I know I will have to re-install all my applications etc...

All the best and thanks in advance.

Yes, you will be able to read your old files. The NTFS filesystem is the same for 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows. Enjoy your new build!

 

[Hacp]

My address is

7759 Sendme Giftcard Ave, San Antonio TX

If you need new pants for the burnt hole in your pocket I can send those back to you.

Now we know his address. Quick, someone mail him spam.

 

[HeianJodan]

Gah! I have been reading more and more of software compatibility issues with Win 7 x64 and am thinking about RMA'ing it and going with good old x32 XP. Decisions, decisions...

 

[mfenn]

Gah! I have been reading more and more of software compatibility issues with Win 7 x64 and am thinking about RMA'ing it and going with good old x32 XP. Decisions, decisions...

Don't do it. There's no sense in crippling a new build with XP.

 

[Reincus]

Any decent software made in the last 3 years will have a 64 bit version.

If you HAVE to run a 32 bit platform (and don't/can't use Ubuntu) then just dual boot XP.

 

[mfenn]

Any decent software made in the last 3 years will have a 64 bit version.

If you HAVE to run a 32 bit platform (and don't/can't use Ubuntu) then just dual boot XP.

FYI, nearly all 32-bit apps run just fine in 64-bit Windows.

 

[HumblePie]

FYI, 32-bit apps run just fine in 64-bit Windows.

No. Not all of them do. There are more than a few 32 bit apps that have some hardcoding in them that prevents them from working with 64 bit OSs. From a compile standpoint the current 64 bit windows have no problem with 32 bit, 16 bit, or even 8 bit apps really. The problem lies in that many older software have hardcoded things like specific directory paths to libraries and such that are no longer found at the locations they are trying to pull from. That's just one example. If you know the app though and what it is trying to use and where it is trying to pull things from, you can get just about any 32 bit app, aside from a driver app, to work in a 64 bit OS.

 

[mfenn]

No. Not all of them do. There are more than a few 32 bit apps that have some hardcoding in them that prevents them from working with 64 bit OSs. From a compile standpoint the current 64 bit windows have no problem with 32 bit, 16 bit, or even 8 bit apps really. The problem lies in that many older software have hardcoded things like specific directory paths to libraries and such that are no longer found at the locations they are trying to pull from. That's just one example. If you know the app though and what it is trying to use and where it is trying to pull things from, you can get just about any 32 bit app, aside from a driver app, to work in a 64 bit OS.

Edited my post. What you're talking about really has more to with XP vs. Vista/7 than with 32 vs. 64. MS has put a lot of work into transparently redirecting paths for old apps.

And, no 16 bit applications will not work, as MS removed the 16 bit subsystem from 64 bit versions of Windows 7.

 

[HeianJodan]

I ended up installing Windows 7 x64. Got the whole system up and running last night in fact. This is my first SSD it is smoking fast! I am going to be gradually installing all my main apps though I am not sure how much of a perf hit I will see considering almost everything other than my OS will be on a 1TB SATA HD. Only the OS will be on my solid state drive and maybe a few minor apps. One scary thing I did last night was updated the BIOS for the Gigabyte motherboard. After the install of the new bios the keyboard did not work when I went into the bios After a hard reset it worked though so I was able to load the optimized defaults and it went smooth

After I install all my main apps I am going to backup the computer and then clean everything. I will then start testing some of my less known apps (mainly video converters, etc.)

Most of the apps I have researched may not have a specific x64 version, but have been documented to work with it just the same. The main one I have not installed but will NEED TO HAVE working is Photoshop.

Tried Media Player Classic x64 and it worked with a couple initial dll errors, though it skipped when scrolling through a video. I heard VLC works with it which is what I would prefer but they don't have a specific version for x64.

Note: I also have a system to sell now so I am looking for suggestions on pricing. We have a bulletin at my work and I am going to try and sell it on there so I wont have to ship it anywhere. Specs of what this one has (with current prices for NEW parts at newegg)

$69 COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
$117 Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
$140 ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
$109 G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)

 

[mfenn]

I ended up installing Windows 7 x64. Got the whole system up and running last night in fact. This is my first SSD it is smoking fast! I am going to be gradually installing all my main apps though I am not sure how much of a perf hit I will see considering almost everything other than my OS will be on a 1TB SATA HD. Only the OS will be on my solid state drive and maybe a few minor apps. One scary thing I did last night was updated the BIOS for the Gigabyte motherboard. After the install of the new bios the keyboard did not work when I went into the bios After a hard reset it worked though so I was able to load the optimized defaults and it went smooth

After I install all my main apps I am going to backup the computer and then clean everything. I will then start testing some of my less known apps (mainly video converters, etc.)

Most of the apps I have researched may not have a specific x64 version, but have been documented to work with it just the same. The main one I have not installed but will NEED TO HAVE working is Photoshop.

Tried Media Player Classic x64 and it worked with a couple initial dll errors, though it skipped when scrolling through a video. I heard VLC works with it which is what I would prefer but they don't have a specific version for x64.

I wouldn't base my application choice on whether or not a 64-bit version was available. If the app you like has a 64-bit version, then great! If not, don't worry about it any use what you like.

You should definitely put your most commonly-used apps on the SSD. If you do the normal tweaks (disable hibernation, move page file to HDD), then you should have more than enough room on the SSD for your web browsers, Photoshop, Office, etc. In fact, the only apps I wouldn't put on the SSD would be games. All of that fast storage is useless if you don't put your apps on it!