First, thanks to people who offered me advice. Appreciated.
Well I finally finished my new upgrade tonight and since I always enjoyed reading other people's upgrade journals (and usually learn a few things), so I figured I would do the same, "just for fun" so I took a few pictures to show what I did.
My old system:
AMD 64 3400
BFG 6800 GT OC
Asus K8V SE Deluxe
1 gig of Generic Ram (2x512)
Antec TruePower 550
Enermax Case
WD Raptor 74G
WD 120G EIDE
Creative Labs Audigy 2
DVD Reader & NEC 2500A DVD Writer
What I upgraded to:
AMD X2 4200
Connect3D X1900XT Crossfire Edition
DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D
2 Gigs of OCZ EL Platinum PC3200 2X1GB DDR400 (CL2-3-2-5)
OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU
Antec P160W Case with 2 Antec 3Led TriCool 120mm Fans
Antec Cobra 16in UV Cable for the floppy Drive
Antec Luminate Blue led light tube
CoolMax Neon Wire EL Serial ATA Cable, 18in, Blue
Lit up SATA cable
Salvaged for new system:
WD Raptor 74G
WD 120G EIDE
Creative Labs Audigy 2
DVD Reader & NEC 2500A DVD Writer
Reasoning for Parts:
Since I didn't want to do a full upgrade, my focus here was to upgrade at a medium price (except the video card, where I always buy the best) so I can tide myself over until the end of 2006 or early 2007 when the new .65nm AMD cores come out, or the new Intel chips come out (whatever is faster). This equipment will then go to my brother in all liklyhood. I was just going to grab a S754 with PCI-E motherboard to save a CPU/Memory upgrade but I read of people having trouble with those and X1800XT's and just figured I would grab the rest...
So with that in mind, why did I choose the parts that I did?
[ul] [*] I went with the X2 4200, because it was only $70 more than the 3800 and I figured if I couldn't OC it that well, I could at least fallback on the 2.2gig default, but I plan on aiming for a 2.6gig overclock. [/li]
[*] I bought the DFI Ultra-D motherboard because after doing much research, it seemed to be the best reviewed price/performance motherboard around. I prefer Asus motherboards personally, but so far it has been a great board with a
tonne of features. The manual does suck though, but who reads manuals? I found out after I ordered it that it didn't have a parallel port though, but thankfully my printer has a USB port. [/li]
[*] The OCZ memory I chose seemed to be the best value for the price and after reading reviews, it overclocks very well and is still low latency, so I figured it would be the best pick. [/li]
[*] I picked up the x1900XT because it is simply the best video card on the market, period. Why did I get the Connect 3D Crossfire Edition? Well, the Connect 3d was all that was in stock at NCIX.com and secondly, I didn't pay attention and ordered the Crossfire version by mistake. I just wanted the XT. Oh well. For branding, I prefer ATI, but these are mostly all reference designs anyways so not like it matters, however ya, for warranty it does... [/li]
[*] I was going to use my Antec TruePower 550 BUT after doing research, I found some people were having stability issues between 20 pin PSU's and the Ultra-D motherboards, so not wanting to subject myself to problems (and having totally blown my budget anyways), I went to a local shop to get myself ripped off and bough the OCZ PowerStream 520, which is an awesome PSU, but I could of saved $40 getting it online. I didn't want to wait though... [/li]
[*] I chose the case because it had USB cables at the top, which makes it ideal for putting it under my desk should I take that route again. I also love the look. [/li]
[*] The cables and fans were all chosen for performance and looks. I wanted to make a "cool looking case" for once. In the past, I never cared at all about this and found it to be stupid but I guess we all need to do things "just cause" from time to time [face_happy] [/li]
[*] Will probably toss the WD 120 EIDE and grab a Raptor 150 gig later this year. [/li] [/ul]
Journal Stuff:
1. Obviously, the first step was to disassemble my existing system. Here is a picture of my computer, pre-upgrade.
http://www.wowhq.com/mithan/compdesk1.jpg
Since moving the system around is a pain in the ass, I decided to take the oppotunity to clean things up a bit. The dust behind the system was incredible...
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade1.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade2.jpg
2. I took my old computer up to the kitchen and layed it out on the dining room table, with the intent of gutting the parts I needed (basically the sound card, Hard drives and optical drives) but I wanted to clean it out since I intend to sell it. Since I hadn't cleaned it out in about a year, it was pretty dusty inside.
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade3.jpg
Here are pictures of the system partially ripped up:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade4.jpg
And here it is re-assembled and clean. Cans of CO2 FTW!:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade5.jpg
Now all it needs is a DVD or CD-Rom, hard drive and a sound card (if somebody doesn't like the on-board sound) and its good to go. Overall, I didn't really need to upgrade as it handled everything except FEAR at 1280x1024 with most options maxed.
3. More for "visual effect" and because I love opening boxes, I layed out most everything going into the new PC:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade6.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade7.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade8.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade9.jpg
4. Then I opened everything and layed it out on the table:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade10.jpg
5. The next step was to setup the case and get the fans, PSU and Hard Drives into it:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade11.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade12.jpg
6. The next step was to setup the motherboard, so to do that I took out the motherboard tray from the Case and layed it out in the kitchen. Then I attached the motherboard to the tray, installed the CPU, applied Arctic Silver thermal paste, added the heatsink and memory and then stuck it into the case. I didn't attach the optional audio hub to the DFI motherboard though, prefering not to burden my CPU with on-board audio. Unfortunatly, I forgot I owned a camera during this part and only took two pictures:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade13.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade14.jpg
(The bananas were not installed [face_happy] )
7. After I got the motherboard in the case, I proceeded to run all the power and data cables for everything. However, I basically did a "rough build" here, not wishing to waste time getting everything "perfect" and then realizing something was broken. So, I hooked up everything and took it downstairs to the computer room and hooked it up.
8. YAY! The computer booted up properly, but is everything working? Only the reformat will tell me that so I went and started with a new XP install.
Unfortunatly, the Raptor was being recognized by XP Pro as drive D and the WD120 EIDE was being recognized as drive C, despite me telling the BIOS to load them the other way. To fix this, I disabled the WD120 drive by yanking the ATA133 Cable from the motherboard (power turned off of course) and rebooting the system. XP Pro made my Raptor the C drive and I proceeded to install XP Pro.
9. Yadda yadda yadda... We all know all the crap we need to do with a new install of XP. So after a few hours of downloading and installing drivers and getting things set up the way I wanted them to be set up, I was finally relativly happy with everything. I even plugged in the EIDE WD 120 drive and it was recognized properly as a D drive. Thankfully, I own a Western Digital 160gig USB drive as well, which I had everything backed up onto. Most of the stuff was also on the 120gig as well, but since I have Vista installed on that drive, I prefer to use the USB.
10. After I had everything finally complete, I decided to "finish up" the computers wiring, so I opened it up and did my final tweaking, which basically consisted of trying to make the wires NOT look like a big mess. For the most part, they were already where I wanted them anyways but now they are "perfect", or near enough it doesn't matter.
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade15.jpg
Here is the right side of the case and as you can see via my bubbles, I used double-sided tape to stick the two fan speed switches, the C/F switch for the case and the power converter for the ATA133 cables light. The cable out in the front is actually the temperature monitor for the case, which I left until very last to hookup.
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade16.jpg
This bad picture is the front side of the case. I used the two empty drive slots to tuck cables into and I double-side taped the power converter for the SATA cable light in here as well.
11. So eventually, all the cables were "tweaked" the way I wanted them with a relativly clean and uncluttered look and this is the final look:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade17.jpg
Overall, air flow should be fairly free and I have the 120mm fans maxed out as well. I am pretty happy with it actually.
12. Finished case with the lights on:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade18.jpg
13. Finished case with the lights off:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade19.jpg
14. Completed upgrade, on the desk as it looks right now:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade20.jpg
Now, I am not sure if I will leave the case ontop of the desk or if I will put it under the desk like my old one was (see first picture above). Leaving it on the desk means I cant have my desks shelving unit on, cutting effective space.
On the flip side, if I put it under the desk, what the hell was the point in getting UV lights and such if nobody sees them? lol. I will try it on the desk for now and see how it goes, but in the end, I am fairly practical (usually) and will
probably go with function over form...but we will see.
Temperatures:
So far and according to Smart Guardian, these are the temperature readings I got after the system was running for most of the day:
[ul] [*] CPU: 30C [/li]
[*] PWM IC: 37C [/li]
[*] Chipset: 44C [/li]
[*] Video Card: 55C [/li]
[*] Raptor Hard Drive: 32C [/li] [/ul]
Those seem pretty reasonable to me, but I am not a temperature expert.
Some preliminary Benchmarks, after some tweaking:
[ul] [*] 3dMark06: [link=[url="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=120756"]http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=120756[/url]]5436 3DMarks[/link] [/li]
[*] FEAR: (Maxed settings, Soft Shadows off, 1280x1024, 4xAA, 8xAS)
Min 26, Ave 58, Max 145, 38% 25-45FPS, 62% Above 40 FPS [/li] [/ul]
I might benchmark Quake 4 and COD2, but I'm not sure I really care to re-install them just for benchmarking purposes. At this point, I am fairly happy with what I have achieved. Hopefully, all the new games coming out (DDO, Prey, Titan Quest, Quake Wars, Rise of Legends, Aftermath, SIN, Hellgate, Huxley, Oblivion, etc) should all run awesome on here.
Overclocking
I am not sure how far I want to overclock this system yet, but I imagine I will go for at least 2.4gig as that should be easy to attain. I MIGHT go for 2.6gig but I think I will need a CPU/Heatsink for that and I am just not sure if is worth the extra $80 it will run me for cooling, especially with my planned move to AM2 early next year and the fact that existing Heatsinks/Fans wont work on AM2 cpu cages. Either way, 2.4gig should be easily attainable with stock fans so I might go for that and just call it a day.
As for the video card, I will probably try and OC it to XTX speeds if I can.
Well I finally finished my new upgrade tonight and since I always enjoyed reading other people's upgrade journals (and usually learn a few things), so I figured I would do the same, "just for fun" so I took a few pictures to show what I did.
My old system:
AMD 64 3400
BFG 6800 GT OC
Asus K8V SE Deluxe
1 gig of Generic Ram (2x512)
Antec TruePower 550
Enermax Case
WD Raptor 74G
WD 120G EIDE
Creative Labs Audigy 2
DVD Reader & NEC 2500A DVD Writer
What I upgraded to:
AMD X2 4200
Connect3D X1900XT Crossfire Edition
DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D
2 Gigs of OCZ EL Platinum PC3200 2X1GB DDR400 (CL2-3-2-5)
OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU
Antec P160W Case with 2 Antec 3Led TriCool 120mm Fans
Antec Cobra 16in UV Cable for the floppy Drive
Antec Luminate Blue led light tube
CoolMax Neon Wire EL Serial ATA Cable, 18in, Blue
Lit up SATA cable
Salvaged for new system:
WD Raptor 74G
WD 120G EIDE
Creative Labs Audigy 2
DVD Reader & NEC 2500A DVD Writer
Reasoning for Parts:
Since I didn't want to do a full upgrade, my focus here was to upgrade at a medium price (except the video card, where I always buy the best) so I can tide myself over until the end of 2006 or early 2007 when the new .65nm AMD cores come out, or the new Intel chips come out (whatever is faster). This equipment will then go to my brother in all liklyhood. I was just going to grab a S754 with PCI-E motherboard to save a CPU/Memory upgrade but I read of people having trouble with those and X1800XT's and just figured I would grab the rest...
So with that in mind, why did I choose the parts that I did?
[ul] [*] I went with the X2 4200, because it was only $70 more than the 3800 and I figured if I couldn't OC it that well, I could at least fallback on the 2.2gig default, but I plan on aiming for a 2.6gig overclock. [/li]
[*] I bought the DFI Ultra-D motherboard because after doing much research, it seemed to be the best reviewed price/performance motherboard around. I prefer Asus motherboards personally, but so far it has been a great board with a
tonne of features. The manual does suck though, but who reads manuals? I found out after I ordered it that it didn't have a parallel port though, but thankfully my printer has a USB port. [/li]
[*] The OCZ memory I chose seemed to be the best value for the price and after reading reviews, it overclocks very well and is still low latency, so I figured it would be the best pick. [/li]
[*] I picked up the x1900XT because it is simply the best video card on the market, period. Why did I get the Connect 3D Crossfire Edition? Well, the Connect 3d was all that was in stock at NCIX.com and secondly, I didn't pay attention and ordered the Crossfire version by mistake. I just wanted the XT. Oh well. For branding, I prefer ATI, but these are mostly all reference designs anyways so not like it matters, however ya, for warranty it does... [/li]
[*] I was going to use my Antec TruePower 550 BUT after doing research, I found some people were having stability issues between 20 pin PSU's and the Ultra-D motherboards, so not wanting to subject myself to problems (and having totally blown my budget anyways), I went to a local shop to get myself ripped off and bough the OCZ PowerStream 520, which is an awesome PSU, but I could of saved $40 getting it online. I didn't want to wait though... [/li]
[*] I chose the case because it had USB cables at the top, which makes it ideal for putting it under my desk should I take that route again. I also love the look. [/li]
[*] The cables and fans were all chosen for performance and looks. I wanted to make a "cool looking case" for once. In the past, I never cared at all about this and found it to be stupid but I guess we all need to do things "just cause" from time to time [face_happy] [/li]
[*] Will probably toss the WD 120 EIDE and grab a Raptor 150 gig later this year. [/li] [/ul]
Journal Stuff:
1. Obviously, the first step was to disassemble my existing system. Here is a picture of my computer, pre-upgrade.
http://www.wowhq.com/mithan/compdesk1.jpg
Since moving the system around is a pain in the ass, I decided to take the oppotunity to clean things up a bit. The dust behind the system was incredible...
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade1.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade2.jpg
2. I took my old computer up to the kitchen and layed it out on the dining room table, with the intent of gutting the parts I needed (basically the sound card, Hard drives and optical drives) but I wanted to clean it out since I intend to sell it. Since I hadn't cleaned it out in about a year, it was pretty dusty inside.
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade3.jpg
Here are pictures of the system partially ripped up:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade4.jpg
And here it is re-assembled and clean. Cans of CO2 FTW!:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade5.jpg
Now all it needs is a DVD or CD-Rom, hard drive and a sound card (if somebody doesn't like the on-board sound) and its good to go. Overall, I didn't really need to upgrade as it handled everything except FEAR at 1280x1024 with most options maxed.
3. More for "visual effect" and because I love opening boxes, I layed out most everything going into the new PC:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade6.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade7.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade8.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade9.jpg
4. Then I opened everything and layed it out on the table:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade10.jpg
5. The next step was to setup the case and get the fans, PSU and Hard Drives into it:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade11.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade12.jpg
6. The next step was to setup the motherboard, so to do that I took out the motherboard tray from the Case and layed it out in the kitchen. Then I attached the motherboard to the tray, installed the CPU, applied Arctic Silver thermal paste, added the heatsink and memory and then stuck it into the case. I didn't attach the optional audio hub to the DFI motherboard though, prefering not to burden my CPU with on-board audio. Unfortunatly, I forgot I owned a camera during this part and only took two pictures:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade13.jpg
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade14.jpg
(The bananas were not installed [face_happy] )
7. After I got the motherboard in the case, I proceeded to run all the power and data cables for everything. However, I basically did a "rough build" here, not wishing to waste time getting everything "perfect" and then realizing something was broken. So, I hooked up everything and took it downstairs to the computer room and hooked it up.
8. YAY! The computer booted up properly, but is everything working? Only the reformat will tell me that so I went and started with a new XP install.
Unfortunatly, the Raptor was being recognized by XP Pro as drive D and the WD120 EIDE was being recognized as drive C, despite me telling the BIOS to load them the other way. To fix this, I disabled the WD120 drive by yanking the ATA133 Cable from the motherboard (power turned off of course) and rebooting the system. XP Pro made my Raptor the C drive and I proceeded to install XP Pro.
9. Yadda yadda yadda... We all know all the crap we need to do with a new install of XP. So after a few hours of downloading and installing drivers and getting things set up the way I wanted them to be set up, I was finally relativly happy with everything. I even plugged in the EIDE WD 120 drive and it was recognized properly as a D drive. Thankfully, I own a Western Digital 160gig USB drive as well, which I had everything backed up onto. Most of the stuff was also on the 120gig as well, but since I have Vista installed on that drive, I prefer to use the USB.
10. After I had everything finally complete, I decided to "finish up" the computers wiring, so I opened it up and did my final tweaking, which basically consisted of trying to make the wires NOT look like a big mess. For the most part, they were already where I wanted them anyways but now they are "perfect", or near enough it doesn't matter.
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade15.jpg
Here is the right side of the case and as you can see via my bubbles, I used double-sided tape to stick the two fan speed switches, the C/F switch for the case and the power converter for the ATA133 cables light. The cable out in the front is actually the temperature monitor for the case, which I left until very last to hookup.
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade16.jpg
This bad picture is the front side of the case. I used the two empty drive slots to tuck cables into and I double-side taped the power converter for the SATA cable light in here as well.
11. So eventually, all the cables were "tweaked" the way I wanted them with a relativly clean and uncluttered look and this is the final look:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade17.jpg
Overall, air flow should be fairly free and I have the 120mm fans maxed out as well. I am pretty happy with it actually.
12. Finished case with the lights on:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade18.jpg
13. Finished case with the lights off:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade19.jpg
14. Completed upgrade, on the desk as it looks right now:
http://216.120.230.178/mithan/upgrade/upgrade20.jpg
Now, I am not sure if I will leave the case ontop of the desk or if I will put it under the desk like my old one was (see first picture above). Leaving it on the desk means I cant have my desks shelving unit on, cutting effective space.
On the flip side, if I put it under the desk, what the hell was the point in getting UV lights and such if nobody sees them? lol. I will try it on the desk for now and see how it goes, but in the end, I am fairly practical (usually) and will
probably go with function over form...but we will see.
Temperatures:
So far and according to Smart Guardian, these are the temperature readings I got after the system was running for most of the day:
[ul] [*] CPU: 30C [/li]
[*] PWM IC: 37C [/li]
[*] Chipset: 44C [/li]
[*] Video Card: 55C [/li]
[*] Raptor Hard Drive: 32C [/li] [/ul]
Those seem pretty reasonable to me, but I am not a temperature expert.
Some preliminary Benchmarks, after some tweaking:
[ul] [*] 3dMark06: [link=[url="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=120756"]http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=120756[/url]]5436 3DMarks[/link] [/li]
[*] FEAR: (Maxed settings, Soft Shadows off, 1280x1024, 4xAA, 8xAS)
Min 26, Ave 58, Max 145, 38% 25-45FPS, 62% Above 40 FPS [/li] [/ul]
I might benchmark Quake 4 and COD2, but I'm not sure I really care to re-install them just for benchmarking purposes. At this point, I am fairly happy with what I have achieved. Hopefully, all the new games coming out (DDO, Prey, Titan Quest, Quake Wars, Rise of Legends, Aftermath, SIN, Hellgate, Huxley, Oblivion, etc) should all run awesome on here.
Overclocking
I am not sure how far I want to overclock this system yet, but I imagine I will go for at least 2.4gig as that should be easy to attain. I MIGHT go for 2.6gig but I think I will need a CPU/Heatsink for that and I am just not sure if is worth the extra $80 it will run me for cooling, especially with my planned move to AM2 early next year and the fact that existing Heatsinks/Fans wont work on AM2 cpu cages. Either way, 2.4gig should be easily attainable with stock fans so I might go for that and just call it a day.
As for the video card, I will probably try and OC it to XTX speeds if I can.
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