Finally Unleashing the beast..... (or the kitten?)

[HURRIC4NE]

let me get this straight... i've been an idiot when it comes to upgrading components (college freshman)... but anyway a few months ago i took my dell factory pc and took it apart....

• replaced homework kid chassis (dell i580 series) with a new (thermeltake chaser mk-1)
• replaced a tiny cpu cooler (above 67C easily most of the time without OC) with a corsair H100 liquid cooling (barely hits above 38C no OC)
• replaced 350 watts generic PSU with a new PSU (corsair TX650, 650 watts)
• replaced GT220 with Asus 7850 (oh yeah )
• replaced generic 8 GB 1333mhz 7-7-8 RAM with corsair vengeance 8 GB 1600mhz 8-8-8 RAM
• added 4 fans inside the case (about 10 fans running)

(cooling overkill? i think so)

i can't OC above 3.5 (from stock 3.2) without using a new motherboard which has CPU settings unlocked... interestingly i found a MSI P55A Fuzion in Amazon for a very cheap price!
should be here within weeks (btw anyone know anything about OCing a i5 650 ?)

my HD started having Parameter errors so i'm writing this thread from safe mode...

now that i can replace my old motherboard with a new one, and my old HD with a new one, i can finally get some speed and way less lag from the computer

i've given this baby somewhat of a good upgrade.. it went from a toyota corolla to a souped up Nissan Skyline (with the stock engine )

have i done the upgrades correctly? i didn't want to build a new system from the ground up so i upgraded what i had, my next upgrade would probably be the cpu.. quite hard to find a i7-875K nowadays (can it hit above 5 ghz?, i would really like to reach the holy grail, even if it means doing water cooling)




EDIT: just in case you were wondering why i need the power, i do a LOT of heavy gaming and i'm also a freelance web/graphic designer

 

[ShadowVVL]

I think you did good but how much did you spend on the total upgrade?

I haven't seen one of these chips hit 5 ghz so I don't think its possible . 4.6 is the highest I have seen.

btw are you upgrading to ssd or sticking with hdd ?

 

[xylem]

Once you have your motherboard, you'll have everything you need to OC any socket 1156 processor. Most of them will reach 3.8-4.2 GHz with reasonable voltage. 5 GHz?.. probably not.

You might notice a bump going to a quad core processor, depending on the games and other software that you'll be running.. probably not necessary to get the 875K, as there are a number of quad core options.

 

[HURRIC4NE]

I think you did good but how much did you spend on the total upgrade?

I haven't seen one of these chips hit 5 ghz so I don't think its possible . 4.6 is the highest I have seen.

btw are you upgrading to ssd or sticking with hdd ?

thermaltake chaser case for $140 (amazon)
psu for $89 (newegg)
dual blue cathode lights for $9 (newegg)
h100 for $99 (newegg)
asus 7850 for $250 (newegg)
ram for $66 (4x2gb, with new motherboard i can finally expand to 16 gb from 8 limited) (newegg)
(on delivery atm)MSI P55A Fuzion for $139 (i got lucky!) (amazon)

total= around $792

i earn cash from day to day so its really hard for me to save up and get something better.. so i decided to go on the one component at a time, (btw its listed in chronological order)

i have the traditional 1 TB sata2 32mb cache seagate barracude that came with the original dell pc, HOWEVER, my new motherboard supports sata 3 and i also really need to get a new harddisk, as for now i'm stuck in dilemma... i really need the extra space but then again i also need a lot of performance for using adobe apps and what not... i haven't decided on it yet but its next

Once you have your motherboard, you'll have everything you need to OC any socket 1156 processor. Most of them will reach 3.8-4.2 GHz with reasonable voltage. 5 GHz?.. probably not.

You might notice a bump going to a quad core processor, depending on the games and other software that you'll be running.. probably not necessary to get the 875K, as there are a number of quad core options.

oh yeah imma start OCing the next day after i make sure my new motherboard is stable with my system, as long as i can reach atleast 4.7 i'm a happy camper.

as of right now i got 2 options for the cpu upgrade... either upgrade the cpu to the i7 875k OR upgrade the whole motherboard and cpu to haswell. thats a big dilemma that i can't seem to find a solution too... is haswell going to provide me more performance than 870k? given that i spend my money on a i5 quad core (haswell) and a new motherboard (spending less than 150), the money to performance benefit ratio is killing me...

however, if haswell has some new tricks up its sleeve (more than 6 cores or some crazy stuff like that which is revolutionary (like the pentium to dual core change) then i'm definataly changing.

 

[ShadowVVL]

You should expect 4.2-4.5ghz on the 650.
I would stick with the system until haswell.
you will only need to replace mobo and cpu which you could sell the 650 and mobo to pay for some of the new parts.
Though I don't know if it has or will have good resale value when haswell arrives.

 

[HURRIC4NE]

You should expect 4.2-4.5ghz on the 650.
I would stick with the system until haswell.
you will only need to replace mobo and cpu which you could sell the 650 and mobo to pay for some of the new parts.
Though I don't know if it has or will have good resale value when haswell arrives.

i do have a really good cooler (H100) i dont think it will have a good resale value... maybe i'll just make a giant HTPC later on from that

and btw for the hard drive issue... i just purchased a 240 GB corsair force SSD.. hopefully it gives me the speeds it mentioned i really don't want my motherboard to mess up

 

[Smoblikat]

thermaltake chaser case for $140 (amazon)
psu for $89 (newegg)
dual blue cathode lights for $9 (newegg)
h100 for $99 (newegg)
asus 7850 for $250 (newegg)
ram for $66 (4x2gb, with new motherboard i can finally expand to 16 gb from 8 limited) (newegg)
(on delivery atm)MSI P55A Fuzion for $139 (i got lucky!) (amazon)

total= around $792

i earn cash from day to day so its really hard for me to save up and get something better.. so i decided to go on the one component at a time, (btw its listed in chronological order)

i have the traditional 1 TB sata2 32mb cache seagate barracude that came with the original dell pc, HOWEVER, my new motherboard supports sata 3 and i also really need to get a new harddisk, as for now i'm stuck in dilemma... i really need the extra space but then again i also need a lot of performance for using adobe apps and what not... i haven't decided on it yet but its next





oh yeah imma start OCing the next day after i make sure my new motherboard is stable with my system, as long as i can reach atleast 4.7 i'm a happy camper.

as of right now i got 2 options for the cpu upgrade... either upgrade the cpu to the i7 875k OR upgrade the whole motherboard and cpu to haswell. thats a big dilemma that i can't seem to find a solution too... is haswell going to provide me more performance than 870k? given that i spend my money on a i5 quad core (haswell) and a new motherboard (spending less than 150), the money to performance benefit ratio is killing me...

however, if haswell has some new tricks up its sleeve (more than 6 cores or some crazy stuff like that which is revolutionary (like the pentium to dual core change) then i'm definataly changing.

Youre not going to get anywhere above 4ghz on that I5. If you had an I7 9XX youd get to 4.2 maximum. Dont get your hopes up for anything higher than 3.8, if it was an OEM chip with OEM cooling then im sure it hasnt had the best treatment all its life, and the OC will show that.

 

[HURRIC4NE]

Youre not going to get anywhere above 4ghz on that I5. If you had an I7 9XX youd get to 4.2 maximum. Dont get your hopes up for anything higher than 3.8, if it was an OEM chip with OEM cooling then im sure it hasnt had the best treatment all its life, and the OC will show that.

i think the i7 9xx you're talking about is in the socket 1366 or something

is it the temperatures or the settings/quality? i'm not sure, but the internet says otherwise, i'll make a new thread when i start with the overclocking. hopefully i can hit 4.5.. then i'm happy

 

[Ferzerp]

That's an awful lot to spend to just re-use that same processor, especially now that you've spent the money on a new motherboard for the same processor, isn't it?

 

[ShadowVVL]

That's an awful lot to spend to just re-use that same processor, especially now that you've spent the money on a new motherboard for the same processor, isn't it?

Well half of what he spent went for the gpu, psu and ram which he can reuse later if he moves to haswell.

 

[HURRIC4NE]

That's an awful lot to spend to just re-use that same processor, especially now that you've spent the money on a new motherboard for the same processor, isn't it?

i think the only mistake on this upgrade list was the motherboard that i just purchased, i could've spent it on a motherboard for the haswell series.... oh well i'm now planning on giving away the old motherboard to by younger siblings

 

[ShadowVVL]

you cant buy a motherboard for haswell yet.it be on socket 1150 which are not out for another 7 months I think.

you should just sit back and enjoy your system and upgrade when haswell comes.

and man get yo self a cheese burger with nachos.

 

[Denithor]

Since you already have the new gear, just use it.

But since you've already got the new gear, add one more part - an i5 750 (easy to find for ~$100 on eBay). Use that on the new motherboard, put the older box back together (assuming you still have all parts) and give to siblings intact. Use the new gear with the i5 750 @ 4-4.5GHz and you'll be set easily until Haswell comes out middle of next year. At that point decide if the increased performance is needed and worth the cost.

 

[Hubb1e]

Seems like a bunch of pointless upgrades to me. The only thing I would have done to that old rig is replace the PSU with a 450W unit and get the 7850. Then an SSD. You've got a brand new rig there. I'm not sure I get the point but I guess if you're living paycheck to paycheck this kind of upgrade process is the way to do it.

Lets review the build list
replaced dell i580 chasis with a new thermeltake chaser mk-1 - OK, cool, but the old chasis worked fine.
replaced a tiny cpu cooler (above 67C easily most of the time without OC) with a corsair H100 liquid cooling (barely hits above 38C no OC) - Dropping the temp on the CPU gains you nothing especially with such a small OC but I guess you can use it in your next build
replaced 350 watts generic PSU with a new PSU (corsair TX650, 650 watts) - Cool, nice PSU but 450W will handle a single GPU just fine
replaced GT220 with Asus 7850 (oh yeah ) - Very nice. Again the 450W PSU would have driven this card.
replaced generic 8 GB 1333mhz 7-7-8 RAM with corsair vengeance 8 GB 1600mhz 8-8-8 RAM - Gains you almost nothing in real world tests. There was nothing wrong with the old RAM Almost a sideways upgrade...
added 4 fans inside the case (about 10 fans running) - The less fans the better for noise. Again, higher temps aren't that big of a deal unless you are OCing to the edge of reason. You should be able to get away with less fans. I have 6. 3 chassis, 1 CPU, 1 GPU, and 1 PSU.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

should of sold old rig and bought a new one -_-

wasting money on an old rig(which was fully functional[YMMV]) is not a good way to spend cash

 

[HURRIC4NE]

Since you already have the new gear, just use it.

But since you've already got the new gear, add one more part - an i5 750 (easy to find for ~$100 on eBay). Use that on the new motherboard, put the older box back together (assuming you still have all parts) and give to siblings intact. Use the new gear with the i5 750 @ 4-4.5GHz and you'll be set easily until Haswell comes out middle of next year. At that point decide if the increased performance is needed and worth the cost.

will an extra 2 cores really help me more? i'm not sure... but still sounds good, maybe if i find a k series somewhere.......

Seems like a bunch of pointless upgrades to me. The only thing I would have done to that old rig is replace the PSU with a 450W unit and get the 7850. Then an SSD. You've got a brand new rig there. I'm not sure I get the point but I guess if you're living paycheck to paycheck this kind of upgrade process is the way to do it.

Lets review the build list
replaced dell i580 chasis with a new thermeltake chaser mk-1 - OK, cool, but the old chasis worked fine.
replaced a tiny cpu cooler (above 67C easily most of the time without OC) with a corsair H100 liquid cooling (barely hits above 38C no OC) - Dropping the temp on the CPU gains you nothing especially with such a small OC but I guess you can use it in your next build
replaced 350 watts generic PSU with a new PSU (corsair TX650, 650 watts) - Cool, nice PSU but 450W will handle a single GPU just fine
replaced GT220 with Asus 7850 (oh yeah ) - Very nice. Again the 450W PSU would have driven this card.
replaced generic 8 GB 1333mhz 7-7-8 RAM with corsair vengeance 8 GB 1600mhz 8-8-8 RAM - Gains you almost nothing in real world tests. There was nothing wrong with the old RAM Almost a sideways upgrade...
added 4 fans inside the case (about 10 fans running) - The less fans the better for noise. Again, higher temps aren't that big of a deal unless you are OCing to the edge of reason. You should be able to get away with less fans. I have 6. 3 chassis, 1 CPU, 1 GPU, and 1 PSU.

i didn't want to take a risk with the 450 watt and 7850, besides back then as i mentioned, i was a retard when it came to upgrading my stuff (i knew about 30% of all the technical stuff that i know now). back then i was a beginner, i'd consider myself a intermediate now. i thought my case was to small for the PSU to fit (it was on the top, and i didnt want to risk anything) and then after i brought the stuff, I WAS WRONG!,

the old chassis was quite small and nice, but it couldn't fit ATX sizes, (only microatx) so thats another reason to why i upgraded the chasis, i brought the 650 watts because i wanted the ability to use future crossfire/sli in case i ever stumble upon a 7850

as for the ram, i upgraded it because i wanted 1600mhz instead of 1333mhz (i know this is the most pointless upgrade), but then again i sort of liked the future compatibility issue. noise wise, its actually pretty quiet, besides whenever i'm using the computer, i'm always using noise canceling headsets so computer noise really doesnt break the barrier

should of sold old rig and bought a new one -_-

wasting money on an old rig(which was fully functional[YMMV]) is not a good way to spend cash

duuuuude you got no idea on how hard i went on selling this factory rig... i brought it for around 850 bucks during the springtime of 2010, my old rig broke (motherboard burned out cause of improper ram installation) and at that time i didnt have a job or anything like that, so i didnt start upgrading the rig till the springtime of 2012, nearly 2 years later.

i posted loads of adds on craigslist, put up street advertisement and even talked to friends and family about them purchasing it.. the highest quote i got was for around $600, and then i went onto newegg and started making up mockups for next possible PC build with that budget, and then i saw that i couldn't build a decent gaming rig (this was back in 2011), i really hate AMD processors so even though i could have saved... i didnt make it go thru

fast forward to 2012, now i work as a freelance web/graphic/print designer and developer in my own company, and i've been fortunate enough to get customers all around, that and i helped rent my basement (got 1st month's rent as a gift from parents, and then i used that money to get the first upgrades), then later on i got more clients, then used that money to get the GPU, and now onto the motherboard and SSD

 

[fixbsod]

For $800 you could have bought a new rig and you basically did. Except instead you spent a lot of money on cooling an old proc that was running fine.

Ditch the mobo, get a Z77 and i5-3570k and call it a day.

 

[HURRIC4NE]

For $800 you could have bought a new rig and you basically did. Except instead you spent a lot of money on cooling an old proc that was running fine.

Ditch the mobo, get a Z77 and i5-3570k and call it a day.

well thats about a lot of cash, and if i did think of upgrading, i'd have gone with the i7

either way come haswell, if its revolutionary big and awesome, then i shall lay my blood money into purchasing a motherboard and a cpu.... and getting 16 gigs of ram lol 8 doesnt cut for me anymore, i dont like my stuff using the HDD to store stuff

EDIT: if its a OC awesome cpu, then i'm definatly getting it, i wanna utilize my H100 to its full potential.

 

[VirtualLarry]

should of sold old rig and bought a new one -_-

wasting money on an old rig(which was fully functional[YMMV]) is not a good way to spend cash

I kind of agree with this.

For the money spent, could have just built a new rig outright, and given/sold the old one.

But I can understand the logic of upgrading it piecemeal, if you were not able to save up the $800 or so all at once.

 

[Blitzvogel]

I would've just built a whole new system, they you would have your screamer of a PC and a nice logical back up computer if the shit hits the fan or if you and a buddy want to play something together.

 

[HURRIC4NE]

as i mentioned before, i tried selling this rig, but the price i was getting for this rig wasn't enough for me to build a new rig with the some-what similer performance, so i thought lets go the dynamic way and build a new pc by replacing part by part, and so here i am lol.

 

[Arkaign]

Ah well, it's kind of fun to frankenstein once in a while. Now that you're on this road, I agree with the earlier poster to find an i5-750 or 760 so that you can get to the quad world. Oc it to around 3.6-4.0 and you'll be gold for anything currently out. Resell the old 650 and you should be out not very much cash at all.

 

[HURRIC4NE]

Ah well, it's kind of fun to frankenstein once in a while. Now that you're on this road, I agree with the earlier poster to find an i5-750 or 760 so that you can get to the quad world. Oc it to around 3.6-4.0 and you'll be gold for anything currently out. Resell the old 650 and you should be out not very much cash at all.

if haswell is good enough, i might just sell my cpu+motherboard for around 200-300 (hopefully!) and then i'm guessing its just 100-200 extra for me to upgrade to the latest

 

[Arkaign]

Haswell is a good ways off, probably a good move to do the cheap upgrade to 750/760 now, and wait on the big upgrade. AMD isn't putting any pressure on, so it might be well over a year until Haswell hits.

 

[Ferzerp]

Haswell is a good ways off, probably a good move to do the cheap upgrade to 750/760 now, and wait on the big upgrade. AMD isn't putting any pressure on, so it might be well over a year until Haswell hits.

I don't know that they'll delay their cadence. Delaying shipping a product means fewer units sold. The x86 CPU market isn't really a massive growth market, so almost all the sales are replacements. You don't drive replacements by letting processors wear out. They just last too long. You have to drive progress fast enough to keep people on an upgrade cycle, or your profits drop, even if you're the only company in the game.