Question New build - component suggestions? Hoping to reuse some parts

mchas

Member
Feb 2, 2000
65
1
71
Hard to believe but I've been a member here for almost 20 years now, and last time I asked for advice on a build was 6 years ago and got some great advice. That machine is getting pretty old now so it's time for a new build. Here's the situation:

What it will be used for: Nothing too special - mostly internet, word processing, spreadsheets, quickbooks, and some photo editing. No gaming or video editing or anything too CPU/GPU intensive. But I do like a very fast machine that boots up almost instantly and doesn't ever lag while using it.

Budget: No real budget but would hope for $500-700ish if I can reuse some of my existing components (at this point maybe just the case and power supply?)

Brand Preference: No strong preference, but I have had Intel CPUs and Samsung SSDs and like them.

Current ~6 year old components (NOTE: one of my goals with this build was to make it as silent as possible, thus the case and CPU fan and SSD):
Monitor Resolution: Currently have a 27" at 2560x1440 that works fine

Main reason for upgrade: I am running Windows 7 and several applications that I use are starting to require Windows 10. I really don't want to reinstall everything from scratch, so I figure if I am going to do the upgrade, I should buy a new HD and clone my drive and upgrade the clone in case there are any problems I can revert back. If I am going to buy a new HD, I would like to get one of the newer NVMe SSDs, and my motherboard won't be able to support that... so it's time to upgrade.

Summary: I would like to buy a fast 1TB NVMe SSD and I assume I will need a motherboard/CPU/RAM. I hope to use my existing power supply and case if possible? Any suggestions are appreciated! Thanks!
 

ao_ika_red

Golden Member
Aug 11, 2016
1,679
715
136
You need to reinstall everything anyway by migrating to win10. Your workload seems moderate and I think 4770k still can handle it. Haswell also supports win10 so it's should be easy upgrade. Probably addding 2x4 GB of RAM is the cheapest way as now is not really a good time for buying new hardware. Their price are catastrophically above MSRP.
 

OlyAR15

Senior member
Oct 23, 2014
982
242
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Reformat and re-install your OS and apps. That may give you a good boost just from removing a lot of crap from your drive. Upgrading to Win 10 may also help. Otherwise, you aren't going to get a huge performance increase with the workload you do. Getting a NVME SSD will increase startup time by a few seconds, but is it really worth spending hundreds of dollars just for that? Just keep the computer asleep. You shouldn't have to power down or restart that often anyways.

If you absolutely want to upgrade, then something like an intel i3 10100 or 10400 with a cheap B or H series motherboard will be a reasonable and cheap upgrade. Luckily, the cheapest motherboards tend to be mATX. You don't need anything more than 2666 DDR4 in that case. Add a decent NVME drive like a WD Black and you should be set. Your HSF should still work on the LGA1200 socket.
 
Last edited:

mchas

Member
Feb 2, 2000
65
1
71
You need to reinstall everything anyway by migrating to win10. Your workload seems moderate and I think 4770k still can handle it. Haswell also supports win10 so it's should be easy upgrade. Probably addding 2x4 GB of RAM is the cheapest way as now is not really a good time for buying new hardware. Their price are catastrophically above MSRP.

Thanks for the reply. I forgot to mention that within the last few years I added another 8GB of RAM just like you suggested so I have 16GB total now.

Why do you say I need to reinstall everything by migrating to Windows 10? I thought it was possible to upgrade? I know a clean install is preferred but finding all of the installation disks and files for all of my apps will be near impossible.
 

DeathReborn

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2005
2,743
734
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Have you considered modifying/using a modded BIOS adding NVME support to your current system? I did it for my Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC board and it worked a treat. That way you can keep your W7 OS as is & add a W10 SSD and migrate apps as & when you can.

Guide

Modded BIOS
 

MalVeauX

Senior member
Dec 19, 2008
653
176
116
Heya,

If booting in 5 seconds versus 20 seconds is truly that big of a deal, it's not so much a CPU division thing but more of a specific BIOS thing. You can absolutely get an Intel board and CPU and have a slower boot than perhaps you would prefer, just as easily as an AMD board and CPU with a slower boot. Again, it's more specific to the actual motherboard and its BIOS and post sequences. The more "check points" the board has in the post process, the slower it will be to pass POST and get to your OS.

Anecdotally, my observatory PC is an AM4 build on a B450 motherboard by MSI and has a dinky little Athlon 3000G APU. I press the button to power it on, then sit down and it's already showing me the Win 10 unlock screen. Maybe 5 seconds? If that? It's an MSI B450M Pro-M2 Max motherboard. Mean while, my workstation PC with an AM4 X570 Asus TUF Gaming Plus Wifi motherboard and Ryzen 3700x takes a solid 15+ seconds to boot, plus or minus a bit, because of all the post check points, I didn't enable fast boot, I kept the pause in case I wanted more time to enter BIOS, etc. Mean while my Intel XEON server in the same room never boots up nor recycles unless I tell it too, so there's no waiting for anything on it. But when I do cycle it to boot, it's pretty fast, and that's with a server board from SuperMicro.

If you're dead set on trying to have the fastest booting process to get into Windows, saving like 10 seconds perhaps, put more effort into researching different motherboards that you're interested in, as this is more key to this than the CPU or chipset necessarily. The POST sequence and check points are the hold up. You can get boards that you can bypass most of the slower POST sequences.

As for reusing parts, you could reuse your PSU and case. You could reuse your SSD, but I wouldn't. If it's 6 years old, you may want to refresh that with a new SSD and maybe use that as a work drive or scratch drive.

Also, since you said you want things to run with no lag, it will start with you not just taking an old install with all sorts of hot mess software, drivers, whatever installed over the years with tons of clutter and sector maps all over the place, and just upgrading that mess, instead of just doing a clean install. Do the clean install. Reinstall the software you want/need. If you care so much about it being fast and not laggy, this is going to matter based on what you've described with your goal of upgrading. Upgrading is not the way to go if this is your goal with what you're coming from into Windows 10.

Beyond that, you can get any AMD or Intel system that's modern within the last 2 years with 16Gb of RAM and a new SSD, with a fresh install of Win 10 and it will be a nice snappy experience. Almost everything you've described you're interested in using is mostly single threaded software, so you don't need a bunch of cores. Just lots of RAM, new SSD, and a newer architecture and chipset for your motherboard and system bus with a newer CPU.

Very best,
 

mchas

Member
Feb 2, 2000
65
1
71
Heya,

If booting in 5 seconds versus 20 seconds is truly that big of a deal, it's not so much a CPU division thing but more of a specific BIOS thing. You can absolutely get an Intel board and CPU and have a slower boot than perhaps you would prefer, just as easily as an AMD board and CPU with a slower boot. Again, it's more specific to the actual motherboard and its BIOS and post sequences. The more "check points" the board has in the post process, the slower it will be to pass POST and get to your OS.

Anecdotally, my observatory PC is an AM4 build on a B450 motherboard by MSI and has a dinky little Athlon 3000G APU. I press the button to power it on, then sit down and it's already showing me the Win 10 unlock screen. Maybe 5 seconds? If that? It's an MSI B450M Pro-M2 Max motherboard. Mean while, my workstation PC with an AM4 X570 Asus TUF Gaming Plus Wifi motherboard and Ryzen 3700x takes a solid 15+ seconds to boot, plus or minus a bit, because of all the post check points, I didn't enable fast boot, I kept the pause in case I wanted more time to enter BIOS, etc. Mean while my Intel XEON server in the same room never boots up nor recycles unless I tell it too, so there's no waiting for anything on it. But when I do cycle it to boot, it's pretty fast, and that's with a server board from SuperMicro.

If you're dead set on trying to have the fastest booting process to get into Windows, saving like 10 seconds perhaps, put more effort into researching different motherboards that you're interested in, as this is more key to this than the CPU or chipset necessarily. The POST sequence and check points are the hold up. You can get boards that you can bypass most of the slower POST sequences.

As for reusing parts, you could reuse your PSU and case. You could reuse your SSD, but I wouldn't. If it's 6 years old, you may want to refresh that with a new SSD and maybe use that as a work drive or scratch drive.

Also, since you said you want things to run with no lag, it will start with you not just taking an old install with all sorts of hot mess software, drivers, whatever installed over the years with tons of clutter and sector maps all over the place, and just upgrading that mess, instead of just doing a clean install. Do the clean install. Reinstall the software you want/need. If you care so much about it being fast and not laggy, this is going to matter based on what you've described with your goal of upgrading. Upgrading is not the way to go if this is your goal with what you're coming from into Windows 10.

Beyond that, you can get any AMD or Intel system that's modern within the last 2 years with 16Gb of RAM and a new SSD, with a fresh install of Win 10 and it will be a nice snappy experience. Almost everything you've described you're interested in using is mostly single threaded software, so you don't need a bunch of cores. Just lots of RAM, new SSD, and a newer architecture and chipset for your motherboard and system bus with a newer CPU.

Very best,

Wow - thanks for the very detailed post! I feel a bit silly now saying I need the fastest boot up possible. The truth is I leave the computer on 24/7 so I hardly ever boot it up. What is most important to me is the speed while using it and I think everyone is right that pretty much any new system with enough RAM and an SSD will be fast enough. My current computer feels a bit slow but certainly still fine.
 
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mchas

Member
Feb 2, 2000
65
1
71
Have you considered modifying/using a modded BIOS adding NVME support to your current system? I did it for my Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC board and it worked a treat. That way you can keep your W7 OS as is & add a W10 SSD and migrate apps as & when you can.

Guide

Modded BIOS

This looks really interesting - thanks!! I had no idea this might be an option. So it sounds like my motherboard has the physical slot for an NVMe SSD and I could mod the BIOS to boot from it? If so this might be the way to go. Are there any downsides or risks with this?
 

DeathReborn

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2005
2,743
734
136
This looks really interesting - thanks!! I had no idea this might be an option. So it sounds like my motherboard has the physical slot for an NVMe SSD and I could mod the BIOS to boot from it? If so this might be the way to go. Are there any downsides or risks with this?

There's the obvious flashing risks but the only issue I encountered was my Samsung M.2 drives wouldn't work, my Sabrent Rocket 1TB did work. I use a Lycom DT-120 PCIe card as my board has no M.2 slot. This post (from that guide thread) covers some compatibility things that might pop up.