When should I retire my Q9300 @ 3.0 ATX rigs?

[VirtualLarry]

I've still got a pair of ATX rigs, with Gigabyte P35-DS3R boards, Q9300 CPUs (OCed to 400FSB, 3.0Ghz), 4x2GB DDR2-800, and HD4850 512MB video cards.

Surely, they would have been awesome gaming rigs... back in 2006-2007.

Now, one of them crunches for me, and the other one is in the closet.

I currently don't have to pay for electricity, and still, I'm concerned about power consumption.

Full distributed-computing load is slightly north of 280W. Not horrible, but not very lower either.

Performance is fine, they are very usable for web browsing, even with all four CPU cores at 100%, and the video card crunching MW@Home too.

Really reliable and fairly powerful rigs.

But I see that I can get an IB i3-3240 3.4Ghz w/HT CPU at Newegg for $110 after promo code, and they also have a nice Biostar Z77 board for $74 shipped, with two PCI-E slots.

I've already got drives, and stockpiles of DDR3.

I could have a nice couple of machines, running Z77 chipsets, that I could do DC on, while plugging in a pair of higher-performance GPUs, all while saving a bit on power.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, Larry! The cable-tv station should do a "Hoarders" episode about both of us. I would go through my four big parts-locker chests: "These are my Delta fans, Sunon fans, 92mm, 120mm, 140mm -- and some 200mm; these are my IDE and SATA cables; my front-panel manual fan controllers; my obsolete heatpipe coolers; here's some VGA heatpipe coolers which don't fit any current VGA cards; my box of Promise-Tech IDE and RAID controllers, unusable TV tuner cards; DDR, DDR2 and DDR3 RAM; a burned out Gigabyte P45 mobo; wires, wires, cables and wires . . . " and on and on and on.

But, Larry! A Biostar motherboard? At least with a Z77 chipset!! No -- you're right. I don't want to think about what I'd spent on computer parts and software over the last . . . lessee . . . 30 years. It's a five-digit sum, but it's not just hovering around the minimum 5 digits!! With my adjunct teaching and moonlight consulting practice in addition to the day job, I broke even, I suppose.

On the power angle. One of the sloppy things I've done is to run both my server and my Sandy Bridge off the same 1,300W UPS. I was in the middle of figuring out how I can get the software on the SB-K to make both machines shut down normally within 3 minutes after an outage, but I lost track of that to tidy up my registry, drivers, event-log error causes and other things. Just looking, with both systems hooked up, I see 219 watts on the UPS display. My old Q6600 system was drawing 192W at idle!!

Who wants to buy LGA-775 rigs that run great? Everybody is going with Android, Ipad, windows Surface, Ultrabook!! What are we to do? You can't donate to schools anymore; Goodwill won't take used computers.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, Larry! The cable-tv station should do a "Hoarders" episode about both of us.

Indeed.

But, Larry! A Biostar motherboard? At least with a Z77 chipset!!

Their T-series boards are supposed to be decently-regarded. It does have all solid caps.

On the power angle.
Just looking, with both systems hooked up, I see 219 watts on the UPS display. My old Q6600 system was drawing 192W at idle!!

I guess that would be the primary motivation to upgrade.

Who wants to buy LGA-775 rigs that run great? Everybody is going with Android, Ipad, windows Surface, Ultrabook!! What are we to do? You can't donate to schools anymore; Goodwill won't take used computers.

Sad, but point taken. I guess there's always the chop-shop (ebay).

 

[ehume]

My work machine is an i3, and I curse it every time I turn it on. I wouldn't give up anything to get another, and yours seem to be doing fine.

Non replaceum duts.

 

[Burpo]

Yeap agreed. I def don't see moving to an I3 as any kind of upgrade, if it ain't broke, don't "Fix" it. I'm typing this from a 2007 Gateway FX 8020 that had a Q6600 in it, but now runs a Xeon quad, Does everything nicely STILL!! Built a Xeon 6 core X58 for video rendering & I sit between & work them both. Can't live without either of them.. My parts bin dates back to 1981 with a disc from a Winchester Hard drive that we rolled up to an HP 8086 pc and had 5 megabytes of storage!

<-----Fosil

 

[escrow4]

I've chucked all sold all my old parts off. Both my boxes run 4770's. If you want to upgrade do it. Core 2 Quad's are old and creaky by now and suck down power.

 

[Arkaign]

What purpose would the new units be for? The answer to that would really tell us a lot more about potential options that might make more sense. Performance wise, I am not too fond of i3s. They bench well, but they just don't feel very responsive once you've got a lot of stuff going.

So depending on what you want to do, I'd either recommend an IB Pentium Dual core, or a used SB i5 instead.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What purpose would the new units be for?

Truthfully? I guess, "status symbols".

I'm not sure what they would be used for.

I forgot, I do already own two i3s, one IB and one SB, Lenovo pre-builts. But pre-builts just aren't that much fun.

 

[Arkaign]

Hmm. Surprisingly some of the parts on pre-builts (particularly mobos) are worth decent $$ on ye old auction site. And of course the i3s are easy sellers as well.

Why not sell all of it, and get a couple of decent K-series i5s? Maybe some SSDs?

 

[Shingi]

larry my closer is empty so it could use another q9300 sitting in it. I'd pay for shipping. j/k. but yeah it sucks I know. you could ebay or try to sell it here, but the shipping will probably already cost what it is worth anyway, so yeah. But if you do give it away. let me know we can always put another computer in our non-profit.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think I told my mom I would keep them for ten years. Maybe I should. That's only three years from now. Win7 SP1 will still be supported.

 

[NTMBK]

Those still sound like perfectly decent gaming rigs, compared to the junk that plenty of people have. My rig is not much different (3GHz Phenom II X4, HD7770). Not got any family members who would appreciate a donation?

 

[SPBHM]

your VGA is from 2008, so it would surely have been pretty amazing in 2006

i3 would be faster for gaming, but a little slower for some MT work like video encoding.


I think simply replacing the 4850 could be a fun thing to do, and it would reduce power usage significantly under (gaming or GPGPU) load.

 

[ehume]

your VGA is from 2008, so it would surely have been pretty amazing in 2006

i3 would be faster for gaming, but a little slower for some MT work like video encoding.


I think simply replacing the 4850 could be a fun thing to do, and it would reduce power usage significantly under (gaming or GPGPU) load.

Agree with the latter. I would wave everyone away from i3's. Even for routine work, they are barely adequate while on-task. But when you want to transition to another task, they are dogs. Woof.

 

[NTMBK]

Yeah, if you are using those GPUs for distributed computing I would suggest an upgrade. Even a HD7750 seriously beats a HD4870 in compute tasks: http://anandtech.com/bench/product/535?vs=513

 

[Lorne]

So you dont think that IOmega Zip drive and Glide for my 3DFX Monster-1 card will make a come back..

 

[Leyawiin]

I never have that issue. Too many lazy and/or poor relatives who snap up any computer I'm done with.

 

[tweakboy]

Do it, ASAP! Its a least 3000 thousand times faster these new CPU's

 

[tweakboy]

I was blown away its 100x then my old Q6600 @ 3.7Ghz , lol

 

[VirtualLarry]

I guess I'm going to skip the Z77 / IB i3 idea for my rigs, and just upgrade the video cards. Don't forget, though, my P35 board only has PCI-E 1.1.

Edit: Would these R90 270 cards be too much for my Q9300 @ 3.0 rigs? They're $179.99.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127769

 

[tweakboy]

WIth PCIe your covered. 760 or ATI equiev would be nice With a new CPU. Also SSD a must. gl

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I guess I'm going to skip the Z77 / IB i3 idea for my rigs, and just upgrade the video cards. Don't forget, though, my P35 board only has PCI-E 1.1.

As much as they have usefulness, I don't think I could go back to dual-cores for a new machine, but we have four C2D's (LGA_775) still ticking along in the house. Nobody else complains.

Larry -- ya got plenty of computing power there -- maybe too much! [But like my Bro the chef says, "No such thing as too much garlic . . ."]

I said a couple times over the last few months: The Forums need a "12-step-program" for OC'ing and techno-addicts. I agree with someone here that you might upgrade a graphics card, but save the old one.

I say that . . . . because we should put our heads together about building deferred Haswell-E systems next year. If you did that, you could swap the new gfx into the "E" system, put the old card back in the Q6600 (or whatever . . ) Harmless advice at this point -- the "E" hasn't been released; you can save your money; maybe sell off some parts; and then -- wait for the "right" 2nd-gen 2011 board with a decently mature BIOS and some good tech-lab reviews . . .

When it comes to spendin' money, always put off 'til tomorrow what you might otherwise do today! For this -- Procrastination is a GOOD thing! Stocks and flows! Stocks and flows!