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Gaming machine put together in 2006ish- Suggestions for budget upgrades/replacements?
Underwhelming
myMomIsTheJam July 13, 2013Registered User regular
myMomIsTheJam July 13, 2013Registered User regular
Hi ho, techies. Might I get some assistance?
It's been a long time since I built my own machine. My buddy has had this budget gaming rig since around 2006. The mobo is all wonky, but everything else tests fine in other machines. It's mine now, so I'm looking for some input on replacing the mobo and maybe upgrading. I don't know a lot of tech jargon. Bits and pieces, I guess.
Here's what I'm workin' with:
Aspire ATX 500w power supply
Gigabyte GA K8N Pro SLI Motherboard
PNY Verto GeForce 6800 GS
4GB Patriot DDR
I'm not sure about the processor at the moment. He doesn't remember and I didn't check when we were troubleshooting it in my bro's shop, but it's safe to assume it's between 2 and 3 GhZ. Anyway, I could be upgrading it.
So, IF I kept everything the same, replaced the same mobo, same power supply, could I run a 2nd identical vid card? Would that be economical? Would you recommend just upgrading to a better single card?
Money is an issue here. I'd like to keep it all under $200. I don't want top of the line. I don't play Crysis, and if I did, I wouldn't care about any settings higher than lowest. I play lame stuff like Warcraft 3 and use Photoshop.
Any input/advice is welcome, thanks in advance!
It's been a long time since I built my own machine. My buddy has had this budget gaming rig since around 2006. The mobo is all wonky, but everything else tests fine in other machines. It's mine now, so I'm looking for some input on replacing the mobo and maybe upgrading. I don't know a lot of tech jargon. Bits and pieces, I guess.
Here's what I'm workin' with:
Aspire ATX 500w power supply
Gigabyte GA K8N Pro SLI Motherboard
PNY Verto GeForce 6800 GS
4GB Patriot DDR
I'm not sure about the processor at the moment. He doesn't remember and I didn't check when we were troubleshooting it in my bro's shop, but it's safe to assume it's between 2 and 3 GhZ. Anyway, I could be upgrading it.
So, IF I kept everything the same, replaced the same mobo, same power supply, could I run a 2nd identical vid card? Would that be economical? Would you recommend just upgrading to a better single card?
Money is an issue here. I'd like to keep it all under $200. I don't want top of the line. I don't play Crysis, and if I did, I wouldn't care about any settings higher than lowest. I play lame stuff like Warcraft 3 and use Photoshop.
Any input/advice is welcome, thanks in advance!
Underwhelming on
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If the processor is only single core, you can pick up a cheap quad core for about $100 and then a 56XX or something for about $100 or so.
I would think the 5770 would probably be starved by that cpu and mem and the 460 is def out of the question.
The 4850 may not be a bad choice. I mean, if you're only going to be running WC3 I would think it would be more than enough.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
If you want to do a piecemeal upgrade, upgrade the processor and mobo and RAM to something Socket AM3 and DDR3, OR get a new video card. But it's not at all worth it to just get a new processor.
It would be nice to have a desktop for the first time in 4 years and I regularly played Warcraft 3, Battlefield 2142, Oblivion and Prey on this machine back in the day at lowered settings. I don't plan on putting it through anything more intense than that. Having an outdated machine doesn't really bother me as long as it serves the purpose.
Your thoughts?
If you go ahead and try to maintain this computer, I would say go find your $50 motherboard and stop. Don't sink any other money into it, just save for the budget build in the PC thread down the line.
PSN: TheScrublet
I don't think so... usually (as far as I know always) a change in socket type means a completely different supported series of CPUs.
EDIT: The hardware you have is too many generations behind to do a piece by piece upgrade. Basically, do what Scrublet said, buy what ever you need to get your system stable then save up in order to purchase a recent generation budget build.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
Alright then. If anyone can confirm this, I'd appreciate it.
Otherwise, thank you to all of you for the advice! I think I'm going to replace the mobo just to have a desktop right now and save up for a better machine in the future. I mostly game on my 360 now, so I'm not worried.
plus ram, plus new video card.. that's way over what he stated he wanted to spend.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
AM2 and 939 are completely different.
Thank you!
The hard part is finding dual core Socket 939 CPUs.
Click on your start menu, then click on Run, and type in the phrase "dxdiag" without the quotes. Give it a second and a window will pop up. Look toward the middle and you'll see some information about the components inside of your computer. It should look similar to this:
This is mine, let us know what yours says under Processor. If yours is Dual Core it will say X2 after the processor name (which should be Athlon, Opteron, or Sempron)
Like these guys are saying, a piece by piece upgrade plan really won't work, since a new motherboard is going to mean a new CPU is going to need new RAM, plus you'd need to replace your old GPU. At that point you have effectively rebuilt the computer, so you might as well just build a new one instead.
The Computer Build Thread has a budget build for around $600, but you can easily knock off a couple of hundred bucks if you reused your case (depending on whether it's proprietary or not and how good the airflow is), hard drive, optical drive, and OS. You can definitely build a machine cheaper than that as well. You (like me) have gotten to the point where just about anything you can build with off the shelf components is going to be faster than the machine you have.
That said, if you are running a single core CPU and you upgraded to a dual core and a cheap GPU you would definitely see a performance increase, but to be honest if all you're doing is playing Warcraft 3 and using Photoshop it won't really make a difference to you. You could just track down a replacement socket 939 motherboard (good luck) and a sub-$100 videocard and use the machine the way it is.
That, sir, is an excellent idea. I might do that, but it would still be a few months.