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General discussion (archive)A PC dilemma, opinions wanted. (31 posts)(31 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 02, 2012
Well tax return time has rolled around again, I'm expected to have my refund deposited tomorrow. Originally I was going to spend about $600 and buy a new PC with it. I was burglarized back in August while I was at work someone got off with my PC and laptop. Well I've been dealing as a temp solution with low end machine that my friend gave to me after this happened and a quick cheap purchase of a video card off of craigslist. I'm running a Pentium Dual Core (wolfdale) @2.5ghz, 2gb DDR2 ram, and a 1GB R4850 HD. The video card has actually been quite impressive holding up this rather unimpressive PC, I can play skyrim med-high settings (high with a couple tweaks) really well.

Well as with most things, things dont go as planned and as some issues with the car I was going to get fixed are going to cost much more than I planned on so I'm not going to have the money to buy/build a gaming pc. I can still squeeze out about $200 perhaps $300..maybe.

My dilemma now is to either do some upgrading to this PC a little to get me by for another year. Or getting into something different on the cheap. For instance I got a guy on craigslist that could sell me a Phenom x4 @2.36ghz 7GB ram, 7200RPM HDD machine with 2 LCD monitors for only $200. I pop my video card and PSU in there and I should have a decent machine... and I while I have no experience in it, I have this feeling that Phenom x4 could be overclocked?

Or I can invest in some Ram, and a SSD drive, perhaps maybe a better video card than my 4850 and just upgrade this guy to last me a bit longer. I'm just concerned it's only dual core and not all that fast one. If it was an i3 or something I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade.

Option 3 would be to go to like Walmart or someplace and buy one of their quads in a box. It would have 3.0ghz processor, probably 3-6gb ram, I pop my PSU and Video card in it and It would be better than I got. I was just out at my parents and they just bought one themselves and besides the video card their PC is better than mine in every way. I am jealous currently.
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Posted February 02, 2012
If you need something right now, I'd probably go for option 3.

But if you can hang on with what you currently have for a while, what I'd really recommend is to set that money aside and add to it over the next few months. Once you get a nice chunk of change saved up, then buy a new system.
Posted February 02, 2012
Depends on what exactly you're planning to do with the PC. Personally I'd be reluctant to put more than 50$, _perhaps_ 75, into a partial upgrade of such an old machine. Getting a new architecture (at least mainboard, CPU, and RAM) would be more expensive, but well worth it in terms of improved performance. I'll also expect the prices to go down when Intel's new CPUs (Ivy Bridge) hit the market.

Edit: An upgrade kit with an i3 2100, cheap mobo, and standard RAM might be within your price range. You could upgrade these parts and use your current graphics card until you can afford a better one. However, you'd need to be extra careful that the new mobo can actually handle your current old periphery, and you'd need to have an eye on the power supply. And it may not even improve performance by much if most of your programs are GPU-bound. But it would be better than adding a soon-to-be obsolete CPU now, imho.
Post edited February 02, 2012 by Psyringe
Posted February 02, 2012
I'd say it depends to an extent on what the old PC is made of.

If that Celeron^H^H^H^H^H^H^HPentium Dual-Core is in a commercially made tower with a proprietary motherboard, you're SOL.

If it's sitting on a retail motherboard with BIOS access to the clock, you can overclock the crap out of it for no more than the price of a better CPU cooler. Those little guys are hares in tortoise clothing.

Avoid anything called "Phenom" and not "Phenom II" like it's got the plague. The original Phenoms were the biggest step backward in CPU technology since the Pentium 4. AMD didn't get it right until the Phenom II, and even then a 2.36 GHz CPU is a tortoise compared to your PDC.
Posted February 02, 2012
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Sequiro: Well tax return time has rolled around again, I'm expected to have my refund deposited tomorrow. Originally I was going to spend about $600 and buy a new PC with it. I was burglarized back in August while I was at work someone got off with my PC and laptop. Well I've been dealing as a temp solution with low end machine that my friend gave to me after this happened and a quick cheap purchase of a video card off of craigslist. I'm running a Pentium Dual Core (wolfdale) @2.5ghz, 2gb DDR2 ram, and a 1GB R4850 HD. The video card has actually been quite impressive holding up this rather unimpressive PC, I can play skyrim med-high settings (high with a couple tweaks) really well.

Well as with most things, things dont go as planned and as some issues with the car I was going to get fixed are going to cost much more than I planned on so I'm not going to have the money to buy/build a gaming pc. I can still squeeze out about $200 perhaps $300..maybe.

My dilemma now is to either do some upgrading to this PC a little to get me by for another year. Or getting into something different on the cheap. For instance I got a guy on craigslist that could sell me a Phenom x4 @2.36ghz 7GB ram, 7200RPM HDD machine with 2 LCD monitors for only $200. I pop my video card and PSU in there and I should have a decent machine... and I while I have no experience in it, I have this feeling that Phenom x4 could be overclocked?

Or I can invest in some Ram, and a SSD drive, perhaps maybe a better video card than my 4850 and just upgrade this guy to last me a bit longer. I'm just concerned it's only dual core and not all that fast one. If it was an i3 or something I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade.

Option 3 would be to go to like Walmart or someplace and buy one of their quads in a box. It would have 3.0ghz processor, probably 3-6gb ram, I pop my PSU and Video card in it and It would be better than I got. I was just out at my parents and they just bought one themselves and besides the video card their PC is better than mine in every way. I am jealous currently.
If by "Quad in a box" you mean a full PC, this is your best option for the short term, unless it's cheaper for the $200 STEAL of a deal from craigslist.

Your 4850 is not a bad card, I would not replace it with something marginally better.

The difference between the Quad 2.36 and the Quad 3.0~ is not going to be huge so pay attention to the price difference between the two deals.
Posted February 02, 2012
Well, option 2 is just wasted money. An SSD is only useful if your computer and your OS are sufficiently up to date.

Option 1 is a matter of taste. I wouldn't go for it because it will not improve your experience that much. The phenom X4 9600 is now more than 4 years old, will be on an older socket ( AM2/Am2+) thus not upgradeable anymore, and features a 95W TDP . Its CPU benchmarks will be in the 30 to 50% above the E5200 you're curently using. ( A Phenom II would double it ). Moreover 2nd hand hardware remains a potential source of worries

Option is thus the most reasonable one.
Posted February 02, 2012
SSD are decent but for the size of the drives and the prices they are a bit expensive. They are also pretty new technology so would leave well alone for another year or so.

Best way to look at an SSD is an array of memory cards, similar to a memory card that is in a mobile phone. You write stuff to much and they can corrupt or to much access and they can go funny. At the min they are good to put in as a primary hard disc for your OS as loading times are really fast. For anything else give it a miss for the time being.

I would say go for a Phenom II X4 Black Edition. The Black Edition chips are good overclockers, however if you get 2.4 Ghz or higher you shouldnt have to oc. New games that require quad core arnt asking for any higher than 2.4Ghz. Get yourself a new AM3 motherboard and 8Gb DDR 3, try and budget for the 1600 speed stuff.

Stick with the VGA card you have at the minute, still is decent enough for another year or so I would say.
Posted February 02, 2012
Now, depending on the current case/psu/monitor you are using, you may want to consider upgrade kits (Motherboard+CPU+ram+HDD ). I see Newegg has a 320 usd kit based on a 3.4Ghz Phenom II x2 , and fo a bit more, an I3 based kit.
Posted February 02, 2012
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CymTyr: The difference between the Quad 2.36 and the Quad 3.0~ is not going to be huge so pay attention to the price difference between the two deals.
No, there's a huge difference between a Phenom quad and any other line of quad. There's a good cruel reason the Phenoms died off and were replaced by the Phenom II, except for the few pieces of crap HP and others managed to deceive the public into paying retail price for.

That $200 deal may not be stolen. It may be surplus. That's about what a surplus Phenom tower and a couple surplus LCDs are worth.
Posted February 02, 2012
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CymTyr: The difference between the Quad 2.36 and the Quad 3.0~ is not going to be huge so pay attention to the price difference between the two deals.
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cjrgreen: No, there's a huge difference between a Phenom quad and any other line of quad. There's a good cruel reason the Phenoms died off and were replaced by the Phenom II, except for the few pieces of crap HP and others managed to deceive the public into paying retail price for.

That $200 deal may not be stolen. It may be surplus. That's about what a surplus Phenom tower and a couple surplus LCDs are worth.
Is this relating to the 10% performance loss I heard about several years back? If so I apologize, was merely trying to be helpful :)
Posted February 02, 2012
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cjrgreen: No, there's a huge difference between a Phenom quad and any other line of quad. There's a good cruel reason the Phenoms died off and were replaced by the Phenom II, except for the few pieces of crap HP and others managed to deceive the public into paying retail price for.

That $200 deal may not be stolen. It may be surplus. That's about what a surplus Phenom tower and a couple surplus LCDs are worth.
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CymTyr: Is this relating to the 10% performance loss I heard about several years back? If so I apologize, was merely trying to be helpful :)
That's only part of it. That was on the Phenom xx00 series, which needed a performance-limiting fix in the BIOS to prevent it from freezing randomly during normal operation.

But the Phenom xx50 series is still probably the only CPU ever brought to market that was so pitiful that it had a cache slower than main memory.

The only ones who liked these CPUs were mass market vendors like HP, who could get huge lots of "yield-managed" chips with one or two cores, or half the cache, disabled for next to nothing. The surplus market is still full of these crappy doorstop/space-heater boxes.
Post edited February 02, 2012 by cjrgreen
Posted February 02, 2012
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CymTyr: Is this relating to the 10% performance loss I heard about several years back? If so I apologize, was merely trying to be helpful :)
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cjrgreen: That's only part of it. That was on the Phenom xx00 series, which needed a performance-limiting fix in the BIOS to prevent it from freezing randomly during normal operation.

But the Phenom xx50 series is still probably the only CPU ever brought to market that was so pitiful that it had a cache slower than main memory.

The only ones who liked these CPUs were mass market vendors like HP, who could get huge lots of "yield-managed" chips with one or two cores, or half the cache, disabled for next to nothing. The surplus market is still full of these crappy doorstop/space-heater boxes.
You got me scared, had to double check that my Phenom is a Phenom II, which it is.
Posted February 02, 2012
Either get RAM, or go with option 3. Anything else just seems forcing a square object in a circle hole.
Posted February 02, 2012
Hi there.

I would recommend getting:

New motherboard. It doesn't need to be an expensive brand one. I myself use an ASRock motherboard which has proven quite reliable.

New CPU. For example, an AMD Athlon II X4 @ 3GHz is not too bad, but get the best CPU you can afford. Remember to aim for "the best bang for the buck"-option.

New RAM. 4GB is enough, but 6GB or even 8GB won't hurt.

If your power supply is less than 400W then it will need an upgrade too. Avoid the cheap ones like a plague.

The rest of your components should work fine, as long as you make sure your display adapter is compatible with the motherboard.

You can upgrade the mass storage and the display card later when you can afford it, but for now your 4850 will suffice.

Here is a link to the "Big Power Supply Guide": [url=]http://www.10stripe.com/featured/psu/index.php[/url]

If you cannot afford buying all the parts now, just try to hang on for a couple of months and put some money to the side until you can go grab them all at once .The prices will also probably drop so there will be new options for you.
Posted February 02, 2012
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SoanoS: Hi there.

I would recommend getting:

New motherboard. It doesn't need to be an expensive brand one. I myself use an ASRock motherboard which has proven quite reliable.

New CPU. For example, an AMD Athlon II X4 @ 3GHz is not too bad, but get the best CPU you can afford. Remember to aim for "the best bang for the buck"-option.

New RAM. 4GB is enough, but 6GB or even 8GB won't hurt.

If your power supply is less than 400W then it will need an upgrade too. Avoid the cheap ones like a plague.

The rest of your components should work fine, as long as you make sure your display adapter is compatible with the motherboard.

You can upgrade the mass storage and the display card later when you can afford it, but for now your 4850 will suffice.

Here is a link to the "Big Power Supply Guide": [url=]http://www.10stripe.com/featured/psu/index.php[/url]

If you cannot afford buying all the parts now, just try to hang on for a couple of months and put some money to the side until you can go grab them all at once .The prices will also probably drop so there will be new options for you.
I'd like to like that power supply guide, but it's very out of date. Doesn't even mention, for example, the Delta-made Antecs, the buyout of PC Power & Cooling, the fact that OCZ (which bought PCP&C) uses Sirtec as their OEM, the difference between low-end Corsairs and the Seasonic-made ones, and any number of other omissions.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)A PC dilemma, opinions wanted. (31 posts)(31 posts)
(31 posts)