Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2006 > October > 09 > Entry
Biennial desktop upgrade
Every two years ago, especially around the time a new technology cycle ramps up and prices fall quickly, I get the hankering to upgrade my desktop computer.
Sometimes a data disaster or a particularly good deal on a video card will make for incremental updates, but a full-on motherboard + processor changeover is something you really have to commit to. For one thing, taking apart your whole computer and putting it all back together with new components is a weekend project. Being extra-extra careful, the whole process can take four or five hours and that’s not counting if something goes wrong and you need to troubleshoot why your computer won’t post (that is, starting up the first; the flat PC speaker beep is its birthcry).
My last upgrade was to a AMD Athlon 2600+ Mobile processor (which works just fine in a desktop motherboard). I bought a new case and power supply at the time to accommodate the new system. The changeup also required me to buy a new kind of RAM. And while I was in there, I updated my IDE interface to rounder connectors that aren’t as restrictive of airflow as older ribbon-style cables.
I also spread some Arctic Silver 5 on the processor and upgraded from the stock heatsink/fan that came with the processor bundle. The result was a speedy machine that overclocks well, up to about 2.3 GHz, far beyond the 1.8 GHz the processor was meant to run. It’s been running fairly stable for the last two years.
Recently, though, the price on dual-core processors has fallen so far that the performance jump has finally made the upgrade worthwhile. Couple that with some power supply problems I’ve been having and an aging video card, and it was time to rebuild.
So I started haunting online forums, checking out prices on newegg.com, scrutinizing the Fry’s circulars as if they were Dead Data Scrolls, looking for good deals. Sure, I thought about just buying a new computer for just a few hundred dollars more, but my problem with computers is you can’t always pick the components you want and except for very expensive custom PCs, you usually don’t get a decent videocard with most pre-built machines. Sure, there are very inexpensive PCs (and the thought of buying a Mac desktop did cross my mind), but they rarely offer the performance you get from picking your own top-of-the-line components and tweaking the BIOS settings yourself.
The upgrade is happening this week. Instead of doing it myself, I’m using a local computer store that charges a flat rate of under $50 for upgrades, but I’m buying everything a la carte and taking it all to them (except for the processor and motherboard, which I’m buying from the store).
The goal was to build a fairly affordable system that will be rock-solid stable (my wife also uses the computer and has little patience for unplanned restarts or system crashes) and run very fast with some room for overclocking without exotic liquid cooling or aftermarket processor heatsinks. It would also need to be able to run the latest PC games at high speeds and be able to upgrade to Windows Vista next year when the time comes.
Here’s what’s being upgraded:
Processor: Intel Duo 2 Core E6400 (runs at 2.18 GHz but is commonly overclocked well beyond 3 GHz with the right components and cooling). I’ve been running on AMD Athlon processors for a while now, but this time it looks like Intel scored a coup with its Duo 2 Core line. They run cool and efficient and very, very fast if the campfire stories are to be believed. This processor is about $100 cheaper than the next step up and the performance on it is said to be stellar. About $225.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3. Choosing a motherboard was by far the hardest part of the process. Depending on whom you ask, some motherboards overclock well, while others are better if you want to run at stock speeds. This motherboard had almost universally good reviews, though it’s considered a mid-range board compared to some of the more deluxe offerings from rival manufacturer ASUS. In this case I tried to balance price with performance. The only downside is that this won’t run a dual-graphics-card configuration (known as SLI for Nvidia cards of Crossfire for ATI cards), but I decided to stick to a single graphics card because I don’t want to mess with trying to eke more performance out of two separate video cards. The board runs about $150, but the prices on it keep dropping as more competitors that run Duo 2 Core processors enter the mix.
Memory: Two gigs of Patriot DDR2 667 MHz memory. Again, balancing price with performance. DDR2 800 memory is theoretically faster, but this particular model is said to overclock well past 800 MHz for a much cheaper price ($181, on sale). Patriot memory is considered to be very stable and worth its premium pricing. Memory prices for DDR2 memory (the emerging standard for newer motherboards) is incredibly high right now. You might find yourself paying more for decent memory than any other component in a new PC right now.
Power Supply: 600W Ultra V series power supply. Fry’s had a sale on these recently: $20 after rebate. You can’t beat that. For newer systems with high-end graphics card, a power supply upgrade is usually necessary. To future-proof your system, you probably shouldn’t go below 500W. Many higher-end power supplies run for more than $100.
Graphics card: Sapphire x1900XT 256 MB. A very well priced high-end card that compromises on memory (most x1900XT cards run at 512 MB) with a negligible performance hit unless you’re running at insanely high monitor resolutions. ATI and Nvidia are price cutting and introducing new card models left and right. A new generation of videocards is pending (those that will run the upcoming Windows DX10 standard in Vista), but if you don’t mind settling for a current-generation card while that all shakes out, there are great deals to be had. About $235 after a mail-in rebate.
Components from my old system moving over include an SATA hard drive, an IDE hard drive partitioned into two drives, a budget Audigy sound card (with a very useful Firewire port) and a DVD drive/burner. There’s also an old SCSI CD-ROM drive and a spare, empty 40 Gig hard drive sitting in my case, but I’m not sure that those components will make it over to the new system.
I’ll be using the same case (assuming everything fits in there; it looks a lot like this one). And before I take it in, I’ll be backing up everything to an external hard drive.
Total price: Right around $900.
Sure, you can get a new mid-range computer for that, but what fun would it be not to be able to do all that shopping?
I’ll let you know how the upgrade goes.
Permalink | | Categories: Computers, Shopping
