Upgrade compatibilty for Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus

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TheTJW

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Dec 11, 2015
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Hi, I'm looking to do some upgrades to my Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus motherboard and am having trouble finding out what is compatible - does anybody know if I can upgrade to a SSD SATA III when I've got only SATA II connectors and if I can upgrade to a high-end graphics card (i.e. something like a Nvidia GTX 750 etc.), when I've only got PCI Express v2 and not v3?

Thanks to anybody who can advise!
(PS - my processor is a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Energy Efficient 95W edition Socket 775)
 
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Luminary

Luminary

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Hello TheTJW,

1) Yes, you can isntall SATA III drives into your SATA II ports just fine. You'll lose a bit of throughput, but an SSD will still give you a huge boost in performance even when connected via SATA II.

2) Yes, any PCIe 3.0 GPU is fully backwards compatible with the PCIe 2.0 lane on your motherboard. You can run the GTX 750 without any performance loss.
 
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TheTJW

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Hi, thanks for that - that puts my mind at ease before spending loads of money. Do you think there would be a limit to the graphics cards I'd be able to use - or would that just come down to whether it would fit in my case or not!?

 
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TheTJW

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That's great, thanks for all your help - I was intending to get the best graphics card I could for my system, but it sounds like the GTX 750 is a good card & will be relatively future proof for a couple of years maybe!

 
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Luminary

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Yes, switching your main OS drive to an SSD would be a very good upgrade, you'll see a very noticible overall performance boost. As long as you're using the same motherboard you can install the same Windows Key on the new SSD without any issue.
 
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TheTJW

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Luminary

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Don't think so.

The motherboard would technically support it just fine, but your processor would bottleneck the GPU significantly, stopping it from using its full potential. You would need a motherboard + CPU upgrade as well to get the most out of a card like the GTX 960.
 
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TheTJW

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TheTJW

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Once again, thanks for all your help with this - so, in your opinion do you think a card like the GTX 750 ti would be good enough, say, for the next couple of releases of Call of Duty for example?
 
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Luminary

Luminary

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No worries, happy to help. :)

The GTX 750ti is enough for current games at mid to lower specs, can't say for certain about future releases. It's one of the best GPU pairings with your current hardware, but not too long from now you'll probably be looking at a larger system upgrade to be able to play next gen games.
 
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