PC Upgrade?

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Hey, so I wanted to know what's the best way to figure out where the weakest link in my computer is. Thanks!

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Reply to vegasmazza3

There is no super easy way to do this that I am aware of.

Most methods involve benchmarking and having spare parts laying around that people can switch out for other ones.

------------------------------ i5-3570k, Asrock Z77 Pro4, XFX Pro 650w Core, 2x 4GB Crucial CT2KIT51264BA1339, PowerColor 6850 SCS3, Lian Li PC - K59, Seagate Barracuda 500gb hd, ASUS DRW-24B1ST DVDRW

Planning a build, click here: http://tinyurl.com/82pnrn6
Reply to Raiddinn

vegasmazza3 wrote :

Hey, so I wanted to know what's the best way to figure out where the weakest link in my computer is. Thanks!

Its inability to withstand direct nuclear attack , and meteorite strike would be keeping me awake at night if I was you .

For an opinion on your hardware you could try telling us what you have . That will take a lot of pressure off my psychic abilities

Reply to Outlander_04

Then you aren't exercising your abilities often enough.

Windows Vista Ultimate
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9450 @ 2.66GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.7GHz
4094MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280

Drive: C:
Free Space: 46.2 GB
Total Space: 476.9 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: WDC WD50 00AAKS-00TMA SCSI Disk Device

Those are the crucial things right?

I bought it in August 2008. So in terms of ram most likely DDR2... and the I think the motherboard was MSI P7N diamond... but that's off of memory.

It's at least a year off before I decide to take the plunge and get another one (unless of course for some reason this one decides to royally fail).

Reply to vegasmazza3

Still problems with my psychic abilities so Im going to assume you want to improve gaming ability .

and the good news is that your processor is still competitive . If you want more performance then you can overclock it .
But graphics card performance improves quickly and is likely to be the weakest link . Check the charts section of this site to compare how much better the newer cards are

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Reply to Outlander_04

No I have really slow start up... and sometimes freezing up. I kind of suspect the hard drive even though I have really no idea. Or maybe it's just that I have a lot of stuff on my computer.

Am I able to just switch out the graphics card still? I know for processor and DDR3 you need new motherboard.

And overclocking - know about it - never tried to do it - I'd kind of be worried about frying my computer.

Reply to vegasmazza3

Really slow start ups could be the hard drive . Are you sure its a 500 gig SCSI drive? . and running through an adapter card?

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Reply to Outlander_04

Outlander_04 wrote :

Still problems with my psychic abilities so Im going to assume you want to improve gaming ability .

I love you...No homo...

------------------------------ Casualties many; Percentage of dead not known; Combat efficiency: we are winning!
-Colonel David M. Shoup, USMC

Animated videos of how to build your own computer!
Reply to Emelth

My slow startups are from my DVDRW drive, believe it or not.

Funny story, I was kinda annoyed for the last few years that it took my computer like 5 minutes to boot into windows but it never bothered me very much because I rarely turned my computer off or restarted it.

So I got this new case and video card because my old video card was too loud and I shove everything in the new case and it boots up in like 10 seconds. Obviously, the case is not the cause of this so I look in there and it turns out that I forgot to connect the CD drive to the motherboard and power.

So I connect it back and it again takes me more than 5 minutes to boot up. Disconnect it again and it boots within 10 seconds.

So, now I just connect the CD drive when I need it for something and just leave it disconnected most of the time. It is an old IDE one with a ribbon cable that has been dragged from computer to computer and I don't really need to use CDs anyway.

Anyway, that is why I mentioned soon after you posted this that it would help to have the ability to switch out parts. If you don't have parts you can switch out you can just pull a me and start disconnecting things on accident in order to locate the device that is keeping your computer from booting up quickly.

Normally, I would say that this problem is usually related to either BIOS settings (yours is set to do long checks before windows starts) or from the hard drive (the registry and all that), but its also possible that it can be so completely random that you never see it coming like my CD drive.

Outlander_04 wrote :

Really slow start ups could be the hard drive . Are you sure its a 500 gig SCSI drive? . and running through an adapter card?

I have no idea - just took it from dxdiag

Reply to vegasmazza3

SCSI is an older hard drive interface , but you dont have one . Its a SATA drive , but the older nVidia chipset reports it as SCSI .

Have you ever used msconfig ?

You can shut down all the programs that start automatically with windows and speed boot times
http://www.optimizingpc.com/vista/msconfig.html

stick to the start up tab for now and turn off everything thats not part of windows , a hardware driver , your antivirus and firewall .
They are still there when you want them but in the meantime they wont hog system RAM and slow boot times

Reply to Outlander_04