6 Year Old PC Need Help

[Robert21]

Hello Everyone

This is my first time posting on this forum, but i'm hoping you guys can help me out a little bit here as i really need some guidance on what the best path to take is on updating my home pc.

My current custom built PC is about 7 years old now perhaps a little older and its served me well, but as i'm an online gamer i'm looking at updating it so i can really play some of the latest games in full resolution and not experience any slow downs.

My current spec

Intel Quad Core Q6600 (2.4GHz)
2 * 8800GT's Nvidia in sli mode
2 * western digital raptors 10k speed in raid 0 mode
2 * 2GB Crossair DDR2 ram
Asus Striker extreme motherboard
Thermaltake Armor Lcs case
http://techgage.com/article/thermaltake_armor_lcs_ve2000bws/
Liquid cooling

I dont think the whole set up needs updating like the hard drives etc but i'd like to update the following

Motherboard = I'm not exactly sure where to go with this as it was a great gaming motherboard, and it's still sold for quite a bit but its lacking some of the capabilitys of the newer boards like usb 3.0 and ddr3 ram support etc. I was thinking about the sabretooth as an upgrade to keep upto date and future proof my set up for another 5 years or so. One question i really need answered about this is, will the newer boards fit in my tower case or do i have to update that too? What do you think?

Ram= Very old ram and only 4GB in total atm in my system cant use the latest ram due to the motherboard etc. Want to put some 1800 ddr3 ram in abt 16 gb of it for gaming.

2 * 8800 GT's in Sli mode = Lasted a very long time and if im honest could prolly last a year longer but they are struggling with the latest games and i need to update them to something long lasting preferably from nvidia any ideas? I was thinking of getting a 560 etc but uses pc express 2.0 and my motherboard only supports 1.0 etc.

Quad core Q6600 2.GHz = Open to suggestions its getting worked quite a bit when i'm gaming etc but i dont know if it'd be worth updating this. How far am i off the latest in terms of speed?


I'm thinking that i'll have to spend about £500 to update the set up etc thats my budget.

One idea i'm toying with is selling the pc on ebay as a whole or as invidual parts and using that money to buy a brand new gaming pc etc.

Any ideas and help appreciated

Thanks

Rob

 

[aznshinobi]

First off, it doesn't seem like you'll be needing to overclock, I'm assuming since it doesn't seem as though you've overclocked your Q6600.

So...

I'd recommend the i5 3450 £143
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Processors+-+CPUs/Processors+-+Intel/Core+i5+-+Socket+1155+%28Ivy%29/Intel+Core+i5-3450+3.10GHz+%28Ivybridge%29+Socket+LGA1155+Processor+%2877W%29+-+Retail+?productId=49752
7850 £173
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards+-+GPUs/Graphics+Cards+-+AMD/Radeon+HD+7850/VTX3D+Radeon+HD+7850+2048MB+GDDR5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=49714
Asrock Z75 Pro3 £75
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards+-+Intel/Socket+1155+-+Intel+Z75/ASRock+Z75+Pro3+%28Socket+1155%2FIntel+Z75%2FDDR3%2FS-ATA+600%2FATX%29+?productId=49580
Corsair 8GB DDR3 1600 £40
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Memory+-+RAM/DDR3/Dual+Channel+-+%281600MHz%29/Corsair+Vengeance+Low+Profile+8GB+%282x4GB%29+DDR3+PC3-12800C9+1600MHz+Dual+Channel+Kit+%28CML8GX3M2A1600C9%29+?productId=45511
OCZ 550w £50
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Power+Supplies+-+PSUs/Non-Modular+650W+or+less/550W+OCZ+ZS+Series+80PLUS+Bronze+Power+Supply+?productId=45457
Total: £481

 

[jim45682]

Well the most important part that we need to know before any upgrade suggestions can be made would be what your PSU is. We need to find its wattage, amps, and connectors to be sure that it will run and/or plug up to what gets suggested.

That said, 500 is a tight budget with that many *old* components but doable if the PSU and case and hdd's/optical drives can be salvaged, ATX form factor hasnt changed much so new ATX mobo's should fit the case without issue. Once you give me the info on PSU I will start putting together an upgrade package for mobo/cpu/ram/and graphics

 

[Robert21]

Wow that was a mission getting the psu lol

Its a Thermaltake 850W Toughpower AP psu

I'm also running windows 7 and have a Creative SB X-Fi soundcard

Thanks for your help guys, it would have taken me months to research a suitable upgrade path thats why i came here

 

[Robert21]

Oh and ur right aznshinobi i dont overclock the psu atm, thats another thing i need to research lol thanks for your suggestions

 

[Robert21]

lol meant cpu

 

[jim45682]

Ok well I can suggest a nice system upgrade for just under 500 (497.35 to be exact) that will take care of CPU, Motherboard, RaM, and Graphics card if your willing to reuse your case, PSU, HDD, and optical drive this system will bring you up to speed with some future upgrade ability left over since the mobo is ready for the new ivy bridge cpu. Now on to the good stuff.

CPU <£161.99 inc VAT>
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-360-IN

Mobo <£101.99 inc VAT >
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-061-AK

RaM <£41.99 inc VAT >
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-132-CR

Graphics <£179.99 inc VAT >
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-266-AS

 

[aznshinobi]

^ Disagree, OP isn't overclocking and GPU lacks vs the 7850.

But... Yeah Robert, just keep you PSU then, change my 7850 to a 7870 instead since you don't need a PSU.

 

[jim45682]

^ Disagree, OP isn't overclocking and GPU lacks vs the 7850.

But... Yeah Robert, just keep you PSU then, change my 7850 to a 7870 instead since you don't need a PSU.

Just because he hasnt overclocked yet doesnt mean he wont want to in the future, he did say he was looking into researching it. But it doesnt matter as the price point is not all that different, he could go with a slightly cheaper mobo and still get the power of the 2500k and get your graphics card since that price point isnt all that different either.

 

[capt_taco]

You have watercooling, but you haven't overclocked it? Seriously, that's what it's for!

You can easily get that CPU up to 3.4, 3.6 GHz. Hell, I've got a q6600 in one of my old machines and even at 3.0GHz, it still does fine for gaming. Yes, it's miles behind Ivy Bridge, but it still works and I'm not trying to set any benchmark records.

Anyway, I'd recommend trying that first; you really have nothing to lose and you might not need a new CPU/mobo for another year if it works. Then drop in a better GPU and you're good to go.

By the way: 16GB of RAM will do nothing at all for you in gaming. Games today don't even use a full 4GB. And the performance difference you'll see from faster RAM by itself is negligible, a couple percent usually. Great article on that here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-speed-tests,1807.html

Bottom line, RAM is something where you might as well get the fastest within reason when you're building from scratch, but upgrading the RAM on an existing system is a waste of money unless you were sitting at 2GB or something.

So I'd say for best results, try oc'ing what you have and get a video card in about the $250-$300 range, with an eye toward transferring it over to a new build about 12-18 months from now when you've hopefully replenished your budget can replace all the remaining important parts at once with high-quality ones.

 

[aznshinobi]

Then at least get this board if you are going to overclock with the i5 3570K or i5 2500K OP.
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards+-+Intel/Socket+1155+-+Intel+Z77/MSI+Z77A-GD55+Intel+Z77+Socket+1155+DDR3+PCI-Express+Motherboard+?productId=48884
It's ATX so for longer cards it'll be a better fit in Crossfire.

 

[Robert21]

As you can probably tell i'm no expert in pcs i'm thinking i might wait a month and increase my budget to £800 so i can get high end parts.

Also whats people's opinion on selling parts of the pc on places like ebay so that could possible increase my budget further?

 

[Guest]

get this:
EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2048MB £329.99 inc VAT
yes it will work on pci 1.0 and yes it will blow away your SLI set up now and yes it will bottleneck.
then after you sell the q6600 for a good chunk of change on ebay, they go like hot cakes for a fair amount of coin and you have another £300 get the system jim45682 posted sans the gpu and you are GOLD!

 

[Robert21]

Hey guys

Well thought i'd come back here for 2 reasons 1 to say thanks for the reommendations and 2 for a little help.

I still have the same system but started running into overheating problems where my PC would just lock up as the cpu temp used to spend alot of time over 70% etc not healthy i know.

So today i replaced the thermal paste on the top of my quad core cpu and had to remove it from the board to clean it. I put some more liquid cooling into my "big water 735 liquid cooling system" for the "armor LCS" case.

So i thought i'd got away with doing it all right when my pc started and launched into windows without any errors and i was very happy, until ofc i started playing a few games.

Now i keep seeing the BSOD and its had the following errors

bad pool header
page fault in non paged area
and general bsod msg

My pc keeps running fine as long as i dont play any games i dont get the BSOD

I've looked in Event viewer in administrive tools and there are a few errors but not sure what to look at etc

Questions

Is this a cpu problem from when i took the cpu out to clean it etc?
Is it a ram problem?

If i've knackered something up is it cheaper to just get a new motherboard which is the only thing i can afford to replace atm?

 

[Robert21]

Stressed out with this pc now it could be the hard drive it could be the ram it could be level 1 or 2 cache

Would it be cheaper to just buy new AMD parts than take it to a pc repair shop?