I've been out of the game for quit some time. I built this PC (PC Build Details) years ago and haven't upgraded anything. It gets little use currently. When my son comes home on breaks from college he uses it to play Rocket League and Runescape. Other than that, it's only used occasionally. That might change now that I have renewed interests. I upgraded to Windows 10 (clean install) and its running pretty good. I looked into overclocking but I believe the fan on the Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler is out (its not overheating but probably wouldn't support additional heat). Fix or replace? Cooler suggestions? Good performing but least expensive (vs Cheap) the better. Should I bother with overclocking or invest in another LGA1366 CPU? Someone mentioned Xeon's could be bought cheap. Any recommendations? Also, video card could use an upgrade. Not wanting to spend much dough. Suggestions appreciated. Thanks in advance!
No problem but what specs? I provided a link to the build which shows all the components. Were you able to see that? Maybe you need more and I’m happy to provide. Thanks a bunch!
thats a blast from the past all right.i remember having an hd4870.great card in its day.maybe throw a little newer gpu in and an ssd.
maybe a gtx 570 or similar.ssd depends on what you want it for.if its just for the os and a few games and or favorite programs,256gb would probably do you.this doesnt sound like your daily driver.further to the video card you could probably even find a used one.
I would probably advise against overclocking hardware that old, you are likely to push fragile hardware over the edge and experience reliability issues. You would gain far more performance by replacing the hardware with new components. Credit to you for still running the same build for over 9 years though, it just goes to show how much hardware improvements have stagnated since then. GTX570s are not as old as the HD4890 in the original machine but are still many years out of date by this point and carry the usual risks of buying second-hand hardware well beyond end-of-life. You may get another few years' use out of it, or may only last a month. If you need more graphics performance you're probably better off buying something like a GTX 1050 Ti. That's a relatively inexpensive card which is almost double the performance of a GTX570, which was in itself more than 60% faster than the HD4890, so you'd be looking at triple the video performance at least for $170 or so. If the rest of the system works to your satisfaction and you don't game very often, you may as well leave the rest until you experience a failure. While there are much faster CPUs than the i7 920 available nowadays, the gains aren't anywhere near as obvious as they are with graphics, and you'll be spending a lot more than that for a suitable replacement.
Good feedback and thanks again to YOU for all your assistance in building “this” almost 10 year old machine. Haha As some background, I was able to fix the CPU cooler fan (tricks learned from YouTube) and I am currently overclocking at ~3.8 GHz. That was done about 3-4 days ago. I’ve ran several stress tests to include an extended test. So far so good. If it “craps the bed” I guess I’ll have an excuse to upgrade. I’m not particularly happy with the Cooler Master V8’s cooling ability. As I remember, I may have went my own way on that hardware choice. Hehe. What can I say, it “looked” cool. I’m confused by all the manufacturers of the GTX 1050 ti. Does one brand warrant addition expense. I prefer the most BANG for the BUCK. What about RAM? I have 6 GB, using 3 of 6 slots. Should I add more and if so, can I buy 3 more DIMM’s and still use the ones I have? I saw something about not being able to use 4 GB sticks so I was confused by that. The specs show a 24 GB max. So, NO, on a Xeon 5660-5680 even if I can acquire used for $30-50?
this is a good build to have some fun overclocking on.i would say no on the xeon.now is the time to start thinking about a new build.its hard to let go but to spend any money on that build,unless it was on a component that could be used in a new one is strictly an exercise in futility.i had my triple core phenom for years and overclocked as far as i could make it.it was fun but sooner or later reality sets in .lol
Re: the GPU brand - Not really, all the partner brands are fairly similar in terms of performance. If anything I often advise against the factory overclocked examples for longevity reasons. More RAM than 6GB is advisable in a performance system these days, it would be worthwhile populating your remaining slots to make 12GB, if you expect to get a lot more serviceable life out of this existing system. Whether you will or not after 9+ years of use, I couldn't say, that's largely down to luck. Bear in mind also that populating all the RAM slots will place additional load on the memory controller and make overclocking a little more difficult - the speed you have that's stable now may no longer be with 12GB fitted and that would be no fault of the RAM you installed if it were the case (unless of course you experienced issues at stock speed which is another matter). Also worth considering, you are running DDR3 - still widely available but the current standard is DDR4 - any RAM you buy for this system will not be transferable to a new build, whereas the GPU upgrade will, as PCIe standards are backwards-compatible. The Xeon X5680 may be worth a punt if you can find one cheap, but you're probably only going to see a 20% gain in performance at best, possibly less. You also have no idea how hard a life that CPU has had before now. If it's been overclocked already for many of those years, its remaining lifespan may be very limited. Whether that's worth the time finding it, buying it and fitting it is a matter of personal opinion. Once again, an upgraded CPU on that socket will not be transferable to a new machine if you wish to take that route later on. I would generally agree with the sentiment of aldan's post. It could be fun to tinker with all this and the GPU upgrade is certainly worthwhile doing as you can keep it for later, but any money spent on the CPU / RAM will not be a long-term investment.
Thanks again. What would you suggest if I don’t want to spend that much to get a 1050ti? I don’t foresee building a new machine ANY time soon so I’m not as concerned about moving it to another build.
It'd be best to fully list your requirements that concern the graphics card (basically just games - which ones, what level of detail you're happy to settle with, and what display resolution you use). Below the GTX1050Ti the advantages over your current card will become much less pronounced.
Ok. With that said I’ll go with that card when I end up upgrading. I don’t have a list of games other than Rocket League and Runescape which my son plays. Thank you.
LGA 1366 Xeons are pretty cheap and overclocks really good. X5650 is a 6 cores 12 threads chip and can be found dirt cheap. Also you can upgrade ram to 8GB or 16GB as DDR3 memories are cheap. Also, you can find used RX470/480.
