Computer upgrades!

[jae]

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I finally worked on upgrading my old home desktop last night.

This is the most recent computer I built for myself, if I recall correctly, right after I graduated college, which would have put it early 2009. Even then it wasn't top-of-the-line, but basic run down on the build was a micro-ATX case with an ASUS M3A78-EM motherboard, AMD x2 7750 processor, 2x 2gb of Corsair XMS2 DDR2-8500, 400 gb hard drive, and a 1gb video card of some sort (can't remember now). Over the years I've gone to a SSD for the boot drive, replaced the power supply, just about every fan, and most recently the video card with a 2gb Nvidia GeForce 710. Not a power house by any means, but until recently it really was just used for web browsing/watching videos and my wife's music program (she scores a ton of music for her wedding group, and some other artists she performs/records with).

Since I've been trying to do video editing for the youtubes I've really come to notice just how slow it is, so I decided on an upgrade. I ran a preliminary benchmark just so I could see what (if any) improvement there would be. Unfortunately even the "newest" processors the board would support are around 7-8 years old now. Parts I used for the update include an AMD Phenom ii X6 1090T processor, 4x 2gb Corsair Dominator DDR2 6400 (apparently this mobo will only support 2 sticks of the 1066mhz ram, so I went with 4 sticks of 800 mhz that's supposed to be a tier above the XMS2 line), and a Corsair H60 liquid cooler.

The liquid cooler was a PITA, because while I couldn't find it documented anywhere, I apparently needed to adjust bios settings to ignore the CPU fan speed before installing it, as I couldn't even access bios the first couple of times I tried to boot. Having a very slim case, I also had to make some modifications in order to be able to mount the radiator, which now sits on the outside of the case. I still haven't gotten the case fully reassembled as I'm going to have to make some more modifications due to the real estate used by the new ram's heatsink. It seems to have some interference with the optical drive/hard drive cage, but nothing a little clearancing with a grinder won't solve. Anyway, here's where I am now, at least until I can get home and reassemble:




...and the benchmark test once everything was in with updated drivers, etc. It's also worth noting that under the test stress, CPU temps dropped from ~43C to ~23C going from the stock heatsink/fan to the liquid cooler, so there may be a bit of room to OC the processor without having to worry about excessive heat.


Given the jump in the overall score, I'm really hoping that this will let me process videos a little quicker. So far, not a bad upgrade for $150.

[DerGolgo]

Your images aren't showing, only the error message, image doesn't exist or is no longer available.

Upgraded a bit myself, 'bout a month or two ago. Bigger SSD for my boot drive. The old one had been fine in 2013, with 128gb, but I needed more. Also needed a PIC to SATA adapter, because all the old old-fashioned hds I still have, which back up each other and the boot drive, I had already occupied all the SATA ports. Now I got a 256gig boot drive, and a 128gig drive that's all page file.

Had decided against a more substantial upgrade, simply because I didn't wanna invest more than €100-ish when I plan on replacing the whole setup in a year or two, and had already upgrade the graphics card a few months earlier.
Went from my old nVidia GT640 to a an AMD Radeon RX 560.
FUCK do I regret buy that piece of shit. The AMD Drivers suck arse (won't maintain window positions if I turn off my screens because I leave it running over night, and when I turn the screens on, will suddenly decide to forget the resolution settings and set itself to some bullshit that crashes some programs I left on in the background like KSP). Performance is okay, but the drivers just suck so fucking hard.

I wanted liquid cooling, but I didn't wanna make great mods to my case, only mounting point that would have fit a radiator would have been the left outer case wall, the one I take off for fettlin on the insides. So just got me a bigger air-cooler. The installation was a bit nightmarish, because it's so huge, you cannot reach the screws from above ... nor the RAM slots any more. Which now means I have to disassemble the whole computer, almost, take out the motherboard and take off that cooler if I wanna upgrade my RAM. But that probably ain't happening. Without my new cooler, I wouldn't be able to use my computer at all, presently, with temperatures in the 90s. That shitty little intel cooler I had on before hadn't just been louder, but also would let over-temperature BSODs happen in room temperatures in the high 80s.

Originally got my present computer in 2013, had it built at the time (so they couldn't piss on about denying me warranty) and I will replace it with a more muscular machine within the next two years, I hope.
I'm drooling over the AMD Threadripper 2, 32 core CPU... though it'll likely "only" be some 8 core machine, or the Threadripper 16 core, if that gets cheap enough. Or I might keep my present 4 core, if I can't afford it (which is in the cards).

Fun fact: After the installing of the new fan, I was dicking about in the BIOS and then kicked myself.
The RAM speed had been set at 1333 MHz when I got it, I had always assumed I had 1333 MHz ram and had never looked into it.
Turned out I had 1600 MHz RAM all the time. I think it got a bit faster when I changed that, and when I overclocked the CPU a mild and tiny little bit, but I didn't measure it or anything. Would be pointless without a measurement of the previous setup for comparison.

[jae]

weird. I'll try again, though they did show up on my end earlier I'm also seeing a "does not exist" error.

benchmark(s)


Don't know why, but running it again, I'm consistently testing right around 965. I don't know that that number really means anything significant, except when comparing it to the score of the original setup at 539. Huge step up considering the upgrades I'm running are still essentially 7 year old parts.

...and state of assembly, which unfortunately, hasn't really changed much. I did get the fan speed detection worked out, as well as being able to read the pump rpm (at least in bios). There's just been too much damn troubleshooting on this liquid cooled assembly. Even with the radiator mounted outside the case, the micro-ATX seems to be just a bit too cramped for these long-ass water lines that appear to be made to stretch across the room. However, complaining about fitment aside, the benchmark tool is still reporting a 25C CPU temp while the GPU is hovering around low 50's.