I Guess An Upgrade Is In Order. Its been 5 years but should I do a little or a lot?

[vujsa 0]

Even at the time that I built it, it was a modest machine. I spent a lot of time shopping for the perfect components for my system and my budget.My first PC was an IBM Aptiva which was limited in the amount of upgrading that it could handle. I quickly ran out of memory, CPU, and HDD usability.I maxed out the memory, added the second hard drive (a total of 8GB), and the processor didn't have too many faster version available. When the motherboard finally lost it's floppy drive controller, I was stuck since the Aptiva motherboard and case were both proprietory form factors. They only worked together so I couldn't just buy a new motherboard. So in spring 2002, I had to replace my Aptiva (100MHz, 256MB, 1.6GB HDD & 6.3GB HDD) with a new Pentium 4 system.As I suggested earlier, I was very particular in my selection of components. My biggest motivation was upgradability! I bought the largest, usable Full ATX case I could find. Slide out HDD mount, slide out motherboard tray, 5 ext. 5.25" drive bays, 6 3.5" int. drive bays, 1 3.5" ext. drive bay, 3 built in fan slots plus the power supply fans, and 7 expansion slots. I followed this with a 300 Watt Antec power supply with dual fans and more 12V connectors than I could ever use. I think you are seeing the theme here, make sure I have room for upgrades latter!The processor, motherboard and memory were the next step. I went with a lesser processor speed since I was sure of future upgradability. I bought a boxed Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz, 256KB cache, 400MHz FSB. The biggest processor at the time was the same Pentium 4 with 2.2GHz 512KB cache so I wasn't too far behind. I parked that CPU in an Intel D845WN motherboard. It is a modest motherboard with 6 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, 4 external USB ports, 1 internal USB port, 3 168 pin DIMM slots for up to 3GB of memory, and built in audio. As you may have just realized, my biggest compromise was the memory. DDR was very expensive at the time. There were so many memory emerging memory technologies to choose from, SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, and RDRAM. I choose the the PC133 SDRAM since it was a lot cheeper (like 50% less or more), the selection of motherboards was greater, and the future of RDRAM and DDR SDRAM was unclear. Really glad I didn't chose the Rambus (RDRAM) memory now since it lost the battle. I went ahead and installed a single stick of 512 MB of memory in the system.So I ended up with a very expandable motherboard and case with multiple hard drives and optical drives. Of course, I had to add some components to use the system. An FDD, NIC, modem, 3 case fans, video capture graphic card, keyboard, mouse, and more USB ports. I reused my old monitor which was a refurbished model we bought in 1996 and still works!It has be a very good system. The only trouble I had was with a HDD and that inspired me to buy twin HDD's and a RAID controler. It worked! A HDD crashed and took the RAID controler with it but I still had the backup drive which I still use. My only real problem is dust! I don't have a forced air heating system so the house gets dusty and the computer suffers from that. When enough dust collects on them, the fans slow down and the system warms up. This usually results in slower performance until I open up the case and clean it out. Dust is a bad thing, not only does it slow the fans, it blankets the components and traps heat. The war system attracts even more dust as a result and the sysem is noticably slower!Recently, I've noticed that with the new browser running, the IM client, Email, text editor, and FTP client all open the system sometimes hangs. ;)So, I've decided to upgrade. ;)The plan is to max out the CPU with a Pentium 4 2.0GHz 400MHz FSB 512KB cache processor. This is the fastest processor that is listed compatible with the motherboard that is still available. The 2.2GHz processor was the fastest that Intel says is compatible but that processor isn't available any longer. The 2.5GHz is probably fine but costs 3 times as much but is still available. I'll play it safe with the 2.0GHz! I'll double my memory for now which will give me 1GB at 133MHz. The memory increase alone should really improve my performance. Since the memory bus is 3 times sloer than the FSB, this causes a bottleneck which can only be resolved with additional memory. I can install 1GB memory modules but I haven't been able to find 1GB sticks with all of the features I want. I'll still have one additional memory slot I can add another 512MB to later if needed.I think that an additional HDD or replacement drive will come in the next year. Other than that, I I'm very happy with my computer. I wish I had an older system that I could use as a test server since my windows version of Apache, PHP, and MySQL just isn't the same as the Linux version. I think I can do the CPU and memory upgrades for $130.00 with shipping. That's a lot better than buying a new computer that which is limited in upgradability for $800.00 to $1000.00 or building a system for $1000.00 to $1400.00.The next step would either be build a new system in a few years or possibly replace the motherboard, CPU, and memory only which right now would cost me $300.00 plus whatever I need to ensure that my IDE drives will work with the motherboard. That would be for a Pentium D 3.0GHz CPU and compatable motherboard with 2GB of memory. Of course, that was a quick search for comparison purposes and the motherboard only has 3 expansion slots instead of the 4+ I prefer.I guess in the grand scheme of things, maybe the new guts is the better option which would give me a great start on that test server I'd like to build from an older system.Any thoughts?vujsa

[vizskywalker 0]

Whenever I go for a new machine (or upgrade) I do one of two things (well three things really).1) I manage to acquire lots of old computers (PIII) and lots of memory (mostly 32MB unfortunately) so I occasionally just take all my machines and put the best components together, leads to decent, but not good by any imagination, computers.2) Simply upgrade CPU and RAM (motherboard if required) and graphics card if the upgrade is for a game.3) Get an entirely new computer, but build it myself, or at least pick a highly customizeable (and upgradable) pre-built.So far, the most common thing I've done is #1, and I've done #3 for family computers and when getting my laptop for college. Never had a chance (or reason, or money) to do #2 yet, and probably won't for a long time because I'm saving up for my $15000 machine (no the three zeros is not a typo).In your case, I would probably just go with the better CPU and RAM, although you may want to look into a higher speed RAM if the motherboard can support it. Going up one level in speed (I'm not sure what the 200 level RAM speed is exactly, I think it's 267 or 266) will give you much less of a bottleneck for not much more cost.~Viz

[wutske 0]

whatever you do, upgradability will be nill. Your motherboard is outdated and it supports nothing but outdated stuff (wich is more expensive, like SDRAM). Upgrading the cpu with only 300Mhz and adding some more memory will only make you keeping this computer another year, so I don't think this is the best solution. The cpu is useless too, +300Mhz is realy nothing, you'll hardly notice the difference.I'd rather look for a new motherboard, cpu, memory and graphics card and this doesn't have to cost you $800-$1000, you can still refurbish a lot of things from your current computer. If you do this, you'll have a computer that can run fast enough for a few years. After 3-4 years you will of course have the same problem as you have now, everything is outdated (in 3 years, will probably have PCI-e5.0, DDR4.0 and the CPUs are wireless ).I know it's a tough decision (money wise), but I think you'll get more out of your money if you do a good upgrade rather than paying a lot of money for old hardware that isn't going to make your computer noticeably faster.P.s. doing a fresh windows installation can speed things up too .

[vujsa 0]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies.

 

I think I decided to replace the motherboard. Mostly because I really want to use the old one for a linux system. I have an older, smaller power supply that I can use and can either build a case or buy a really cheap one. Of course, I'll need a cheap graphics card for it as I plan to reuse my old one for the upgraded system.

 

With A KVM switch, I should be good to go and any new board will have built in LAN support so I don't need a new NIC. Of course I suitable HDD's in storage since I don't need much for the system. 6.8GB and 40GB HDDs will be more than enough for this project!

 

I don't worry too much about being behind in upgrades. I like to stay at least one step behind since my budget is limited usually.

But if I put in a new motherboard with a 3GHz Pentium 4 and 1GB RAM for $300.00 now, I can probably upgrade that in a couple of years to a topped out Pentium D or Core 2 Duo for about another $150.00 depending on how much the processor prices drop in that period of time. Of course, I would still be behind but not as far as I am now and for my use, I don't need an ultra fast PC!

 

Now to find the new motherboard:

Probably LGA775 Socket since it is the current Intel standard for desktop motherboards and allows for a wide range of processors.

Dual Channel DDR2 800/667/533 Memory

Built in LAN 10/100 or better

RAID - At least mirroring support

ATX, not µATX

At least 3 PCI slots for upgradability and 1 AGP slot (4+ PCI slots would be better)

Built in video support would be nice so I can run multiple monitors without much additional cost

IDE (PATA) would be nice so I don't have to buy adapters right away but SATA should definitely be available

Only reputable motherboard manufacturers will be considered

It is hard to shop for motherboards since there are so many that just don't meet the requirements and the selectors (configurators) vary from site to site. Even after you find the perfect board, you may not find a place to buy it! I remember spending 2 moths researching the last time I did this! But the internet has grown a lot since then and it is easier tha ever to find stuff now. Used to be mit the MOBOT @ motherboards.org and then get maybe 2 possibilities and then shop the 5 or 6 online shops that sold motherboards to find that they didn't carry either board! So go back to the MOBOT and find a few near perfect motherboards and repeat the process until you get something close to what you need for a reasonable price.

 

I tend to spend the most money on the motherboard since it determins the amount of upgradability the system will have. Unfortunately, the current motherboard never got the benefits of such upgrades because times were pretty lean in recent years. I should have upgraded to the 2GHz processor about 2 years ago but I didn't have the money then. Now I'm behind schedual!

 

vujsa

[vizskywalker 0]

Sorry vujsa, I couldn't find any motherboards matching your specifications with an AGP slot. However, I found some with 4 PCI slots. Check out newegg.com, if you do an advanced search, you can specify all of your options. Here's the results page I got for your specs without AGP.

~Viz

[vujsa 0]

Yeah, the newegg search engine has a common flaw when used as a configuration finder.If a motherboard has multiple options for a category, they have a hard time matching them correctly.For example, if I ask for LGA775 boards for Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo / Pentium D / Celeron processors, it won't match a board that also accepts a Pentium 4! This creates a problem when searching the databases since you really have to search each processor type that you want compatibilty for the manually cross reference them.But it is still so much easier than it was 5 years ago.For example, the max LAN speed you chose was 10/100/1000Mbps which means only boards that match exactly that! For my home system, I don't need a 1Gbps network since I'm not even close to 100Mbps for my internet and we don't do a lot of file sharing here! So that eliminates a large number of potential boards because the search engine wants to make exact matches. ;)5 years ago, there were so many options that you couldn't search for! Like internal LAN, internal audio, RAID, and USB ports but you could search by the number of EISA slots. ;)Another problem with newegg is that it only searches a database of newegg products. Intels search engine will include all intel compatible board! It still has many of the same problems that most configurators do though! This is because designers are lazy and don't want to return false positives. Also, this flawed system is easier to add features and products to.Thanks for the search. I have a couple of boards in mind but need more time to read the spec sheets on a few dozen to narrow the field!vujsa

[kgd2006 0]

I eventually would probably want to add more ram in my computer. I always feel that I needed more ram. I currently have a Alienware computer with the first generation dual core. And its been running great, only thing I wish I had more of was RAM. The one gig that I currently have in the system right now just isnt cutting it. I would notice slow downs every now and then when I have applications running with a game also running. I know its not good to be doing so much to it, but I always like to test out my setup to see if its worthy of the price I paid for it. Maybe when its time for me to get a new computer I probably will build one, just to save the cost.