Thanks for that information. I never plan to game and that tip will be useful.
Do you have a rough idea of what the machine will be used for? Because if it will just be general purpose home use, one of AMD’s A-series APU’s would be a very good and inexpensive choice.
The integrated graphics core will give you the performance of one of their 7xxx series GPU’s if you go with one of the new [Trinity models](http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007671 50001028 600166681 600372026&IsNodeId=1&name=Trinity) and they are fairly energy efficient running at either 65w or 100w TDP. I have one of the older Llano models running my HTPC.
Due to the number of systems Dell sells, they can get their contract manufacturers (like Foxconn, Quanta, etc.) to make the systems more cost-efficient. Some of this goes to customers as reduced prices, some of it goes to Dell for increased profit.
Dell has gotten away from proprietary power supplies (the old XPS R/T/etc. systems used a completely non-standard pinout on the normal motherboard power connector, for example).
However, a Dell chassis will have somewhat closer integration of things like front panel ports and indicators with the motherboard. This is generally a proprietary cable, which means you can’t change the motherboard and still expect the connectors on the front of the case to work. It is possible to make adapter cables or rewire the front panel, but it usually isn’t worth it.
Another issue is that Dell cases don’t have a separate I/O shield, since Dell is only using one motherboard in there - in fact, “bare” cases come from Foxconn with motherboard, power supply, and fan(s) pre-installed.
Also, cables in a Dell chassis will be made-to-length for the Dell components in the chassis. This lets them avoid the “octopus tentacles” of unused cables coming off the power supply. But it does mean the power supply probably can’t be re-used in a generic case.
There are disadvantages with this, as you’ve discovered. But it also lets Dell shoehorn a respectable system into a tiny case (for example, the Optiplex 790 Ultra Small Form Factor).
My blog post on upgrading a Dell Optiplex 755 is one of the most popular posts on my blog, with over 75,000 views and 180 comments. So there’s definitely interest out there, and at least some discussions of how to get the most out of an older Dell box.
To give you an idea how big the orders that Dell places with its suppliers are, consider that every Turtle Beach Montego sound card has a label with the Dell part number (DP/N) on it, regardless of whether it was sold to Dell or you bought it from Turtle Beach in retail packaging.
The two places where it chokes up now are PhotoShop and MS Access.
All my graphics have a resolution of 600 ppi or higher. According to Process Explorer, CPU is taxed at 100% and memory usually tops out at 75 to 80 percent. I only have 3GB and onboard video.
My databases aren’t huge, but some tables have 50 fields. Things were going fairly well until I added the last three fields and now it takes twenty seconds or so for forms to load.
There’s the usual internet stuff which is generally of no consequence. I don’t watch many videos but they’re certainly buffering more than they should. I don’t stream video or do podcasts. Microsoft patches scrape along at slow speeds but that may be their fault.
I’d definitely like to speed up my disk-disk backups but much of that will probably come from having all the disks mounted internally. I think all my drives are SATAII but the USB is ancient and can’t take advantage. Newer, faster, bigger drives will come, but not in the initial build. Similarly, my defrags take forever but I expect a bigger boost from drives than motherboard.
I do a lot of FLAC downloads and those are probably limited by throughput from the servers and my internet provider.
Like everyone, I’m looking for a sweet-spot that’s not overkill but will still provide reasonably good performance for five years or so. I expect the power supply to be life-of-machine. I expect drive swaps will come as needed. I don’t know much about the benefits of separate video cards but should probably plan for one down the road as more things shift online. One day I may buckle down and digitize all the old vinyl and VHS, and need separate video and audio, or a mid-life motherboard upgrade may move technology forward enough that the onboard functions will suffice.
I haven’t decided on a specific motherboard yet. Realistically, the build is probably two months in the future. I might pick up the case, power supply, fans and other peripherals but nothing really comes into focus until a choose the CPU/motherboard combo. Prices on those fluctuate, so the target is always moving.
I’m not a real gear head in sense that most people you’d talk to about shit like this would be. I have very specific interests related to distributed computing and I only learn what I absolutely have to for my builds (and sometimes, not even that - god some of the horror stories I could tell you). And even for the rigs I use daily, I’m far from a performance junkie - this is an old 1090t for example.
I mention this so you know to take anything I say with a grain of salt. Having said that though, it sounds like the biggest issue right now is memory. I’m tempted to tell you to just upgrade the ram and see if that doesn’t make things much better, but I’m guessing your rig has DDR2 and not DDR3 sdram, so that probably won’t fly.
In building the new machine, in allocating your budget, I would give priority to the memory and get a minimum of 16gig. Prices for 2 4gig sticks of 240 pin (there aren’t actually any pins) DDR3 1333 CAS 9 SDRAM start at about $55. So figure a minimum of about $100 for ram. This also means the m/b will need 4 memory slots, some only have 2. 8 gig sticks are available, but still make sure you have 4 slots.
As to your current plan of prioritizing the PSU and case, that’s a good move. Something in the 550-650w range is probably adequate, but I would look to the high end rather than the low. Power supplies are never supposed to be run at capacity. I don’t know what percentage of max is considered optimal, but when I pull 60% out of my ass, that feels about right. I can look into though if it’s an issue. 
What you mainly get with more wattage is more connectors. That usually means a) more PCI-e connectors (high end gpus need 2 3-4 pin molex connectors) and b) more m/b connectors (usually for dual socket or high end boards designed for overclocking).
With this as your base, given the interchangeability of PCI-e and DDR3, what you’re really down to is m/b and cpu. So once you’re comfortable tearing these things apart, swapping out a m/b is no big. And changing the cpu you could literally do blindfolded and in your sleep. So the only issue is cost and maybe form factor.
But if you go with an ATX case, virtually any m/b you want will be ATX or smaller. There are exceptions like my SR-2 which is HPTX form factor, but god have mercy on your soul if you ever get to that point. The point is that you can start out with something like quad core 3.8 GHz A10 and decent m/b for under $200 which includes decent graphics (Radeon HD 7660D) Sure, it’s pretty far down the list, but it’s still pretty good.
And when you consider that the cheapest non-hyperthreaded Intel quad chip is $180 - FOR JUST THE CHIP, not even a side of salsa . . . IDK, it starts to look like it might be a fun experiment.
I agree.
What exactly do you do in Photoshop? Because modern Nvidia and ATI GPUs can accelerate some functions in Photoshop.
I don’t mind honest criticism, but pot shots like that sort of annoy me. I don’t suppose you would care to elaborate? I would be interested in knowing what misinformation you think I’ve dispensed or in what other ways I’ve shown myself to be full of shit.
Mainly create CD covers for local bands and blogging friends who are into making mixtapes. Performance is adequate for the task but saves take 15 to 20 seconds and cause me annoyance. Sometimes I’m working on too many layers at once and that sucks up memory but it goes back down after a save.
And I’ll reiterate once again (for other posters), the machine is frequently 100% CPU bound when I have multiple tasks running. It very rarely shows more than 75% memory when things are slowed down and peak commit charge between reboots runs closer to 1,500,000. Everyone always points to memory as being a bottleneck but I don’t think it’s the primary issue here. If I did, I’d certainly bump up from 3GB to 4GB (the max for this machine) and postpone the update even longer.
If I recall correctly, I need at least 8GB just to run Windows 7 or 8. It would keep initial build costs lower if I could use that as my base point and decide if I need more after putting the machine through it’s paces. Memory is easy to add and I believe it’s currently priced at the high end of the range.
There’s more of a desire for better performance than a need. I think the Dell is from 2006. Everything has improved since then and it’s time to kick it up a notch.
And for Yoyodyne. Your advice seems to be directed at a higher performance level than I feel I need (and I admit that my objectives may come from complete ignorance), and the snark in some of your posts is off-putting. It’s obvious that you know what you’re talking about, but I think the responses on both points could be dialed down.
PSP 12.1 version 5.1 Service Pack 3
MS Office Pro 2007
The reason I mentioned memory was because of the database performance. The fact that such a small change had a dramatic affect is usually an indication of increased pagefile activity (virtual memory).
You can verify this by using taskmanager and performance monitor (start->admin tools->performan->add->pagefile) Here’s and article on it. There are also utilities like this, but none I’m familiar with.
As for the stuff that’s computationally bound, as Quartz noted, most programs like Adobe will be able to use either hardware acceleration whether it’s nvidia or AMD hardware although I think nvidia did have the edge a couple years ago.
Also, you’ll probably want to get a quad CPU which if you go with a hyperthreaded intel i7 quad is really more like have 8 virtual cores. Since many programs can multithread, that will also be a substantial boost.
edit: memory is easy to add, but default to the slowest speed and latency, so it’s a bit more complicated. Just so you know.
I think then we can skip the hardware acceleration as an extra that would be nice.
A new HDD should fix that.
I think you will be disappointed with the performance of an AMD APU / Intel Atom solution.
Not really, but Windows 7 does like having 8 GB.
It really sounds like a ‘white box’ solution would suit you very nicely. Intel i5 CPU (upgrade to i7 when prices drop); ASUS, Gigabyte, or MSI motherboard; 8+ GB RAM; new HDD; modest case + PSU. Add in a GPU when funds permit.
One thing I hadn’t considered, but given the vintage of your PC you’re probably using a CRT. Be sure to keep it. The colour rendition on cheap LCD monitors is not good enough for Photoshop. That said, I do recommend that when funds permit, you buy one to use in addition to your CRT. You will see a significant productivity increase, simply by having your menus, notes, etc, on the second monitor.
The AMD APUs he is talking about (A10-5800k) are in a whole nother class from the Intel Atom. An A10-5800k is the CPU equivalent of an i3-3220 (more or less- Intel is better single threaded, AMD better multithreaded). Certainly not the equivalent of an Intel Atom. If you are thinking of the AMD “E” series CPUs included in the very cheapest notebooks, those are pretty slow, but generally only the “A” series are referred to as APUs.
Not only that, it is universally recognized, outside of Intel anyway, that their integrated graphics, both IGP and on chip, suck fetid bobnobo ass.
I rebooted this morning and haven’t hammered the machine today so I can’t act on this information yet. I’d like to stay for a week and gather more information to get an accurate picture.
It looks like it will go a long way toward shedding light on the myriad memory/page/swap numbers. It doesn’t cover the “delta” numbers given by Process Explorer and I’m coming up blank on a useful description but I’ll keep digging.
Ruh? Delta? [while cocking head quizzically to one side]
I found this on SuperUser if it helps. It mentions 2 utilities that should make it easier to suss things out.
BTW, if you manage to piece it all together and don’t mind coming back to explain it to us, the unwashed masses, certainly I would be in your debt. [bows] 
By “white box” I’m assuming that you’re describing what I recognize as a “bare bones system”. I’ve been watching those over several years and have nearly always found one major component that seemed wrong for my purposes. It’s also more difficult to find an irresistible sale price to make me pull the trigger. They’re already discounted by virtue of thier bundling. I’ve always wondered if vendors put these together to move their less popular components.
Good point about the CRT. Yes, that’s what I have, and I’m looking forward to a flat screen bringing me more real estate in a smaller footprint. But a new monitor would probably come near the end of the build, and it’s not like people are lined up trying to buy my old screen. The local Goodwill doesn’t even want CRT TVs/monitors. There’s little reason not to hold onto this.
I use Process Explorer the proclaimed “higher level” Microsoft XP system information tool. My screen-shot program apparently has been quarantined as spyware, so I can’t show the display. This is essentially what it looks like when you drill down, although mine also has a visual for physical memory.
Under the Paging category, the current numbers are 6538, 0, 0, 0. The official explanation for Page Fault Delta is “change in the number of page faults since the last update”. That tells me virtually nothing. Page Fault Delta bounces up and down by several thousand every second. Read Delta has reached as high as 296 while I’ve been watching but is usually below 3.
I won’t have time to dig into your links a day or two, but it looks very useful. Briefly running through your theeldergeek link, my Peak Commit has (to my knowledge) never exceeded 50% of the limit over the last year. the Commit Charge Peak has very occasionally exceeded Total Memory, always from PhotoShop use. Doing a save of my work tosses away the memory reserved for the 30 history steps I’ve built up, and memory drops back to a manageable level.
Most of the time the peak for Physical Memory during major work hovers between 2 and 2.5 GB. A boost from 3GB to 8GB will be wonderful, and will eliminate one of the roadblocks but not the primary one. My CPU will hit 100% several times in the course of an hour. It’s not unusual for Firefox to momentarily eat 60% for no apparent reason.
My computer runs just fine with only 2 GB of memory (Windows 7; Windows 8 has similar requirements and in fact requires fewer resources) and usually stays below 50%, although I don’t do anything that is very memory intensive. For the same reason, I only have a 200 GB hard drive, of which about 25 GB is used (I figure it would take a couple millennia to fill it up with personal data based on what I have so far).
Just for the record, regarding if the case is usable:
I recently bought a new case for my i5 based system. The old case was a bit too heavy and the loud. I actually first bought it in 1998 and it housed a Pentium 2. It got upgraded a few years later to a Pentium 3 and I think may have had a P4 in there at some point. The i5 was installed a couple of years ago.
I actually felt weirdly nostalgic when I put it in the recycling room in the building. For the record, I replaced it with one of these. I highly recommend them: