I’m thinking about helping my dad upgrade his older PC to get a few more years of life out of it. He’s running windows 8.1 on it and it’s working pretty well, but could definitely use a few upgrades. When I built it a few years ago for him, we went pretty cheap knowing we could upgrade certain components in the future. Here are a few ideas I’ve been knocking around, and I would love your suggestions on specific hardware to upgrade.
Motherboard - currently has an XFX nForce 680i LT SLI. Not sure I really want to upgrade this and not sure he really needs it or would benefit from it.
RAM - Currently has 2.0GB of 800MHz DDR2. There are two empty slots as it is, so upgrading this is a no brainer. Anyone recommend a good source/brand for this?
Video Card - Currently has a GeForce 8600 GTS. I think upgrading this would be a good idea, but not sure what the best card out there that would work on his motherboard.
CPU - Currently has Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.40 GHz. I think I could upgrade the processor to something better, but not sure what CPU is supported by the motherboard that would give the best bang for the buck (I’m pretty darn sure it doesn’t support any of the i3, i5, i7 chips for example)
Any and all advice is welcome. Really looking for experts who can give me a few examples of CPUs and Video Cards that would work on the existing motherboard. Also would welcome a suggestion on a brand new motherboard if it was cheap and came bundled with the RAM and CPU.
I used to buy used processors off Ebay. You can get great deals if the motherboard is four or more years old. Make *certain *they have a return policy. Insert processor, run a burn in program like Prime 95 for a couple days. For my customers I ran it five days. I didn’t want any failures. I always gave a 90 day shop warranty. I made good money updating 4 year old pc’s. Save your old processor as a backup. But I never had a failure if the CPU passed the 5 day burn in. I had a few fail during the burn in that I returned.
. memoryman.com is my preferred supplier. I’ve used him since 1998. Ebay used memory is another option, but be prepared to test it with that same burn in program. http://www.memman.com/
If you upgrade the video board make sure your power supply has a power tap for it.
the chart says a Q6700 will work. $59 no shipping cost. 14 day return. I’d jump on it. That’s a simple upgrade for little money. There’s other listings for the same processor.
The chart only lists this quad cord as an upgrade. you could get a higher speed if you went duo core. That’s up to you.
check your MB manual. make sure it can do a 1333 FSB. your running 1066 FSB right now. The chart says you’ll be ok, but double check.
I’d put 1333 memory in the system too. It’s always best to match your cpu FSB and memory speed.
burn in is easy. download free prime95. Install. look under tools and select burn in. Let it run a day minimum. better yet 2 days. check the results text file and make sure the prime numbers computed correctly. It computes the same set of primes over and over again.
for video cards the bus slot is what matters. find out what you mb supports. most would support PCI Express x16. But yours may support something even newer. Your PS Wattage is important.
then it’s just a matter of looking at video cards and their specs. Make sure they support Direct x 11. I’d see what Ebay has for the slot my mb uses. Pick something from that list.
Hope this helps. I didn’t upgrade gamer pcs. I did mostly business or general home use pcs. I’m not the guy that will turn your pc into a blazing hot rod. But my customers always felt their pc’s ran faster. A fresh windows install helped too.
The Q6700 may be your best bet. it’s cheaper and I think it matches your current memory speed of 1066. You can pull your old memory and see if the speed is labeled. But based on your processor it should be 1066.
the other processor is faster, more powerful. but you’ll need faster memory. 1333 for the best results.
I see your memory now is 800MHz. That’s interesting because your Q6600 is a 1066 FSB. shrug, it works. so it’s fine.
you might be ok with the q6700 but I’d upgrade to 1066 ddr2 if it was me. I haven’t checked this for compatibility. but it’s ddr2 1066. 4 gig in 2 dimms Check your mb manual.
Sorry for so many posts. Blame this boards 5 min edit window. Correctly updating a pc takes careful research. I earned my fee that I charged my customers. What I purchased worked. I prided myself on having very few ebay returns unless the component failed in my burn in. Return components postage came out of my pocket and I hated messing with them.
What does he do with it? Additional memory is a no-brainer, but the rest depends upon what he does with it. If he’s a light user - Office etc -then he won’t notice any benefit from a CPU upgrade. You should only upgrade the GPU if he’s a gamer.
I’ll second aceplace57’s recommendation of Prime95 as a testing tool.
One final comment. Your memory speed limits your bus speed. You’re running 800MHz ddr2. That’s your FSB limit. your 1066 fsb processor is running slower to match.
so upgrading the cpu and memory should give a noticeable change. Faster bus means a faster computer.
At least that’s what I’ve read. I’m a Computer Analyst that moonlighted as a Service Technician because I loved the work. I like service work much better than writing SQL reports. A Engineer would know more about memory speed and bus speed.
I’d do the CPU and memory first. I’m not sure it’s worth upgrading the Video card. What version of DirectX does it support? I can’t see your dad needing blazing graphics speed. YMMV
This is what results.txt looks like. Prime95 is using all 4 cores of my processor at 100% to calculate these primes. Best work out I’ve ever found for both the CPU and memory. The calculations for these primes are very, very complex. A unstable or over clocked system will usually fail after a few hours.
There’s no install program. Create a folder like C:\prime95, download into that folder. Unzip there. double click prime95.exe. under Options click torture test. check results.txt after the 1 hour. Let it run. If you don’t get a passed result then there are problems with the PC.
While you can probably find memory cheaper elsewhere, Crucial stuff is reliable.
Frankly other than upgrading memory (since it is cheap and easy to do) I really think you should consider a replacement. For example a three year old refurbished computer off of eBay will probably cost no more than all these upgrades you are proposing and will take less time.
Transferring all the settings, reinstalling all the applications, getting everything patched, and everything the way it was can take a very long time. Adding extra memory is trivial in comparison.
My sideline business upgrading PC’s dried up almost ten years ago. People just wouldn’t pay the cost of my labor.
I believe its still worthwhile to upgrade a pc with used components. If you can do the work yourself. Thats why there is such a strong market for used components on Ebay. Computer recyclers strip old pc’s down and sell the parts. You can get good deals on cpu’s, video cards, memory, and dvd drives. Theres no reason to upgrade a 3 year old pc with new parts. Except, for the hard drive.
I bought a lot of used hard drives for my customers. The hard drives made 12 years ago had very long life spans. Tough and dependable. Unfortunately they aren’t made like that now. You can buy cheap ass hard drives on NewEgg for $60. You get what you pay for. That cheap ass drive will fail within 4 years. I wouldn’t buy used hard drives now. You should always buy new hard drives.
I guess I’m kind of shocked he only has two Gbytes of RAM currently for a computer running Windows 8. Just bumping the RAM to 8 GBytes would make a big difference.
What does your dad use the PC for? If it’s just browsing the internet and other low-power things (which, if he currently only has 2 Gbytes, it kind of has to be), I don’t see why you’d need to do more than add more RAM.
