Ok, my motherboard is showing its age by going a bit wonky around the USB ports. I have a nice graphics card in the AGP slot that works well, but apparently that is fairly ancient. So, I am looking at replacing the motherboard, processor, memory and possibly the case. I am planning to keep the power supply and the drives, and not redo the OS, which is a fairly stable XP pro installation.
What should I get?
I just did my first DIY system and I’m running The Sims 3 with no problems.
Motherboard
Gigabyte P55A UD3
Graphics card
Radeon 5770
8GB RAM although I only use about 2.5 during play.
23" LCD monitor
I play at 1920x1080 resolution with most of the settings at medium or high.
Make sure your power supply can handle any extra load.
You won’t be able to keep your install when switching motherboards and CPU’s. The HAL layer if nothing else will prevent it.
You’ll have to reinstall.
I would say the i5 or the Phenom II will do you right. Motherboard - you’re really just looking for one with a PCIex 2.0 slot and enough USB ports.
The 5770 is a great card, I’d second that recommendation.
You can actually keep windows installs with pretty much completely different hardware, but it might bite you in the ass later with weird problems. I would recommend a clean install on a brand new system. Plus, windows 7 is worth upgrading for.
The sims 3 isn’t a horribly demanding game so you don’t need to spend that much - but you might as well throw together a decent system for general usage - what does your budget look like?
Edit: You may have to replace your power supply. If you’re using a system with an AGP slot, it’s probably at least 5 years old (unless low end computers retained AGP slots longer than that and I’m not aware of it), which might mean your PSU doesn’t support the current 24 pin ATX standard.
I have kept my install through motherboard swaps before, more than once. Kinthalis, what you say is flatly wrong.
I have not set my budget yet. I usually look for the elbow in the price curve, and get what is in the crook. From what I can see, that means i5, but i7 is not out of the question, but i7 extreme is too extreme for me. I also look at a decent pre-made and use that as a budget guide. I typically get fairly current technology that does last a while this one was built originally in 2002, and made incremental improvements and replaced parts that failed. I do photoshop, and sims 3 but no FPS. My current set up runs Sims 3 fine, but I am taking the usb issue as a sign that now is upgrade time. I don’t want to reinstall because I have so much installed that is playing nice with each other.
[Computer shop owner hat on]
What Kinthalis said is best practice, and under the circumstances more right than wrong..
It can be done but you want to look for a motherboard with the same or very similar chipset. Problem is this is probably a 5-7 year old AGP class board so even a close chipset match is gonna be unlikely. If looking into a core i3-i7 series CPU, the differences in chipset are gonna be very dramatic making it unlikely that a straight swap would work, especially under XP. If the OP wanted to go with one of the lower end/older socket 775 boards with a dualcore/core2duo it would be more likely to succeed.
We would need full model numbers on his existing board to make a good call on how to proceed here without turning this into a major problem for the OP that leaves him with a system that won’t go into windows.
If the OP wants to try, BACK UP YOUR DOCS/PICS first.
I already backed up my pics and docs to an external drive. I am starting the process by getting a SATA drive and I will see if I can copy my OS and boot from that drive. I came to the same conclusion about the socket 775 boards with a dualcore/core2duo as anything higher end seems a bit pointless with XP. Fortunately, that technology is not so old that it has gotten expensive again. I am moving to SATA because those motherboards seem to only support 2 PATA devices and I like my DVD players
And the statement that I won’t be able to keep my install through a motherboard swap is still flatly wrong. I read it and my heart sunk until KellyM reminded me that we have done such a move twice now. I don’t appreciate the scare.
Exactly. Op I’m telling you, it won’t happen. Not going from a 5 year old rig to something modern. Even if by the grace of Zeus it boots, you can expect headaches. Why not take this chance and do a clean install and save yourself some aggravation. I speak from experience. I guarantee you that as much of a pain as it will be to reinstall your apps, not doing a clean install is likely to leave you with ten time the aggravation.
In fact, your upgrading to modern hardware, why not pick up an oem version of 64 bit windows 7 and fully join the modern computing world?
I also don’t appreciate the insinuation that I’m just trying to scare you. I’ve built computers since I was 10 years old. I know the likely sources of problems. Any one with even a bit of experience (as drachillux illustrates) will tell you the same. Good luck, whatever you decide to do.
Kinthalis, I am not insinuating you are trying to scare me. I am saying that you did, albeit briefly, until I realized you were wrong.
I do realize that I can’t go to an i7, but I think there is a reasonable path to keeping this computer going. I will likely soon start a second PC with windows 7 pro, but I have reasons for keeping this one around.
I don’t build PCs often, but it is not alien to me. I have not done so recently. I appreciate the advice about the lower end mother boards. One reason I opened the thread here is to get some idea of pitfalls just like that one.
If you’re changing the CPU/motherboard/ram/video card, that pretty much is the computer. You aren’t really preserving anything, just taking some hard drives and DVD drivers and stuff with you.
It will probably boot with the old OS with the new hardware and may work ok. But it may introduce weird, hard to track down problems too.
From what you say here and earlier, I wonder if maybe a slightly different approach might help in this situation. You seem to be more strongly against a fresh install than pretty much anyone I’ve ever discussed changing pc’s with. I think Kinthalis and others are saying go with a fresh install because they’ve never really had an overwhelming reason other than the PITA factor to avoid it.
Maybe you could explain what you have running that you would not want to risk the change? For example, a 64-bit Windows 7 install wasn’t the best for me because I have an old copy of Minitab I like to use, but I just used XP mode to work around it.
Possibly if you specify what you do not want to risk being permanently ruined, somebody here might already have a workaround for you, and then you can feel comfortable getting that core i7 980X with quad5870s you know you want.
I have patched up dozens of machines the hard way with mission critical machines running a dozen programs that would have taken 10-15 man hours to reproduce the software loadout/configuration or with critical apps that disks have been lost or are otherwise not available.
I just did this two weeks ago with a pizza place whos point of sale server cooked a motherboard, the replacement board was going to be cost prohibitive and the company that wrote the software is no longer in business and installed/serviced the software via remote desktop. So no disks, no support, business dead without the software.
I am intimately familiar with this kind of problem and its something I as a computer tech never look forward to because those businesses need reliability and stability, the stable reliable answer is a clean load. If you as a customer came in and asked for this service it would be spelled out on the invoice that we will not warranty this configuration, we do the same for requests for overclocking.
and I will say the plural of your anecdote is not data. We can hunt down a dozen other computer/IT guys who will all tell you the same thing, and thats gonna be, “it might work, but its not a good idea.”
This is coming from someone with hundreds of builds/rebuilds under his belt and thousands of reloads/repairs.