PC Motherboard / Processor Upgrade
 

Hey guys,

Thought I'd tap your expertise on this issue. My desktop computer is on its last legs at the moment and runs extremely hot, slowly and noisily (the fan on the processor ship is running overtime). I'd like to upgrade the motherboard and processor with something quiet, cool and inexpensive. It doesn't have to be the fastest processor at all, something which is current and low-end would serve me very well - enough to watch DVDs, surf the web and run as a fileserver. Quiet is a big priority as it will live in my bedroom.

I have a nice ATX tower case with sound proofing, a quiet PSU, three hard drives, DVD player, CD writer and DVD player (I know I don't need all three). I have a Matrox G400 graphics card which I am happy with and feel no need to upgrade.

What would you recommend?

I recommend a 680i board and an Intel Core 2 Duo proc. You can get both on the cheap and are still not "low end". What board/proc do you have now? Is your memory DDR2? Is your video card AGP? DDR1 and AGP are tougher to find support for in newer boards. Also, what price are you looking to stay under?

The cheapest proc (Socket 775) is the Celeron D 360 for about US$60. If you can go higher, I recommend at least a Core 2 Duo E6300 for roughly US$175 (though an E6600 or E6700 will give you more life down the road).

For a board I recommend an EVGA 650i for under $100, though as I said, the 680i is a stellar chipset for stability and performance.

Listen to xepherys.

My motherboard is the MSI PT8 Neo-V (MS-7043). From what I can tell, it uses DDR DIMMs rather than DDR2. I believe the G400 is AGP.

I'll have a look to see what those cost here in the UK. Thanks for the input so far.

You may need to consider if you want to upgrade to another AGP board. I know that I've decided to have my next upgrade be a full rebuild, to get away from the aging hardware (AGP cards are more expensive, less range and rarer).

Edit: I know some boards come with both an AGP and PCI-E slot

If you want current hardware, you're going to be looking at upgrading to DDR2 and PCIe. The good news is that the whole thing should be doable for less than $400 if you look for bargains and will give you a nice amount of headroom for future upgrades. You should be able to get a GeForce 8500 or Radeon 2600 for less than $100; while these are far from top of the line video cards, they are solid performers and from the latest generation; if you're not planning on doing a lot of gaming they ought to serve you well. RAM, similarly, can be done for under $100. You ought to be able to get 1 GB of RAM for $60-$80. So overall, we're looking at ($60+$80+$100+$80) or roughly $320 to upgrade all of your hardware to the current generation. While I realize this may be more than you wanted to spend, it will give you the opportunity to expand your capabilities down the line, which is always nice.

One word of caution as well; many newer motherboards only come with one PATA channel. If you want to keep all of your optical drives you may have to invest in a PCI controller card; otherwise, you'll have to prioritize.

A good RAM recommendation would be Mushkin's Blue Line. It's their cheapest RAM, but even so Mushkin is well known for stability. The Blue is not a high performance memory, but is very capable and fairly cheap. Martian's suggestion for the GeForce 8500 is a good one if you are not a gamer. Trying to stick with aging equipment, AGP and DDR, can end up costing as much, and be of lower overall performance. New tech comes out too fast these days to try to keep support around for older stuff (older being more than 18-24 months, sadly).

Look for a new mobo of your preference (either socket AM2 or LGA 775). Make sure it has onboard video or buy a cheap $40 PCI-E videocard with it from NewEgg. Then buy the cheapest processor that NewEgg has for that socket with 1 GB of 5-star cheap ram. It'll be $200-$250 total. Don't buy a CPU or videocard more than $100...there's absolutely no reason to spend that much in your situation.

How is this combination:

M/B:

• http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...1143,405070000 - MSI PT890 (£29)

Processor:

• http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...147,4294958803 - Celeron D 3.2GHz (£29)

Memory:

• http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...063,4294959239 - Kingston ValueRAM PC2-5300 2x1GB (£37), or
• http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...063,4294957152 - Corsair PC5300 1x1GB (£18)

Couple more questions... I noticed that the Celeron D 3.2GHz is £29, the Celeron 347 3.06GHz is £33 and the Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz is £42. I understand they are probably different architectures, but how is their relative performance to each other? I haven't read up on processors since the days of Pentium 4.

Also, what are the motherboards with integrated graphics like these days? There are a few on dabs for about £10 more.

Sorry for all the newbie sounding questions... after a few years of not bothering with PC stuff, I feel like the people who used to come to me with these questions!

And thanks again for your time.

The Celeron D is good enough for what you're doing with it. The Core 2 Duo is the better of the 3 but a bit overkill unless you're feeling spendy.

Same with integrated graphics...they completely suck for games, but since you're not a gamer it doesn't matter.

If I were to spend a little more money on any aspect of my system, would I get the most benefit from the processor upgrade (Celeron D to Core 2 Duo), more RAM, or a different chipset?

Silly question - if I got one with an integrated graphics output, would adding a graphics card later allow multiple monitor output for use with my HD LCD TV?

More ram is the most beneficial.

Not sure about the HD TV but my educated guess would be probably.

I suspect this would vary depending on the chipset. My motherboard has an onboard video adapter that is currently disabled, but were I so inclined I could enable it and use it as a second output. I am not so inclined however, because I think onboard video processing is poor architecture. An onboard adapter will rob you of system memory that would otherwise be put to better use running your applications in order to run your display. Depending on the architecture it may also steal core cpu cycles. In other words, it'll be a drain on your system in order to allow you to do the things you need to do. The one I have is there simply out of convenience, because the best motherboard at my price point happened to have it.

I stand by my earlier recommendation of buying a separate video card. In my experience it makes for a smoother running system overall and is worth the extra expense. Of course, now that you're receiving conflicting advice you'll have to decide for yourself what's best.

I never recommend on-board video. Perhaps it's become much better over the years, but it's generally been a bad situation from my perspective.

It would be a pretty good idea to buy a super cheap PCI-E videocard just in case the onboard video doesn't cooperate, but it should be fine for non-gaming.

Something like this would be perfect: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127296

Thanks for the upgrade advice, I will be looking at websites over the weekend. I may be able to do this for under 100 quid. I have to admit I am tempted to just get a new computer for about 400 quid... Dell is doing a laptop for about that, or a PC deal now with a 20" widescreen monitor.