Pc Build - upgrade time allready (i5 2500k and ssd) and testing

[Colinevan]

Well a big thanks to everyone who helped out and gave advice.

I decided to take a few pics of the build as I actually enjoyed doing it.

This is what i started with and its easy to see why it used to get hot . As a side note Advent pc's are not very well built and are messy, no airflow what so ever.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1853.jpg

New case

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1847.jpg

Some goodies

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1851.jpg

I chose the 750 in the end rather than the 800 gaming series as this one hard a better review and supposedly better components coupled with a 5 year warranty. It wasnt cheap , but its a quality item that I believe is the norm to carry onto future builds etc.

Graphics card was a birthday present from the Mrs. I was bidding on second hand gTX 260'S but they were going around the £35 mark ( 3 on watch all sold for this ), When i decided to bid on newly listed ones they were all going for £56ish . Gutted so i spent a little more and got the better 460 for £70.

I saw the fan controllers a while back and although its not really needed as yet. Thought id build one in as the haf case has loads of room.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1852.jpg
Quite a difference in size and they go plenty bigger :thumbsup:

Oh poo, getting messy allready haha

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1855.jpg

Fan display added

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1856.jpg

[Colinevan]

Fan display added

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1856.jpg

Old motherboard which is staying for the time being

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1858.jpg

New graphics card is almost as big as the motherboard lol

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1861.jpg

Get in there

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1863.jpg

More wires to errr forget about till later ha ha ha ha

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1864.jpg

Almost there

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1865.jpg

[ceejay21]

Very nice build, are you going to add some extra RAM too? it will run much smoother, looks like you have an extra slot too. I would run as much as you can afford :thumbsup: how much is in there at the moment?

[Colinevan]

Fan controller powered up and working

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1869.jpg

Very clever and shows the temps of all the important bits and allows you to whack up the fans or slow them down if you want quiet.

The haf 922 comes with 3 fans and they are pretty quiet thankfully.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1871.jpg

Thats how we look at the moment.

I just need to neaten all the cables and use 8000 cable ties ( handy having these with our hobby lol ) and its good to go until i decide to upgrade again ha ha.

Results wise its like a different pc now. Windows 7 64 bit made a whopping difference and the new card for some reason appears to haev made differences on loading up windows containg all your pics etc.

Iv tried a few games and its amazing, call of duty 4 and deus x are all siper smooth.

I re ran the windows computers performance score and its gone from this

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1867.jpg

To 7.5 for both graphics scores :woot:

All in all it ended up costing more money to simply change the card, but i enjoyed the process.

Future wise, im loving the idea of a sdd drive for windows and a larger 2tb drive as they seem cheap money nowaday £85ish and then lastly the motherboard and cpu.

Thanks again guys :D

[Colinevan]

Very nice build, are you going to add some extra RAM too? it will run much smoother, looks like you have an extra slot too. I would run as much as you can afford :thumbsup: how much is in there at the moment?

Its got 4gb ram at the moment, but to be honest just by going to windows 7 has unleasehed a lot more speediness all around. Something that i didnt really notice before. People say the 64 bit op system can see more ram than 3.5 anyways so maybe the extra .5gb has helped as well.

I think for the time being i will leave the ram until i change the mobo. As this is the older ddr2 ( i think ha ha ). New mobo would support the ddr3 so id have to re buy the lot.

Iv allready been looking ha ha ..

[cigbunt]

got a ati 4770 for sale only want 35...

can run quite games med/high

edit i see youve got a new card

[Colinevan]

got a ati 4770 for sale only want 35...

can run quite games med/high

edit i see youve got a new card

Ha ha no problem, although you never know someone else may need a better card .:)

[ceejay21]

Its got 4gb ram at the moment, but to be honest just by going to windows 7 has unleasehed a lot more speediness all around. Something that i didnt really notice before. People say the 64 bit op system can see more ram than 3.5 anyways so maybe the extra .5gb has helped as well.

I think for the time being i will leave the ram until i change the mobo. As this is the older ddr2 ( i think ha ha ). New mobo would support the ddr3 so id have to re buy the lot.

Iv allready been looking ha ha ..

4GB is plenty for a 64-bit os, i didn't realize you were running that much.

The maximum RAM limit for 32-bit Windows 7 editions is 4GB. On the 64-bit editions, the amount of memory that the OS can use depends on which edition you are running. :) Yes, Windows 7 is a great operating system and if its tweaked it can be made to run fast on as little as 1GB for most average usage, obviously for gaming you would need more. :woot:

Here are the maximum RAM limits for the different editions of Windows 7 64-bit:

Starter: 8GB
Home Basic: 8GB
Home Premium: 16GB
Professional: 192GB
Enterprise: 192GB
Ultimate: 192GB

There isn't that much of a noticeable difference between DDR2 and DDR3 ram really. if you get a good quality stick of DDR2 the differences will not be worth the extra cost. The DDR3 ram is much more expensive than the older DDR2 stuff :)

have a look on here for RAM, they do all diffrent types of good quality ram, their software is useful too, it shows you exactly which type of RAM your motherboard uses ;)

http://www.crucial.com/uk/?click=true


hope this helps you out with your PC build :thumbsup:

[Colinevan]

4GB is plenty for a 64-bit os, i didn't realize you were running that much.

The maximum RAM limit for 32-bit Windows 7 editions is 4GB. On the 64-bit editions, the amount of memory that the OS can use depends on which edition you are running. :) Yes, Windows 7 is a great operating system and if its tweaked it can be made to run fast on as little as 1GB for most average usage, obviously for gaming you would need more. :woot:

Here are the maximum RAM limits for the different editions of Windows 7 64-bit:

Starter: 8GB
Home Basic: 8GB
Home Premium: 16GB
Professional: 192GB
Enterprise: 192GB
Ultimate: 192GB

There isn't that much of a noticeable difference between DDR2 and DDR3 ram really. if you get a good quality stick of DDR2 the differences will not be worth the extra cost. The DDR3 ram is much more expensive than the older DDR2 stuff :)

have a look on here for RAM, they do all diffrent types of good quality ram, their software is useful too, it shows you exactly which type of RAM your motherboard uses ;)

http://www.crucial.com/uk/?click=true


hope this helps you out with your PC build :thumbsup:

Ah thanks , something more to read up on and spend spend spend ha ha.

Its windows ultimate iv got and to be honest the ram i have is probably budget stuuf as the pc is almost 5 years old.

At the time im sure i paid around £600 just for the tower minus the monitor. Its an intel core 2 quad q6600 @ 2.4ghx, 350gb drive and came with 4gb ram coupled with windows vista.

I couldnt afford a new pc, but the bottleneck was the graphics card a 256mb 8300gs which was ok, but recently when watching films on a large tv, became rather hot and jitterred and skipped at times.

General advice was that a new card, also needs a new psu and in turn more cost and was it worth upgrading a dated pc. I went this way as i wanted to learn a little and have teh satisfaction of building a high spec pc but on a long term upgrade and to do bits when funds allow.

:D

[Richard Lowe]

Looking good!

No PSU worries now either :thumbsup:

[Colinevan]

I knew the bug would hit me and so I'v been buying stuff again haha.

Managed to acquire a new motherboard ready for the CPU change.

As yet I'v not decided whether to go for an i5 2500k as for gaming they're highly recommended or go for the i7 2600k as its got more oomph lol.

So the search for a mobo revealed lots of choice and because I'm still working on a small budget ( baby on way ) I'v missed and been outbid on loads recently.

Reading magazines and reviews the msi P67a gd range were reasonably priced, offer easy overclocking facilities and came in around the £100ish mark.

Was going to get a msi p67a gd 53 new for under £100 and saw one on eBay going for £60 so thought I'd see what was available second hand.
Actually bought a slightly better model the gd55 for £40 not bad considering the owner paid £120 for it.

Ram and coolers next and I'm abouts to order either 8gb g skill ripjaws as recommended for £40 or corsairs equivalents for the same price.

Has anyone much experience on g skill? I'll link the ones of interest in another post.

And lastly cooler wise is probably going to be either a second hand cooler master v8 ( simply cos they look good ) ha ha , or a more realistic arctic cooler i3 pro from memory . In custom pc mag they got better results than coolers twice the price ( be quiet dark rock pro or something).

[Colinevan]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B004CRSM4I/ref=cm_cr_pr_btm_link_3?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&pageNumber=3

Corsair bad boy!

Vs

G skill ripjaws

http://www.amazon.co.uk/G-Skill-Ripjaws-Sandybridge-Platforms-PC12800/dp/B004HZG4ZO/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1332686656&sr=1-1

[Colinevan]

I then found out that a new mobo requires you to reinstall windows. Completely overlooked that part:(

So I thought sod it , when I do the upgrade it makes sense to also put the new hd in . I'd love a massive ssd drive but they're pricey. So a compromise on possibly a 64gb or 90 or 128gb and keep my 350gb hard drive just for the time being ( I was going to get a Samsung spin point f3 in either 1tb or 2tb as they're under £100 now, however if i spend the money on a ssd for the time being, hopefully the spin points might come back down in price ( I believe they were half the price they were a few months back but the floods in Thailand have left a big shortfall in drives hence doubled in price overnight.

Its overkill for me on a ssd however having watched the vds on YouTube , I think they're deco the way to go performance wise.

If anyone has recomendations for a quality ssd let us know please.

So far I think the crucial m4 64gb looks good and is very fast.

[Colinevan]

Well just a heads up that iv done a the upgrades now and in theory have a brand new pc now lol.

Today i acquired the following.

Intel i5 2500k unlocked
crucial ssd - very fast read and write performance
Arctic I3 cooler - abso massive and seems ice cold for the cpu.
8gb ram - corsair - although i may have faulty ram.

So a knock on effect is that i have my old cpu, mobo and ram for sale if anyone is interested.

Build went well apart from the ram. Ill put pics up tomorrow and a write up for those that may be interested.

Col.

[U1timate PigDog]

This is a great read mate, keep the pics and updates coming so we can all see the progress :thumbsup:

[Colinevan]

This is a great read mate, keep the pics and updates coming so we can all see the progress :thumbsup:

Cheers pal. Only to happy to show the progress and its been a good learning curve for me as well. Hopefully some others may benefit from seeing the build as well.

Progress so far then.

As mentioned , i purchased everything and am quite familiar with building and removing the old components so got underway.

As a reminder this is what we had prior.

Quad core 2.4ghz, 4gb ram, foxconn mobo and 350gb hard drive, gtx460 overclocked.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1913.jpg

Nothing wrong with the specs as the cpu is good for 7.1 on the windows score and was sppedy enough to handle all what i needed. However the i5 2500k unlocked running at anywhere from 4.2 to 5.0ghz sounds tempting so that the route to go.

New mobo pics

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1922.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1923.jpg

Looks quite nice in the flesh ha ha, glad the pc case has a window to err see half it:D

Now i hit a snag with the mobo, my old mobo was socket 775 with quite large pins and looked like you could literally drop the cpu onto it and the pins are robust. New mobo pins 1155 are tiny and bend very easily. I got a magnifying glass out and checked and could actually see 1 marginally bent pin:mad:. Hmm am i brave enough to attempt to straighten it ......

Decided just to be safe, let an expert see it.. They duly charged me £5 and straightened it with a stanly knife blade lmao. More balls than me ha ha and you couldnt tell afterwards. On a side note, ill find a link just to show how small these pins are. Could probably bend if you sneezed on them ha ha.

[Colinevan]

Link showing how small the pins are lol

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=socket+1155+pins&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-Address&rlz=1I7TSEI_enGB360GB360&biw=1024&bih=516&tbm=isch&tbnid=OmFbRYM5GqD5vM:&imgrefurl=http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/LGA-1155-Sandy-Bridge-Motherboard-Socket-Pins-Get-Burned-Out-2.jpg/&docid=gcecwdK9CSPHmM&imgurl=http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/LGA-1155-Sandy-Bridge-Motherboard-Socket-Pins-Get-Burned-Out-2.jpg&w=1024&h=768&ei=eSZ-T9u9B-bI0QXBrOmQDg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=117&vpy=155&dur=2066&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=169&ty=83&sig=113209621807563658985&page=1&tbnh=149&tbnw=216&start=0&ndsp=9&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:67

[Colinevan]

Next thing to do is prep the motherboard for the cooler. As theyre quite substantial it needs bracing at the rear abd metal plates adding at the front to distribute the weight.

I chose this cooler:-

http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/cpu/472/freezer-i30.html


As its got great results when overclocking and is cheap at around £30. Some might want to use the included cooler and fan that you get with the cpu. However they are not as effective and can be noisy. These larger fans take away more heat, resulting in better performance and theoretically waste less power ( heat is wasted energy, i think lol:drool:).

It outperforms coolers costing twice the price, and is this months best mid range cooler according to custom pc mag..

Chip installed.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1921.jpg

And now thermal paste time. For those that dont know, they say that if you magnify the surface of a cpu, its not that flat and 2 mating surfaces will potentially allow air pockets to heat up causing hot spots on the chip. ( remember these can get pretty hot when overclocked ). The paste fills up this gap and transfers the heat better to the cooler.

1 pea sized amount, and let the tightening of the cooler spread it out evenly.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1924.jpg

Time to add the ram and radiator minus the fan.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1925.jpg

[Colinevan]

Problem time.

The radiator is that big that it obscures the first ram slots lmao. And the ram that i chose has big fins (probably for show and dont do much ).

Test fit shows the fan shroud on here

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1926.jpg

Now i actually ran into problems with this and had to remove the fan completely when testing the mobo and bios. Just left the rad on the cpu ( stayed cool to touch ).

The manual states that you must insert the ram into slot 1 (closest to the cpu otherwise it might not register for initial boot ). I tried it in slots 2 and 4 as 1 was obscured. This resulted in the pc simply resetting every 5 seconds.

I inserted into slot 1 and the pc sprang to life and allowed the fancy bios settings. However if i then inserted the additional 4gb ram into slot 3, the pc wouldnt boot and kept on resetting. I eventually found out my second stick of ram appears faulty ( corsair dominator 8gb 4x2 ). I only noted this as i tried this on its own in all the slots and it just rebooted every time. The good ram stick could go in any slot and allowed the pc to boot menu.

Hmm not a good start, will return this and get a new set or ask them to see of there is any fault on my mobo.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1928.jpg

Nope this 8gb combo wont work :thumbdown:

I decide to carry on and just run with 4gb ram instead of the 8 for the time being.
Went through the colourful bios settigns, makes a change from the boring 80s blue screen lol. and get the ssd fitted and unplug my normal hard drive.

The ssd drives are amazing, anyone thats used an ipad or similar will know this as its almsot instant in doing things. The 64gb crucual M4 is very fast and offers the best performance for the money at the moment. its only £65 and will easily halve your windowsboot time and will literally load all your programs lightening fast .

See this vid load windows and 27 progs lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ZrBM_EPC8

As you can see there very fast lmao.

Reinstalled windows on the ssd , ready to test everything.

[Colinevan]

This pic shows the size of the fan

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1930.jpg

Well everything reconnected and sadly at the moment, there are a few small isuues that need addressing. The ram, and also a small problem of no sound at the moment. However i decided to do some testing as i wanted to see how much things had improved on the windows score.

Original was

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1867.jpg

This was with the old graphics card, so ignore the 3d scores etc.

and its now at this

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1932.jpg

Nice improvement and the ram score will go up when its running the full 8gb.

As mentioned, im selling off the older cpu,mobo and ram if anyone is interested, feel free to drop us a message and if your local i can even fit this for you with no charge.

Ill keep people posted on how the ram situ was resolved, i hope there is no problem with the mobo, and also how the soundcard issues was resolved. I have a feeling a program that MSI use ( the mobo manufacturer called live update ) has updated conflicting files as now it wont update itself (similar thing to how windows update works ).

Thanks

Col.

[AC199]

Shame I didnt see this thread earlier...

Corsair RAM used to be good back in the heady days of BH5 and BH6 chips, now however, its quality has fallen to a level that kinda makes it an iffy choice.

I run GSkill Rip Jaw, my missus runs GSkill Rip Jaw and I recommend it to anyone...

Secondly, to solve the issues with the cooler obscuring stuff, fans work well in push or pull configs, especially with case fans to balance up the air flow... Turn the cooler round by 180°... make sure the rear case fan is exhausting, and check the front 2 fans are blowing in... Roof fan should always be exhausting, hot air rises remember (not heat, heat is a form of energy and doesnt move anywhere)

Looks like a nice build though, but for the love of god, take the antistatic wrist thing and throw it in the bin, just make sure you touch the case before you fit any components, 12 years building PC's and never killed a single thing with static...

[Colinevan]

Shame I didnt see this thread earlier...

Corsair RAM used to be good back in the heady days of BH5 and BH6 chips, now however, its quality has fallen to a level that kinda makes it an iffy choice.

I run GSkill Rip Jaw, my missus runs GSkill Rip Jaw and I recommend it to anyone...

Secondly, to solve the issues with the cooler obscuring stuff, fans work well in push or pull configs, especially with case fans to balance up the air flow... Turn the cooler round by 180°... make sure the rear case fan is exhausting, and check the front 2 fans are blowing in... Roof fan should always be exhausting, hot air rises remember (not heat, heat is a form of energy and doesnt move anywhere)

Looks like a nice build though, but for the love of god, take the antistatic wrist thing and throw it in the bin, just make sure you touch the case before you fit any components, 12 years building PC's and never killed a single thing with static...

I must admit iv heard many bad things about the reliability of the ram now, however its only really the bad things you see on the net.

BUT!!! ha ha:thumbsup:

I now have g skill ram installed and it works no problem. It also looks quite err nice ( hmm does this sound like im becoming an even bigger anorak now ha ha ).

Few pics again.

New ram fitted....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1937.jpg

Side view

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1933.jpg

Close up, not a good pic really as its reflective and iv not re done the cabling neat :bored:

Heres something neat on the mobo. Its called OC genie. Its basically a push button, that activates software to automatically overcock the cpu. It lights up when active
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1938.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1939.jpg
It basically took my stock speed and boosted it to 4.2, cant complain although it takes the fun out of actually understanding what overclocking is actually doing.

Better pic of new ram

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1940.jpg

And lastly to re run the windows experience

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/col.evan.mil/IMG_1942.jpg

That wil do nicely. Just need to spend probably hours now messing around with drivers and updates trying to get the sound working, or i could be lazy and just put a new sound card in ha ha.

Col.

[Colinevan]

Just an update really.

Upgraded the ssd to a Samsung evo 250gb as I maxxed out the 64gb ssd.

ALso upgraded to windows 10 and to be honest its quite decent.

I have also decided to sell , maybe as a whole or as parts as I fanct trying a mac.

For sale ad here.

Open to offers or talks though and anyone is welcome to come and view /try.

col.

colinmilner@aol.com

http://www.oople.com/forums/showthread.php?p=937792#post937792