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.


New case



Some goodies



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.


Quite a difference in size and they go plenty bigger

Oh poo, getting messy allready haha



Fan display added

[Colinevan]

Fan display added



Old motherboard which is staying for the time being



New graphics card is almost as big as the motherboard lol



Get in there



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



Almost there

[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 how much is in there at the moment?

[Colinevan]

Originally Posted by 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 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]

Originally Posted by cigbunt

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]

Originally Posted by Colinevan

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.

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

[Colinevan]

Originally Posted by ceejay21

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.

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

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.

[Colinevan]

Fan controller powered up and working



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.



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



To 7.5 for both graphics scores

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