FizzyFantom

Maybe WIndows 98

Did you know that you can fit "10 motherboards" in a Cooler Master Cosmos II?
I couldn't have made up something this stupid...

It might be worth noting the maximum capacity of some drives (I'm thinking of the WD Blue which only goes up to 1TB) as this may be helpful to some people. I understand that you may not want to put this in as it probably will change in the future.
You could also mention some of the specific features people may want to know about for each drive, for example WD drives don't have AAM (or at least they don't make them that way now).
It might be helpful to link this WD page for quick reference to their consumer drives:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/desktop/
And this one for their enterprise drives:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/enterprise/
 
This is a good guide and I'm sure it will help people who are interested in this info, Well done
 
Edit: You could also mention SSHDs, but this may not be relevant to everyone.

I cut together their "general specs" so you can easily compare them:

 
If you are planning to use them on a radiator then you should go for Shadow Wings, they have higher static pressure. I have a 140mm Shadow Wings fan and it's quiet.
The Silent Wings are quieter and have higher airflow, but they have less static pressure than Pure Wings.
 
Edit: Fixed the comparison (from mixed sizes to all 120mm fans).

What electrical supply are you planning to hook up?
 
If you are referring to mains (230V or 120V AC) then speaker cable is inappropriate for a variety of reasons including safety.
 
If you want to run a lower voltage at a lower current such as DC power to 12V LEDs or 9V to some other device then you should probably be alright with speaker wire. Look up the gauge of your wire and check what current it can carry to see if it will work.
 
A mains outlet? Absolutely not. You will need to get some proper mains cable with 3 wires and wire it up to a plug to make sure it is safe.

They do. I would steer clear of this method for carrying mains electricity.
 
I can't see a reason that it wouldn't work for power, but personally I wouldn't use this as a power solution.
 
Ultimately it's up to you to decide if you think it's safe.

What electrical supply are you planning to hook up?
 
If you are referring to mains (230V or 120V AC) then speaker cable is inappropriate for a variety of reasons including safety.
 
If you want to run a lower voltage at a lower current such as DC power to 12V LEDs or 9V to some other device then you should probably be alright with speaker wire. Look up the gauge of your wire and check what current it can carry to see if it will work.
 
A mains outlet? Absolutely not. You will need to get some proper mains cable with 3 wires and wire it up to a plug to make sure it is safe.

It may be able to handle the mains current, but without a proper fused, switched plug I wouldn't even touch it. Additionally it's only 2 conductors so I would definitely steer clear of using it.
 
Your best solution would be to get a proper wall socket put in near to the device you want to power an use a properly fused grounded plug.

If your budget doesn't allow for an Intel i7 then the FX is a pretty good bet. I have found that the 8320 performs well in gaming and rendering times are very good for the price.
 
If you do get the FX then I suggest you invest in a good motherboard and cooler and make sure to overclock it. That's where most of the value comes from in the FX CPUs.
 
Take a look at this UserBenchmark page:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-6500-vs-AMD-FX-8320/3513vs1983
 
Best of luck with whatever you choose

Well that's your answer right there. Look for some that fit the aesthetic you are going for and make sure they have decent performance.
 
As @Enderman said, you can use "airflow" fans with radiators. They might not perform quite as well as Nocuta "static pressure" fans, but the impact won't be particularly much.
 
What kind of fans do you want? What colour? Do you want LEDs or not? Tell us this and we can find some fans that you will like that also perform well

There are so much confusing posts in this thread.
All fans work at 12V. Molex connector with all 3 wires connected supplies 12V. Each mobo fan header also supplies 12V. Besides that, each mobo header is 1A. Most of the fans are something like 0.2A. So you can connect up to 3 fans safely to single mobo header.
As for connectors themselves. Most fans have 3pin or 4pin connector (shown in pic by @MeshFile. Some might have both fan connector and molex connector. You can use either one.
When you use Molex to connect fans, they will be spinning on full speed whole time. This when molex has 12V wire connected. Some molex adapters and modded connectors have only 7V or 5V line in use. With those fans will be spinning slower than when using 12V connection. If you connect fans to mobo, you can monitor rpm. Most modern mobos allow control of fans either with DC (3pin) or PWM (4pin).

It won't make any difference after the format. The format will flag every block as empty and the SSD will perform the same as before the format.

Maybe check out this video from Tek Syndicate:

No the best option it's still the xbox 360 controller. The xbox one will be more expensive AND force you into windows 10. The 360 works with windows 7 if you ever want to try that and it has a lot more tried and true compatibility across more games.
 
Unless you're a big fighting games nut and absolutely want the xbone elite controller, I see no reason to spend extra on the xbone controller vs the 360 one. 

Yes, you will have to upgrade from Windows 8.1 in order to get Windows 10 to activate against your hardware. After this you will be able to do a clean install as many times as you like.
 
As far as I know the install media hasn't changed since the OEM launch. I might be wrong on this, but you will undoubtedly have to do updates anyway, so you should be fine using that media.
 
You Windows 7 key won't stop working after installing Windows 10. I think that retail keys might be converted permanently after 30 days. Windows 10 actually activates against your hardware so doesn't actually touch your old licence, but if you don't like Windows 10 you should reinstall Windows 7 within 30 days to be safe.

I would probably just turn the cooler fan around so that it is pulling air through the heatsink and out the back of the case. You can unscrew the plastic clip mounts from the fan then screw them into the other side, the screws are self tapping. Moving the other fans might cause dust issues due to lack of filters.

In that case you will need to get hold of a USB to IDE adapter to connect it to your new PC.
 
Alternatively you could boot up the old PC with a Linux LiveCD and transfer the files onto a USB drive. You wouldn't need to buy anything, but you would have to set up a Linux LiveCD or LiveUSB. I suggest Ubuntu for this as its pretty easy to use:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
 
Feel free to ask if you need any more help

Coins that have been bitten.

If your case can accomidate a tower heatsink then I can recommend the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. It's decently quiet and mounts with pushpins using a pretty solid mount:
http://www.arctic.ac/uk_en/freezer-7-pro-rev-2.html

Aren't those two ports at the top USB2 ports (5)?

 
They are labelled on MSI's site as "Gaming" ports, but they are a different colour to the USB3 ports. Is there some option in the BIOS to set them to USB2 or something?
 
Edit: Also there is a PS2 port (1). If you think you can install the drivers with just a mouse or keyboard then this might help you (assuming you have a PS2 keyboard or adapter).

The Freezer 7 Pro is also an option.

No, you will have to download a copy of the microsoft media creation tool and make a windows 10 boot usb and install it. You won't require any keys and can just skip them and it will activate automatically.
Create Windows 10 USB> Remove HDD> Insert SDD> Boot into the USB> Install Windows.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/media-creation-tool-install

Backup is an interesting one. There are a few different ways you can back up your data and you should figure out which is the best for you.
 
The most basic kind of backup is to copy files manually to another drive. This is very simple to do, but can get pretty messy if you aren't constantly on top of it.
Similarly you can use a program to automate the backup to an external drive or something similar. This will simplify keeping track of your files including things like versioning and using file deltas.
Backing up to a drive you own provides the best security and more data backup options, but it will require to to keep you drives safe. Done this way you could backup your files several times very easily and even take drives offsite (if you have somewhere to put then like a safe-deposit box).
 
From the sounds of it offsite backup over the internet is pretty impractical for you, but I recommend offsite backup for any data that is actually important (such as a KeePass database, which also happens to be encrypted).
 
As for a solution, an external HDD sounds like a good idea to start with. You should buy one with enough space that you won't outgrow it anytime soon.
There is a plenty of software out there to do this kind of backup. Microsoft released one called SyncToy. The name is deceptively silly, the software is pretty capable. You could also look at FreeFileSync, a piece of open source file backup software that has more options such as backing up automatically when a drive is connected:
http://www.freefilesync.org/
 
As a whole solution this may be less convenient as you will still have to deal with drive failures through manual setup. A good solution for this would be to build a NAS with HDDs in RAID 1 then backup to that, but at that point you start talking about "real money".
 
Just FYI my current working "solution" is a Windows server running VirtualBox with a virtual Ubuntu installation running a Samba server. I then manually backup the virtual disk wholesale to a usually-disconnected external drive. An offsite backup could be implemented by uploading said virtual disk to a service like DropBox, but that means large uploads and having to trust the service with your unecrypted data. A portable HDD could also be used to take this virtual disk offsite whenever is pertinent.
 
I hope this helps somewhat, best of luck with your backup
 
Edit: Virtual disks can be encrypted, but this can be computationally expensive.

Do you have reason to believe that the SSD itself is slow? If not I would suggest you do a clean install. Your SSD running slowly might be related to your OS being old, and cloning it would simply move this old-ness onto the new SSD.

Back to the topic.
 
OP,  what HD are you using? is it stuffed full of junk? If so it might just need a simple defrag to speed things up.