question What Should I Do With My Brother's Really Old AMD FX PC?

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

This is my Brother's old PC and i want to reuse it. these are the specs:

CPU: AMD FX-6300
GPU: AMD RX 550
MOBO: ASUS M578L-M/USB3
RAM: 32GB DDR3 1600MHz DDR3 (Mix and match but same frequency)
PSU: Cooler Master MWE 600 (My PSU)
Storage: WD Blue 500GB SSD (My SSD)


the RAM is max 32 gigs and i was wondering what the best GPU would be. i mainly use 1080p and i was thinking if a GTX 980 would be worth using or would it be a bottleneck.

what would you do? i have lots of spare parts around so if you wanna ask me anything feel free to.

(The GPU and PSU in the pc in the images is not the RX 550 or the PSU but a different GPU and PSU i was using to test the stability of the PC)

 

 

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

i cleaned the pc up after. the top image was the final result of it all

[rippy4500]

What's your budget for a GPU? A 980 would work fine if you can find it for a fair price, I might go for a newer 10 or 20 series card though.

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

Just now, rippy4500 said:

What's your budget for a GPU? A 980 would work fine if you can find it for a fair price, I might go for a newer 10 or 20 series card though.

i have one right now with me. i don't want to spend a single penny on it at all due to its age. i have a pc myself already but i want to give this every sporting chance of having a second life and keeping up. I'm personally just after second opinions. im pretty sure the GTX 980 is the one in the photos. 

[vanpuffelen]

Just now, SamuraiDestroyer124 said:

i have one right now with me. i don't want to spend a single penny on it at all due to its age. i have a pc myself already but i want to give this every sporting chance of having a second life and keeping up. I'm personally just after second opinions. im pretty sure the GTX 980 is the one in the photos. 

A GTX 980 is good enough for 1080p at medium to high settings. I'd suggest tossing some old HDDs into it, too.

[rippy4500]

3 minutes ago, SamuraiDestroyer124 said:

i have one right now with me. i don't want to spend a single penny on it at all due to its age. i have a pc myself already but i want to give this every sporting chance of having a second life and keeping up. I'm personally just after second opinions. im pretty sure the GTX 980 is the one in the photos. 

If you already have it then there's no reason not to use it. If it does bottleneck it's not like it's gonna break anything. Just keep reasonable expectations, an FX-6300 is gonna be pretty bad in modern games but for older stuff it'll work just fine.

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

2 minutes ago, vanpuffelen said:

A GTX 980 is good enough for 1080p at medium to high settings. I'd suggest tossing some old HDDs into it, too.

what about bottlenecks? because i've heard some mixed flags about bottlenecking the GPU with the 6300. i also have other cards like a GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 760 and this 980 and with all my benchmarks in my main pc. out of those 3 cards, the 980 was the fastest performer. 

[kirashi]

14 minutes ago, SamuraiDestroyer124 said:

This is my Brother's old PC and i want to reuse it. these are the specs:

CPU: AMD FX-6300
GPU: AMD RX 550
MOBO: ASUS M578L-M/USB3
RAM: 32GB DDR3 1600MHz DDR3 (Mix and match but same frequency)
PSU: Cooler Master MWE 600 (My PSU)
Storage: WD Blue 500GB SSD (My SSD)


the RAM is max 32 gigs and i was wondering what the best GPU would be. i mainly use 1080p and i was thinking if a GTX 980 would be worth using or would it be a bottleneck.

what would you do? i have lots of spare parts around so if you wanna ask me anything feel free to.

(The GPU and PSU in the pc in the images is not the RX 550 or the PSU but a different GPU and PSU i was using to test the stability of the PC)

 

 

Assuming everything works properly, you could use this PC as a media center (including streaming games over the local network using Steam) or as a server to mess around with if you're wanting to get into homelab type stuff. Just know that the AMD FX series choke over modern workloads these days, so keep your expectations low if you're going to play games on it.

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

2 minutes ago, rippy4500 said:

If you already have it then there's no reason not to use it. If it does bottleneck it's not like it's gonna break anything. Just keep reasonable expectations, an FX-6300 is gonna be pretty bad in modern games but for older stuff it'll work just fine.

im aware the 6300 aint gonna be up to spec with todays games. i just wanted to get the most amount of power out of this old shitbox. since its been staring at me for the last week to be used

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

1 minute ago, kirashi said:

Assuming everything works properly, you could use this PC as a media center (including streaming games over the local network using Steam) or as a server to mess around with if you're wanting to get into homelab type stuff. Just know that the AMD FX series choke over modern workloads these days, so keep your expectations low if you're going to play games on it.

a media pc is a good shout so i can look into that, i know gaming is definitely gonna be pretty bad on it but i just wanna be able to push it as much as it physically can while having it usable in 2024 since i might install linux on it

[vanpuffelen]

3 minutes ago, SamuraiDestroyer124 said:

what about bottlenecks? because i've heard some mixed flags about bottlenecking the GPU with the 6300. i also have other cards like a GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 760 and this 980 and with all my benchmarks in my main pc. out of those 3 cards, the 980 was the fastest performer. 

I don't think you should worry about bottlenecks on this old fella. You can run benchmarks in some games of choice, and see how the duo performs.

 

What you can also do, is use Aliexpress or used marketplaces and upgrade the CPU to be something more on-par with the GTX 980.

 

Mind you that I used to roll with an i7-3770K and GTX 1060-6GB. That CPU didn't bottleneck the shit out of the GPU, but it did somewhat bottleneck it, especially in PCBS2. I've upgraded the CPU to an R5 2600 now, and the roles have been reversed.

[vanpuffelen]

5 minutes ago, SamuraiDestroyer124 said:

a media pc is a good shout so i can look into that, i know gaming is definitely gonna be pretty bad on it but i just wanna be able to push it as much as it physically can while having it usable in 2024 since i might install linux on it

You can use it as a server, for something like Plex, TrueNAS, or even Folding@Home. Considering it has RGB, or just G by the looks of it, you could also use it as a streaming PC if you stream. I doubt you do, but still.

 

As for using Linux, I'd recommend installing a lightweight distro, something like Linux Mint XFCE. That OS also has green and black in its colour palette.

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

1 minute ago, vanpuffelen said:

I don't think you should worry about bottlenecks on this old fella. You can run benchmarks in some games of choice, and see how the duo performs.

 

What you can also do, is use Aliexpress or used marketplaces and upgrade the CPU to be something more on-par with the GTX 980.

 

Mind you that I used to roll with an i7-3770K and GTX 1060-6GB. That CPU didn't bottleneck the shit out of the GPU, but it did somewhat bottleneck it, especially in PCBS2. I've upgraded the CPU to an R5 2600 now, and the roles have been reversed.

i've installed the 980 into the pc now and just installed ubuntu 24 on it to get some extra performance out of it. gonna run heaven on it to see how it performs now

 

[jaslion]

Honestly sell the amd fx internals and get something newer cheap to replace it. As it's going to consume a fair bit of power. But the remainder of the parts are quite ok. You sure that is a rx550? That is much to big for one so it's probably something different.

 

 

[vanpuffelen]

Just now, SamuraiDestroyer124 said:

i've installed the 980 into the pc now and just installed ubuntu 24 on it to get some extra performance out of it. gonna run heaven on it to see how it performs now

 

Ubuntu 24.04 has higher system requirements than Mint XFCE, and something more on-par with Windows 11. 

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

Just now, jaslion said:

Honestly sell the amd fx internals and get something newer cheap to replace it. As it's going to consume a fair bit of power. But the remainder of the parts are quite ok. You sure that is a rx550? That is much to big for one so it's probably something different.

 

 

i wrote a disclaimer near the top of the post

"The GPU and PSU in the pc in the images is not the RX 550 or the PSU but a different GPU and PSU i was using to test the stability of the PC"

[jaslion]

Just now, SamuraiDestroyer124 said:

i wrote a disclaimer near the top of the post

"The GPU and PSU in the pc in the images is not the RX 550 or the PSU but a different GPU and PSU i was using to test the stability of the PC"

My bad!

[Caroline]

I'd flip the PSU again if you have a bottom case intake, that way it'll suck fresh air in rather than 'fighting' the graphics card and physics.

 

Honestly... not a lot to do with it, can't overclock with that board, you'll risk cooking the naked VRMs, you could try to get into northbridge overclocking (and set the CPU to about 3.8 GHz) if the BIOS allows, that'll increase single-core performance but not by a lot, the downside is the NB will get toasty without active cooling, pointing a case fan towards it might help tho, the absolute max for those is 90C but try to keep it under 80.

 

Don't expect miracles from this though, you won't be able to run new games, if you pair it with a 980 the IPC (single-core perf, basically) will limit performance, hence my NB overclock suggestion. Increasing resolution by upsampling might help as it puts more workload onto the graphics card rather than the CPU but not all games benefit from this.

 

The media server route is valid but I'd undervolt the chip here, mobo feeds them a really high voltage and that's why they run hot, however not all chips need the 1.4-1.45V to run, some will run at 1.3, others at 1.2, each is different, I have one and it's stable at 1.18V with no overclock, temps drop by a lot if comparing to the stock 1.4V.

 

Undervolting really helps this platform but you gotta know what you're doing, you set a value too low and it'll blackscreen and refuse to POST until you reset the CMOS, what I do is change a value, test, if it succeeds I write it down and repeat the same with a different value, until all of them are stable, it's the "old school" way of tuning but at least to me way more useful than following videos or tutorials... not all PCs are the same, even if the components have the same part numbers, silicons differ.

 

You can make it a NAS as well, if you're into that...

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

1 minute ago, vanpuffelen said:

Ubuntu 24.04 has higher system requirements than Mint XFCE, and something more on-par with Windows 11. 

ill compare performance and let you know

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

My bad!

all good g

[SamuraiDestroyer124]

2 minutes ago, Caroline said:

I'd flip the PSU again if you have a bottom case intake, that way it'll suck fresh air in rather than 'fighting' the graphics card and physics.

 

Honestly... not a lot to do with it, can't overclock with that board, you'll risk cooking the naked VRMs, you could try to get into northbridge overclocking (and set the CPU to about 3.8 GHz) if the BIOS allows, that'll increase single-core performance but not by a lot, the downside is the NB will get toasty without active cooling, pointing a case fan towards it might help tho, the absolute max for those is 90C but try to keep it under 80.

 

Don't expect miracles from this though, you won't be able to run new games, if you pair it with a 980 the IPC (single-core perf, basically) will limit performance, hence my NB overclock suggestion. Increasing resolution by upsampling might help as it puts more workload onto the graphics card rather than the CPU but not all games benefit from this.

 

The media server route is valid but I'd undervolt the chip here, mobo feeds them a really high voltage and that's why they run hot, however not all chips need the 1.4-1.45V to run, some will run at 1.3, others at 1.2, each is different, I have one and it's stable at 1.18V with no overclock, temps drop by a lot if comparing to the stock 1.4V.

 

Undervolting really helps this platform but you gotta know what you're doing, you set a value too low and it'll blackscreen and refuse to POST until you reset the CMOS, what I do is change a value, test, if it succeeds I write it down and repeat the same with a different value, until all of them are stable, it's the "old school" way of tuning but at least to me way more useful than following videos or tutorials... not all PCs are the same, even if the components have the same part numbers, silicons differ.

 

You can make it a NAS as well, if you're into that...

i dont wanna really overclock or mess with any clock settings at all since i dont do stuff like that, also the other reason since you mentioned it. the VRMs are basically butt naked don't wanna cook my brothers old pc since he still wants to see it running

[Beerzerker]

1 hour ago, SamuraiDestroyer124 said:

im aware the 6300 aint gonna be up to spec with todays games. i just wanted to get the most amount of power out of this old shitbox. since its been staring at me for the last week to be used

Linux for it is the best choice of OS, for older versions of Windows (Win 8 and older) you can go to this page for software to get more out of it: https://community.hwbot.org/topic/86180-the-stilts-amd-extreme-tools-collection/
You will see "BullDozer Conditioner" if you scroll down so get it.

Makes a difference with FX all around but know it's not a perfect solution, with some things it makes a huge difference but others it's based on what you are doing.
The Stilt has other tools you can use too for it and the page has some comments for further info on his tools too.
You can expand the quoted part of the page and see more info about it, plus he has some posts too you can read.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

fx is crap especially with a lowend board so just resell it and replace it with a used 3100/3300x/3500(x) or 3600(x) with a new/used b450 and itll run circles around that fx whilst drawing less power and not costing much to upgrade considering fx is still kinda pricey these days and 32gb of ram is still gonna sell for a decent chunk even if its ddr3

 

only thing fx is worth is its overclocking abilities and thats only if you get a good chip and a good enough board that doesnt have dogshit vrms even then the imc will still pale in comparison to haswell or x58

 

otherwise what fx can do suboptimaly a newer used ryzen like what i mentioned can be bought for cheap to the point that it wont cost much if at all considering the resale of the fx hardware and do much much better and faster than fx with better power efficiency

[AtechCCS]

Wouldn't be a great Minecraft server 

 

[atxcyclist]

A file server is probably the most useful thing it can be. Really, the FX-6300 is quite limited, as is 1600 MT DDR3. The system also only has PCIe 2.0 support as well, and no native NVMe support. Most of the hardware RAID on that vintage of boards is good enough (SATA 6G supported too), and while you're mostly only going to be able to keep up with spinning storage drives with that level of processing power, unless you're running higher-speed ethernet (2.5g, 10G), it's going to do server duties just fine.