Upgrading my machine

[ButtNuttz]

I am planning to do some upgrades on my machine (CPU and GPU, along with storage space) Currently I have a Core 2 Duo E4400 and an Nvidia 9600GT, along with 2 1tb hard drives ( Seagate and Western Digital) I wanna know what some of you guys might suggest for upgrades on this machine. I can put up to 4 hard drives on the board. So im thinking about a RAID 0 setup. 

[ANewFace]

I am planning to do some upgrades on my machine (CPU and GPU, along with storage space) Currently I have a Core 2 Duo E4400 and an Nvidia 9600GT, along with 2 1tb hard drives ( Seagate and Western Digital) I wanna know what some of you guys might suggest for upgrades on this machine. I can put up to 4 hard drives on the board. So im thinking about a RAID 0 setup. 

What should you upgrade? The entire thing, a 100% redo of CPU, GPU, RAM, Mobo, everything

[Mug]

Yeah. you could do a RAID 0 setup if your board supports RAID

 

Check in the BIOS before committing everything to the cause.

[DarkBlade2117]

What do you do? If it's gaming I'd upgrade the CPU to a nice i5-4460 and h97 board or if budget is no problem a i5-4690k and z97 board like the MSI gaming 3. For the GPU I'd get a r9 390 if budget also isn't a problem. I'd highly reccodmend upgrading the PSU assuming you are using the original one in the prebuilt hp. If you upgrade the board you'd also need ddr3 ram. For the PSU a EVGA GS series at 650w.

Actually.. This is more of a complete redo.. Sorry

[ButtNuttz]

What should you upgrade? The entire thing, a 100% redo of CPU, GPU, RAM, Mobo, everything

Im not planning to rebuild the entire thing yet, as i dont have that much money on hand, I spent 160 on this machine when i got it from my friend. It was his old machine before he got a Supermicro server tower 

[tengarp]

I agree with ANewFace, get a new mobo, cpu, ram, you might be able to get the hdd's but if they are fairly old I would recommend replacing them

[ButtNuttz]

I agree with @ANewFace, get a new mobo, cpu, ram, you might be able to get the hdd's but if they are fairly old I would recommend replacing them

These hard drives were spares from a server that my friend helped his dad with. They work pretty well, I was originally going to get a 128gb SSD as a boot drive, But it crapped out before i bought the machine

[Inception9269]

Im not planning to rebuild the entire thing yet, as i dont have that much money on hand, I spent 160 on this machine when i got it from my friend. It was his old machine before he got a Supermicro server tower 

 

yeah dude, i recommend replacing like the entire thing. a core 2 duo e4400, ddr2 ram, very low graphics card. Do you know what kind of speed the hdds do and if they use modern sata?

[tengarp]

These hard drives were spares from a server that my friend helped his dad with. They work pretty well, I was originally going to get a 128gb SSD as a boot drive, But it crapped out before i bought the machine

Oh ok well if you don't want to do a full upgrade on everything then you might just be better off saving up until you can or getting an ssd like you were planning before

[Inception9269]

If you don't have a lot of money, I suggest saving until you have at least enough for a $500 build,

I put this build together some time ago,

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($64.98 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($96.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($45.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($48.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 280 3GB WINDFORCE Video Card  ($177.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case  ($43.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $513.81
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-23 22:09 EDT-0400

You could cut down the cost by carrying over your hdds and using the same case. But this build would be a significant upgrade over your current one

[arronleeds]

Anything is an upgrade to that .

[Captain_WD]

I am planning to do some upgrades on my machine (CPU and GPU, along with storage space) Currently I have a Core 2 Duo E4400 and an Nvidia 9600GT, along with 2 1tb hard drives ( Seagate and Western Digital) I wanna know what some of you guys might suggest for upgrades on this machine. I can put up to 4 hard drives on the board. So im thinking about a RAID 0 setup. 

 

Hey there,

 

I wouldn't really recommend putting regular drives in a RAID0 array as the risk of a drive dropping out or corrupting the data is rather high. Moreover, RAID0 does not offer any redundancy whatsoever so I would strongly suggest keeping a backup of anything you put on that array. 

If you do decide to go for it, do have in mind that RAID limits the capacity of all drives in the array to the one with the smallest and the speed of all drives to the one with the slowest. Also any differences in the firmware (different brands or models) contributes to the higher risk of drie dropouts.

 

Captain_WD.