Upgrading my setup

[motorboat]

I just tought about posting this upgrade process for some lulz, sorry for my english.

 

So like a lot of guys, I'm running an "anchient" "gaming" pc because I'm a student with no money. When Rainbow 6 Siege came out, it was the first game that really didnt run even acceptably on my setup so i needed to look into some options.

My rig at the time was:
ASUS P5Q

Intel E8500 3.16->4.25ghz
4GB 800mhz->887mhz DDR2
AMD R270X

5xsome random HDDs 

550w BeQuiet PSU

 

Some time ago I upgraded that GPU since my friend had that lying around and I bought it for 50€. My previous GPUs were GTX260, GTX280, HD6850, GTX560Ti. I literally have paid 60€ for all of them combined since i have been able to recycle them to friends for some money.

 

Now for the upgrades. 
Like a godsend my friend was helping his parents move and found his fathers old workstation PC and asked me if there is anything valuable there, to wich i kind of nodded and told him that its so old its probably trash. Turned out it was kind of a beast machine at the time and there was a QX6850 inside. You have my attention now.

 

So obviously I asked him for the chip and he gave it to me (these are about 60€ on ebay I think?)

That piece of s*it of a case is antec sonata II i think. Worst. Airfolw. Ever. (and no removable back panel so please excuse me for that rats nest.)

 

Luckily 7 years ago when i bought this, i bought that Noctua cooler so i could overclock that E8500 and now the xtreme edition

Guess wich one is the xtreme edition.

After CPU upgrade i realized my storage configuration was total trash.

a 500GB WD, 80GBMaxtor, 320GB samsung and WD 2½" laptop drives synced for backups and 160GB WD Raptor all old as hell and ripped from dead machines.

So obviusly i ditched that Maxtor since it didnt even support AHCI, which is needed for my next upgrade.

(credits for ghetto mounting storage?) Thats an Samsung 850EVO 250GB.

 

Now I must say that converting an old windows install from HDD to SSD and changing the BIOS storage type from IDE to AHCI is a bit annoying process since windows does not support changing that after installation (the fix was easy when I found some forum thread for it)
 

 

Now my peripherals are quite new since I broke my orange G15 by spilling coffee on it  and I was so mad i went and bought this Razer Blackwidow, which is quite good, tough I think i should have bought the G710+

As for the mouse, I was using the Logitech MX518 which was great for its time and for the ergonomics but it was old and I got a deal on cyber monday for Mionix NAOS 8200 for like 40€.

 

Headphones were a bit hilarious story since my mother vacuumed my old headset (Crative Fatal1ty :s) while I was visiting

Luckily my friend had these AKG K272HD headphones with broken cable and gave them to me so i could easily fix it  by cutting 15cm from the cable and soldering it back.

 

Yesterday i got this old desklamp for my mic (Blue Snowball) stand

 

Yes that coaster is an intel heatsink

 

OC was necessary to achieve playable framerates so I overclocked the CPU and GPU and here are the current stable overclocks:

 

CPU is overvolted, multiplier changed and FSB freq has been upped a bit to achieve the best overclock possible. Someone on the interwebs was saying that this chip would only go to 3600mhz by changing the multiplier but I found out that it's better to keep the multilplier a bit lower, upping the FSB and lowering the DDR2 strap a bit to achieve a bit higher stable OC.

GPU is just trial and error. Someone told me that this asus R9 270X would go to 1200mhz but mine is not stable above 1152mhz. Memory would overclock a bit tough to 1500mhz.

 

Temps were a bit high in this setup and this case has 1 fan slot so i had to make some haxoring to the case

 

I added some cardboard to prevent air from just circulating around the fan. (The cardboard was appropriately from a salt box for all the saltiness)

 

Also to the back to prevent dust

 

 

Soo this is the setup I use to play R6Siege and stuff. If only I could find some 800mhz DDR2 for reasonable price I would be golden for a year or so.

 

Hopefully someone finds this interesting and decides to upgrade their old computer since its not that hard or expensive.

If not I just wasted too much time writing this

[Lolucoca]

That's ghetto af I like it

[iWearKiltz]

THIS IS MY FAVOURITE BUILD

 

I'm not even kidding. I'm actually so envious of your approach and solution to everything.... SUBBED

[Tieox]

Talk about making the absolute best of what you have at hand!.  

 

Impressive work.  Are you UK based? I saw some DDR2 on Amazon a while back for not too much money.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Komputerbay-800MHz-PC2-6300-PC2-6400-Desktop/dp/B004LT6O56

[Wolf_Lbh]

I love this. It is like if scrapyard wars were not so rushed and they had time to actually get a super budget system up and running semi-properly. Sub'd

[motorboat]

Thank you very much for the comments.

On 4.3.2016 at 5:17 PM, Kierax said:

Talk about making the absolute best of what you have at hand!.  

 

Impressive work.  Are you UK based? I saw some DDR2 on Amazon a while back for not too much money.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Komputerbay-800MHz-PC2-6300-PC2-6400-Desktop/dp/B004LT6O56

Im actually Finnish and I should probably just order some RAM. This local computer shop disassembles computers and i have been asking for those 800 DDR2:s but they told me that they usually only get 667mhz 1gb modules of ddr2:s these days

 

BTW if someone has a pair of headphones with a broken cord, it's actually pretty easy to fix. Headsets are a pain in the ass since they usually don't have individually insulated wires and the use some kind of lacqer and that stuff is really annoying to solder.

Here is a pic of the K272HD:s with the ghettoest mic mod ever I just snipped some 15cm from the wire and soldered those three contacts.

That mic mod was amazing. It's a Fatal1ty detachable mic and 3.5mm plug extension cord attached with wire. Worked quite good for a while but I wanted something better.

[Koverhar]

WIth that avatar I have to assume you are finlandssvensk:DD

[motorboat]

23 minutes ago, Koverhar said:

WIth that avatar I have to assume you are finlandssvensk:DD

Most certainly not.

[Koverhar]

19 minutes ago, iiro.nevalainen said:

Most certainly not.

Okay, didn't know mumin had an appeal to the normal finns. My bad sorry

[motorboat]

Ok so the airflow wasnt too good and my processor temps were 80 when running aida64 gpu+cpu stability test. I noticed that if i removed the front panel, that front fan was able to push a lot more air.

Dremel tiems follow

 

 

So the ghetto factor just rose a bit on this build. Oh well.

 

Temperatures went 10C down tough so i call this a succes!

 

I tested* the air pressure in the case and now its more or less neutral rather than previous when it was certainly negative pressure. (*tested as in removed one optical cover and held a lighter there to see if it pushes or pulls the flame)