Outdated hardware. What to do?

[ManEatingFridge]

I'm going to make this simple. In 2009 i got my computer for about 873.86 $.
Parts here:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P31-ES3G (i cried when I looked up the specs ;()
CPU: Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q8200 
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 5670 (was an entry-level card even back when it came out)
Fans: Stock crap
PSU: Didn't bother looking exact model but its an old (but working) power supply
RAM: dual channel 4gb (no brand name or model number or latency on em so, got no idea, probably Dell something, but its DDR2, which is old and expensive)
Storage: Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB (no SSD, cause they where expensive back then, but i guess for a 7200 rpm HDD this is good enough, plus its very quiet)
Ask me if you want to know more

At the time this computer was pretty good, and for that kind of price it was OK, but the average lifetime of hardware like this, until something a lot better for the same price (SSD used to be way too expensive, A lot better CPU's and GPU's for the same price as back then. SATA 2.0 and 3.0 came along, but my mobo has 3 gb/s SATA) comes along is about 3-5 years. That time is being made more apparent to me by the day. The old hardware, low RAM, no SSD and so on are really hampering my computers performance. 
Albeit i have a pretty good 23-inch 1080p display, good speakers with sub-woofer, a comfortable gaming mouse and Cherry MX Red Corsair K70, my computer itself is weak. It barely runs modern games, and is slow with most tasks (at this point you should know i am a gamer, who enjoys video quality in games, sound quality in music, you get the point...). Now, i have installed the latest drivers for the hardware I have, and use programs like Razer Game Booster, which stops other programs and and prioritizes your game process, along with other such functions, in order to make my games run a bit better, but nothing helps the hardware out that much, like starting up even something like Dark Souls or even Garry's Mod takes forever.
I am a bit of a tech enthusiast, and as much as I'd like a water-cooled PC with the Intel Core i7-4930k, 2 GTX Geforce 780ti-s, an ASUS VI Rampage Extreme Black Edition Motherboard, Quad-channel 64 gigs, dedicating 32gb to a ramdisk, 2T of SSD, nice color scheme and lighting and so on, I simply don't have the money for it. 
SoOoO would be cool if you guys could suggest a nice gaming build for like 1500$, here's what came up with (I live in Estonia where getting such parts is kinda rare, but I found em)

 

Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl - don't know if I should get with or without window, has a nice price tho

PSU: FSP AURUM CM GOLD 650W 90+ (80PLUS GOLD)

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Hero

SSD: Samsung EVO 120 GB

HDD: Say what you think of my current, if it isn't all that good then Seagate ST1000VX000

CPU: Intel 4770k

GPU: MSI R9 270X Gaming (great reviews so far, great cooling and good overclock-ability)

RAM: uhhhh.... the only quad channel that I found were Kingston high-end ungodly expensive 16gb, but if you find some good quad-channel 16gb for a reasonable price that I could order be sure to recommend

Cooling: Found nothing, I'm looking for static pressure (preferably Noctua NF-F12 :3) but if you guys have any good price water-cooling solutions, would be appreciated 

[theking]

I would get a brand PSU, like corsair, seasonic etc.. and the maximus vi isn't compatible with amd CPUs

 

Is your budget 1500$? if so, wouldn't you be able to fit a 780 in your budget?

[eX.Drunk]

is tech expensive in your area? because you can get A LOT better specs in 1500$

[ForeseenVisionz]

bro thats an intel haswell mobo and ur guna put a amd cpu in it? it not gona work theres just no wayyy.

[ManEatingFridge]

I would get a brand PSU, like corsair, seasonic etc.. and i don't the maximus vi is compatible with amd CPUs

 

Is your budget 1500$? if so, wouldn't you be able to fit a 780 in your budget?

Well the thing is I cant get Corsair or Antec PSUs because I simply couldn't find em, maybe I can find something in amazon global but remember that I still need cooling and RAM, tho getting a 780 would be cool and actually possible if I can expand the budget or something

[Megabikerjoe]

The motherboard you chose doesn't have the right socket for you cpu. If you want to get a pretty similar one get the Asus Crosshair V Formula Z. Otherwise just take one with an AM3+ socket. There are a lot of cheap but good ones out there.

[ManEatingFridge]

K, I can get a 4770k for 417$

[ciprian97pop]

K, I can get a 4770k for 417$

try to get something like this:

amd fx 8320

a nice cpu  cooler

any am3+ motherboard with a 990fx chipset

8 gb of ram(1600 or 1866 mhz it's enough)

if you aldeady have that hdd buy a samsung 840 evo 120gb or 240gb

video card: try to find a aftermarket cooled r9 290 or r9 290x or a gtx 780. if it's too expensive look for a 280x

psu: well, if you plan to add another graphics card get a 750w-850w psu, if not, a 600-650w psu will be enough. and please get a psu which actually has a name: xfx, evga, seasonic, corsair, cooler master, nzxt.

case: any case you'd like

[KamiKatze]

That system that you have isn't all that bad actually.

 

The Q8200 is a good CPU. My brother's Q6600 could reach 3.0 GHz with ease, cooled by a $20 cooler.

 

try to find out if your Mobo supports OCing (go into the BIOS) and get a proper cooler for your CPU (hyper 212 EVO).

 

Then add a 1208 gig SSD (~80-100 bucks), reinstall your PC

 

and last but not least get a decent GPU. The problem is, that your Mobo probably has PCIe 1.0 so you don't want anything that requires a high bandwidth. Best is, you look up some graphs if a HD 7970 or a GTX 770 get's bottlenecked by PCIe 1.0. i am sure there are a couple of tests online. If yes, step down to sth. like a HD 7870 or GTX 760.

 

 

There you have a cheap alternative for around 400-500 bucks. Building a completeley new PC is of course more exciting and allways better but at least you have an alternative. Double check if your PSU is good enough (has all the connectors and ratings and stuff) for that.

[legend8887]

I'm going to make this simple. In 2009 i got my computer for about 873.86 $.

Parts here:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P31-ES3G (i cried when I looked up the specs ;()

CPU: Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q8200 

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 5670 (was an entry-level card even back when it came out)

Fans: Stock crap

PSU: Didn't bother looking exact model but its an old (but working) power supply

RAM: dual channel 4gb (no brand name or model number or latency on em so, got no idea, probably Dell something, but its DDR2, which is old and expensive)

Storage: Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB (no SSD, cause they where expensive back then, but i guess for a 7200 rpm HDD this is good enough, plus its very quiet)

Ask me if you want to know more

At the time this computer was pretty good, and for that kind of price it was OK, but the average lifetime of hardware like this, until something a lot better for the same price (SSD used to be way too expensive, A lot better CPU's and GPU's for the same price as back then. SATA 2.0 and 3.0 came along, but my mobo has 3 gb/s SATA) comes along is about 3-5 years. That time is being made more apparent to me by the day. The old hardware, low RAM, no SSD and so on are really hampering my computers performance. 

Albeit i have a pretty good 23-inch 1080p display, good speakers with sub-woofer, a comfortable gaming mouse and Cherry MX Red Corsair K70, my computer itself is weak. It barely runs modern games, and is slow with most tasks (at this point you should know i am a gamer, who enjoys video quality in games, sound quality in music, you get the point...). Now, i have installed the latest drivers for the hardware I have, and use programs like Razer Game Booster, which stops other programs and and prioritizes your game process, along with other such functions, in order to make my games run a bit better, but nothing helps the hardware out that much, like starting up even something like Dark Souls or even Garry's Mod takes forever.

I am a bit of a tech enthusiast, and as much as I'd like a water-cooled PC with the Intel Core i7-4930k, 2 GTX Geforce 780ti-s, an ASUS VI Rampage Extreme Black Edition Motherboard, Quad-channel 64 gigs, dedicating 32gb to a ramdisk, 2T of SSD, nice color scheme and lighting and so on, I simply don't have the money for it. 

SoOoO would be cool if you guys could suggest a nice gaming build for like 1500$, here's what came up with (I live in Estonia where getting such parts is kinda rare, but I found em)

 

Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl - don't know if I should get with or without window, has a nice price tho

PSU: FSP AURUM CM GOLD 650W 90+ (80PLUS GOLD)

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Hero

SSD: Samsung EVO 120 GB

HDD: Say what you think of my current, if it isn't all that good then Seagate ST1000VX000

CPU: Intel 4770k

GPU: MSI R9 270X Gaming (great reviews so far, great cooling and good overclock-ability)

RAM: uhhhh.... the only quad channel that I found were Kingston high-end ungodly expensive 16gb, but if you find some good quad-channel 16gb for a reasonable price that I could order be sure to recommend

Cooling: Found nothing, I'm looking for static pressure (preferably Noctua NF-F12 :3) but if you guys have any good price water-cooling solutions, would be appreciated 

Your motherboard. :-D

[Bingbing10]

personally ide say do the following 

-Drop the 80 certified gold a bronze certified from a good maker ( corsair , seasonic etc) 

-Drop the i7 4770k ( unless you work is more for rendering/workstation , but if its for gaming go for either a i5 4670k or 8350 both good choices)

-unless workstation go for 2x4gb ram or 8x2gb for 16gb ( which isnt needed for gaming atm)

-Fractal design r4 is a great case ( i have it myself and i like the window as you get to see what you have made ) 

-Get an ssd for boot drive and common programmes and maybe most played game

-with the saved money from the psu and cpu ( if you go down to i5 or amd counterpart ) put that into your GPU and get a 280x/290(only if reference models are out yet but im not sure ) or even if you can squeeze a 780 out of the saved money as that thing is a beast and nvidia have some cool features like shadow play if you like streaming or recording. However mantle is being rolled in so amd is a good choice aswell but we dont know what improvements it will cause yet

 

edit: Get yourself and after market cooler such as a 212 evo or look into getting a nice water cooler 212 is plenty fine for stocks and medium OC

hope i helped

[thewhitestig]

I have similar setup. Mine is:
CPU: Q8200
GPU: HD 4830
RAM: 4GB DDR2 800mhz

The only upgrades I've done were replacing a 450W psu with a 550W one, and replacing the stock cooler with a CoolerMaster Hyper 2012 Plus w/ dual fans.

And honestly, the only problem with my PC is the videocard. It's way too old and slow. But the CPU is perfectly fine even for games in 2014. I'm gonna get myself 260X at the end of this month just to be able to play Battlefield 4 and Watch Dogs. I couldn't care less about upgrading my CPU right now, BUUUUUTTTT when Broadwell comes out in ~August 2014 I'm gonna get myself an i5 5670K with 32 gigs of 2000+mhz ram and a nice beefy mobo for overclocking. And then I'm not gonna touch my CPU/MOBO/RAM configuration for another 4-5 years. There is just no point in getting a new i7 every couple of years for gaming, especially if you are short on money. The investment is just not worth it. Oh, and I forgot to mention that my Broadwell upgrade will be followed by a GTX 870 or something like that in order to be able to play Star Citizen at decent settings. But RIGHT NOW, I don't fancy myself spending that much money for a 7 month old Haswell CPU, when the new ones will come in another 7 months. 

[ManEatingFridge]

Thanks for all the replies.

So here are my thoughts:

Case: Still R4, lovely case with awesome sound dampening

PSU: I can get something like the corsair professional series for a bit higher price than the one I suggested

Storage: probably the same

GPU: The R9 290x, which I abesolutely adore from the reviews aside from the referance cooler, got the Direct CU II treatment by Asus, but while the card is now alot more quiet and cooler, its gonna be a bit until it becomes widely avaliable , so I'm steering more towards the msi 270x or 760, since the 780 and 780 Ti have a somewhat steep pricepoint in a build where im trying to balance everything out, I mean I could center the build around 780 or 780 Ti, but wether i should or not, considering I can upgrade to like the Asus Direct CU II R9 290X when it comes around or mybe even R9 300X whenever that comes out , for now however still wanna make a balanced build ready for upgrades.

CPU: I can get the 4670k yeah, thanks for recommending :3

Memory: Quad-Channel 16gb Corsair Vengeance

Motherboard: Same

Cooling: Noctua NH-D12, was considering Corsair H100i but that would need Noctua NF-F12 fans and be a higher price for similar preformance, fans would be still Noctua NF-A14.

So there you go, I don't know if the cpu cooler will direct too much of the airflow away from gpu but thats what I thought.

The whole problem I have with upgrading is that mostly if I want to replace one part that would need replaceing all others (new ram would need new mobo, that would need new gpu, new psu and new hdd, new gpu would need new mobo, that would need new ram and so on...) and pretty much all my parts are less than stellar exept for cpu and hdd. So building a new PC would give me a lot better PC and an awesome experience. So yeah, if you guys would have some Ideas please tell me.

[WoodenMarker]

Memory: Quad-Channel 16gb Corsair Vengeance

Motherboard: Same

Cooling: Noctua NH-D12, was considering Corsair H100i but that would need Noctua NF-F12 fans and be a higher price for similar preformance, fans would be still Noctua NF-A14.

No point getting quad channel when the motherboard doesn't even support it. 

There's no point getting such an expensive cooler for your cpu if what you're doing is gaming. Something like a 212 Evo would be plenty.

[ManEatingFridge]

No point getting quad channel when the motherboard doesn't even support it. 

There's no point getting such an expensive cooler for your cpu if what you're doing is gaming. Something like a 212 Evo would be plenty.

Ok, dafuq. I must have mixed my boards up. I've heard that when it comes to RAM, and CPUs, more cores or more sticks, as in quad-channel or eight-core, is better, but when it comes to RAM, in terms of gaming, the difference between dual- and quad-channel isn't that big, and the difference between latensies is even smaller (The difference between 800 and 2100 was like 1,7 fps or something) . I wouldn't really consider it THAT expensive, but i guess allocating that extra to something else would be smart It's just that keeping my CPU cooled by something like a cooler with six dual heatpipes powered by the lovely quiet Noctua fans would be nice, but the 212 EVO would only save me 30$ so I think it's fine

[WoodenMarker]

Ok, dafuq. I must have mixed my boards up. I've heard that when it comes to RAM, and CPUs, more cores or more sticks, as in quad-channel or eight-core, is better, but when it comes to RAM, in terms of gaming, the difference between dual- and quad-channel isn't that big, and the difference between latensies is even smaller (The difference between 800 and 2100 was like 1,7 fps or something) . I wouldn't really consider it THAT expensive, but i guess allocating that extra to something else would be smart It's just that keeping my CPU cooled by something like a cooler with six dual heatpipes powered by the lovely quiet Noctua fans would be nice, but the 212 EVO would only save me 30$ so I think it's fine

It's nowhere near 7 fps for the majority for games and more like 1 fps. 

The NH-D14 is only $30 more than the 212 Evo?  :huh:

[ManEatingFridge]

I meant one point seven fps . And the NH-D14 is 75$ and Evo 212 is 45

[WoodenMarker]

I meant one point seven fps . And the NH-D14 is 75$ and Evo 212 is 45

You need to quote a post or tag a member or else they won't get a notification you replied to them.

 

Where are you shopping/located? The 212 Evo is normally ~$30. 

[MogIsWinning]

You need to quote a post or tag a member or else they won't get a notification you replied to them.

Where are you shopping/located? The 212 Evo is normally ~$30.

his original post says he is in Estonia

[ManEatingFridge]

You need to quote a post or tag a member or else they won't get a notification you replied to them.

 

Where are you shopping/located? The 212 Evo is normally ~$30. 

 

Yeah, sry bout that. I am in estonia and yes, the 212 Evo is 40$ here, tho on amazon its 35$, but 30$ or 40$ cheaper isn't all that big of a difference maybe  should check if I can get some better prices on my other parts on amazon.