What would you do? (UPDATE)

spud17

I'm not looking for an in depth discussion, just what it says in the title.
I currently have
Pentium Dual Core 2.8 GHz
2x 2GB 1066 ram (Max)
Asus P5KPL-AM SE board
AMD HD 5450 graphics
Corsair CX500 psu

This ran Win 7 faultlessly for nearly 5 yrs.

I did a clean install using the upgrade disk in January, a few weeks later I started getting random reboots.
Event viewer pointed to power supply problems.
PSU tested fine, I eventually traced it to the motherboard, which would no longer put up with the preset 5% overclock I had been using.
I removed the overclock and it's run for nearly 6mths with no problems.
I started thinking about finding a replacement in case the motherboard really is on the way out.

But I have now been given
Antec Sonata case
Phenom 9950 Quad-Core 2.6 GHz
MSI K9A2 Platinum board
4x 1GB 1066 ram
Antec 550w psu

Pentium : Passmark score 1800, Super Pi 18 secs, wPrime 29 secs
Phenom : Passmark score 3100, Super Pi 30 secs, wPrime 16 secs


I have found the current pc struggles when I play around with VMs.

I could put the 2x 2GB + 2x 1GB ram into the Phenom, giving 6GB.
I have an unused Crucial BX100 250 GB ssd (£54 flubit)

Would you spend a few hours putting all the best bits together?

Fightsback

Yes, but I'd have 2x4gb stick and run the ram in dual channel.

You are going to struggle with VM's using 4GB of RAM, 8GB better 16GB ideal.

Use that SSD it will make your PC feel a different machine.

As for overclocking, don't bother as it can cause a lot of problems for little benefit.

spud17

Thanks for the reply.
I'm tending towards making the best machine I can with what I've available.
That AMD board has 4 slots, max is 2GB per slot, besides I'm not going to spend money on it, I'd rather keep that back for the next new build.
This is only intended to be a stop gap.
According to the manual, each pair of slots, 1+2 and 3+4, can be run in dual channel.
The original plan was to upgrade to Win 10 in a few weeks, then do a clean install using the ssd.
I'd still like to see a definitive answer about the Win 8 key and reinstalling, once it's been used for Win 10.
IIRC, it was said that if you used a Win 8 upgrade disk, your Win7 key was deleted forever.

Fightsback

spud17 wrote: »

That AMD board has 4 slots, max is 2GB per slot, besides I'm not going to spend money on it, I'd rather keep that back for the

Oh yes so it does, 4 x 2gb it is then for full dual. As AMD memory controllers are much slower than Intel's offerings it needs all the memory bandwidth you can give it. Ebay for cheap sticks.

spud17

Fightsback wrote: »

Oh yes so it does, 4 x 2gb it is then for full dual. As AMD memory controllers are much slower than Intel's offerings it needs all the memory bandwidth you can give it. Ebay for cheap sticks.

Ebay is around £25 + for 2x 2GB DDR2 PC8500.
So £25 to gain 2GB.
I'll manage without.

esuhl

spud17 wrote: »

I'm not looking for an in depth discussion, just what it says in the title.

Okay, then!

spud17 wrote: »

Would you spend a few hours putting all the best bits together?

Yes. Why wouldn't you?! Even if it takes a few hours you'll benefit from months or years of having a faster PC.

spud17

esuhl wrote: »

Yes. Why wouldn't you?! Even if it takes a few hours you'll benefit from months or years of having a faster PC.

That was the plan.:)
The Asus was a bargain basement model and has lasted 5+ yrs, now showing signs of becoming unreliable.
There is a new range of Intel processors on the way, so will do 'proper' upgrade then, if required.

Fightsback

spud17 wrote: »

That was the plan.:)
There is a new range of Intel processors on the way, so will do 'proper' upgrade then, if required.

If you are into VM's then that's a good idea, plenty of RAM and fast modern Intel processors.

spud17

Fightsback wrote: »

If you are into VM's then that's a good idea, plenty of RAM and fast modern Intel processors.

I just use VMs to check out Linux distros and anything else that takes my fancy.
Plus also have XP and Vista for reference.

Definitely going for it.

spud17

Just to update.
Put all the best bits together and it works well.
No noticeable difference in browsing speed, but Excel opens much quicker, and I can allocate more memory to the various VMs I have.

I had to activate over the phone, which was half expected, it was originally a Retail Upgrade version, but I used a full version for a clean install along with a generic key, which is then changed before activation

For some reason Office Professional Plus 2010, would not install properly, giving the error 'One of your object libraries is missing',
Loads of non solutions, folk use Google and put forward their findings as a solution, to appear clever.
The solutions rarely work, just recycle the misinformation.

As an experiment, I tried an in place reinstall of Win 8 i.e. run setup again from within Windows.
It took about 15 mins, afterwards Office installed and now runs properly.
Thunderbird, Waterfox and Palemoon profiles had been saved and were copied across.
I don't run many programs so it didn't take long to get everything up and running.

AMD Phenom 9950 Quad
6GB 1066 MHz RAM
Crucial BX100 250GB SSD
Radeon HD 5450

The original Samsung 500GB disk was already partitioned, System and Data, once I was satisfied, I deleted the System partition and grew the Data partition.
OS and programs only things on SSD.