Is a Motherboard kit a good idea.

getmore4less

As I have nothing demanding in my use cases I find anything 5y+ old only needs the latest entry level £200-£250 dell outlet(or similar) for the next 5years as a replacement full set of new components,

10y old systems are still fine for basic stuff(if they are not broken)

Very easy to overspend if you don't consider the use cases.

esuhl

getmore4less wrote: »

As I have nothing demanding in my use cases I find anything 5y+ old only needs the latest entry level £200-£250 dell outlet(or similar) for the next 5years as a replacement full set of new components,

10y old systems are still fine for basic stuff(if they are not broken)

Oh, I happily do much more than "basic stuff" on my ten-year-old PC -- play games, run virtual machines, stream video, have a hundred browser windows open etc. All at the same time sometimes. (I don't play the latest 3D shooting style games).

I think you'd be surprised if you tried it.

getmore4less wrote: »

Very easy to overspend if you don't consider the use cases.

Yeah. With the first PC I built, I got an modestly expensive case and PSU. I thought I'd use them when I upgraded, but the case was too small to fit those huge graphics cards I assumed I'd never need, and wasn't ventilated well enough for modern CPUs.

The 500W PSU was pushing it, now I had five drives, wanted a much better video card, and CPUs had become much more power-hungry. And motherboards, graphics cards and new drives now needed connectors my PSU didn't have. So I had to replace them despite spending extra thinking they'd last for years.

For my current PC, I waited almost a year to get a Core i7 CPU on the day they were originally released. They were a leap in performance compared to what was on the market at the time. Triple-channel memory, quad-core with hyperthreading, large onboard caches. They destroyed AMD's market share overnight!

I got a huge BTX server case with six fans (one the size of a small dinner plate), and a 750W PSU. Overkill at the time, but I can't see me "outgrowing" them in the foreseeable future.

I started off running Windows XP, "wasting" half of that 6GB RAM, but I pre-ordered Windows 7 (getting a huge discount), so several months later I was at last running 64-bit Windows as well as GNU/Linux.

The whole PC cost £800. Not bad, given that it's lasted ten years.

Last year I spent £80 on a better video card, and got a PCIe 3.0 SSD, which is so much faster than SATA SSDs. Again, the SSD is overkill, but I'd run out of SATA ports. Rather than have the expense of buying a large hard drive and a SATA SSD, it was cheaper to get a PCIe 3.0 one, even though my motherboard only supports PCIe 2.0. But the SSD will perform much faster with a new motherboard.

The PC still does everything I need, and is faster than I need it to be. Okay -- you'd probably laugh at the boot time, and one or two applications take few seconds to load/start. But it's so much faster than any of my friends' budget laptops -- even recent models. And it'll be so cheap to upgrade -- just a motherboard/CPU/RAM.

You definitely have to choose wisely, anticipate your future needs, anticipate whether PC architecture is likely to undergo fundamental changes in the near future, and look closely so you can trim back on any unnecessary features, and spend the money where it will give you the best long-term bang-per-buck.

jshm2

Well.... you could just upgrade the CPU, but considering the best setup that board can have, it's probably best to ditch and start a new system.

esuhl

getmore4less wrote: »

10y old systems are still fine for basic stuff(if they are not broken)

I happen to be using my PC fairly heavily tonight, so I thought I'd give you a real world example of performance.

I'm running a full virus scan in Avast, streaming HD audio from the internet, streaming SD video on the LAN, and have two Firefox windows open -- one with 31 tabs, the other 24. I'm running a Win7 virtual machine (allocated 4GB RAM) with a few browser tabs open. Oh -- and I'm playing a (fairly old) 3D racing game online with the graphics set to maximum and getting around 180fps when it's windowed.

There's no change in system responsiveness. The CPU usage is steady at around 44%. Memory usage is a steady 9.1 GB of the 12 GB available.

Sorry -- I don't mean to bang on about it -- I'm just hoping that others can see that it is possible to save a lot of money and have a great PC if you build it to last.