Advice needed, upgrading/building new PC

redhed17

redhed17

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Hello, I currently have a desktop bought about 5-6 years ago from another user here that I want to upgrade/replace. The one I have now has an Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 and 8GB of DDR2 RAM. The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4. The reason I want to upgrade is for a faster processor, more RAM, USB3. Having a HDMI socket on the motherboard would be nice too.

I got a USB3 PCI card last year to try and get USB 3 sockets into the computer, but it didn't work. :( I bought a SSD drive in the hope of a temporary improvement, but it had little effect. Which confused me, as people say they can make a big difference. :thinking:

So, if you have got this far, I salute you. :) The motherboard can't take a processor much faster, so I will have to get a new one. I want at least an i5 processor and 16GB of RAM. It will be used with Win 7 Ultimate, but I may upgrade to Win 10.

I did build my 1st PC about 10 - 12 years ago, and things have changed a lot since, hence this thread. I use the PC for Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 5. Also for general computer stuff too.

For those in the know, what do you think of the following;
Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H Socket 1150 VGA DVI HDMI 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i5 4690 3.50GHz Socket 1150 6MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
2x 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 CL10 DIMM HyperX Fury Series

Is this a good mix of components? That is all roughly £350. I haven't got loads of money, so please don't advise parts hugely more expensive if you think other parts would be better. If I can make savings then all the better. ;) :) I'd rather not pay for a graphics card if I don't need to for now. Will the graphics on this motherboard suffice?

I have the case, 512GB SSD, DVD drive, 2x 1TB HDs and a water cooling system that I assume I can use. Please let me know if I can't for any reason.

All advice greatly appreciated.


 
What GFX card? I'd personally double the RAM too if it was me, pshop etc will be much nicer.
 
techguyone said:
What GFX card? I'd personally double the RAM too if it was me, pshop etc will be much nicer.
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Thanks for replying. :)

According to the specs of the motherboard, it has graphics inbuilt.

Integrated Graphics Processor - Intel® HD Graphics support:
  1. 1 x D-Sub port, supporting a maximum resolution of 1920x1200@60Hz
  2. 1 x DVI-D port, supporting a maximum resolution of 1920x1200@60Hz
    * The DVI-D port does not support D-Sub connection by adapter.
  3. 1 x HDMI port, supporting a maximum resolution of 4096x2160@24Hz or 2560x1600@60Hz
    * Support for HDMI 1.4a version.
  4. Support for up to 3 displays at the same time
  5. Maximum shared memory of 512MB
Would that not be good enough? I know Photoshop can take advantage of a graphics card, but I don't play games, so would rather not spend money on a graphics card if I don't need to.
 
I used to build / upgrade myself, but find it's often now pretty much as cheap to buy ready built in a lot of instances - especially if you need the OS as well. (If the OS you currently have was preinstalled on you current PC or was an OEM edition, and you intend to try and use it on your new build you won't be able to - it needs to be a full retail version in order to reinstall on a new PC).

You could then put the SSD and the 2x 1TB drives to good use in a microserver to keep everything backed up.
 
No. OEM editions of Windows 7 are licensed only to the first PC they are installed on. That is why they are much cheaper than retail editions. That isn't to say that it isn't possible to install on a subsequent PC but it will involve phone activation and maybe telling a little or porkie or two - "My hard drive fried and I'm wanting to reinstall on a replacement HD my original PC .. etc .etc..." To prevent this misuse, OEM versions preinstalled on factory made PCs are now often tied to that particular machine's BIOS - meaning that you can legitimately reinstall on a replacement HD on that PC, but not on a different motherboard / PC.
 
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I have Win 7, so that is not a problem. :)

I don't really want two computers running by having a server as it is only me who uses the computer, but thanks for the input. :)

Any more opinions on the parts I've listed?

Would they work together OK?

If I were to up the RAM, would it be better as two strips of 16GB, or four strips of 8GB?
 
DeadpanDodo said:
No. OEM editions of Windows 7 are licensed only to the first PC they are installed on. That is why they are much cheaper than retail editions. That isn't to say that it isn't possible to install on a subsequent PC but it will involve phone activation and maybe telling a little or porkie or two - "My hard drive fried and I'm wanting to reinstall on a replacement HD my original PC .. etc .etc..." To prevent this misuse, OEM versions preinstalled on factory made PCs are now often tied to that particular machine's BIOS - meaning that you can legitimately reinstall on a replacement HD on that PC, but not on a different motherboard / PC.
Click to expand...


Yes it cane be done, I have rebuilt my system a number of times and re-used my win 7 software each time.

You activate it via the Microsoft automated telephone service, confirm you are only using it on one system, jobs a good one
 
Not going to be much help, free bump though, but surprised the SSD did not make much difference- put a samsung SSD in PC with similar spec to yours and best thing since sliced bread.Thinking of similar upgrade as you as would be good with the lightroom / photoshop CC deal especially as my daughter uses photoshop in school - well that's my excuse for getting a new toy.:)
 
redhed17 said:
For those in the know, what do you think of the following;
Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H Socket 1150 VGA DVI HDMI 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i5 4690 3.50GHz Socket 1150 6MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
2x 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 CL10 DIMM HyperX Fury Series

Is this a good mix of components? That is all roughly £350. I haven't got loads of money, so please don't advise parts hugely more expensive if you think other parts would be better. If I can make savings then all the better. ;) :) I'd rather not pay for a graphics card if I don't need to for now. Will the graphics on this motherboard suffice?

I have the case, 512GB SSD, DVD drive, 2x 1TB HDs and a water cooling system that I assume I can use. Please let me know if I can't for any reason.

All advice greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...
I can't see any problems with that lot except, perhaps the water cooling. You're moving from S775 to S1150 so it depends if the CPU plate has the fittings for later sockets. 1156, 1155 and 1150 all use the same fitting so anything later than 775 should be okay.
The only other thing I'd strongly recommend is a new PSU. They do lose power with age and modern ones are much more efficient than their predecessors. You don't need anything massive - 450-500W should do if you don't buy a silly great GPU later.
 
Very similar system you have to what I had at the start of the year, only with an E6850 and 4GB of ram. Understand where you are coming from with the SSD. I dropped one in my old system and while it did speed things up I was always a bit disappointed with it. So went and built a new system at start of the year with a similar motherboard (mine did not have the H on the end I think). Also 16GB ram (Team 2133 2x8GB) but went with a G3258 CPU and windows 8.1. Carried over the old machines SSDs and HDD and the old 8600GTS GPU.

To be fair I now understand what people were saying about SSDs in a board that is better suited to them, it is like night and day. Went from a tranfer rate of 80MBs to 530MBs. I am going to drop in another 16GB of Ram, as it is cheap at the moment and like you tend to keep my desktop for a number of years. Will look to overclock the CPU once I have an AIO on it.

To me there is nothing wrong with the parts you mention. But do agree with snapsh0t consider a new powersupply unit also my old one would not have worked in the new machine. Also I found that when I tied to get the system to first run there was nothing on the screen seems that the motherboard BIOS defaults to GPU so need to change that to onbaord if you are not going with GPU.

If you need to cut corners to get the powersupply then I can recommend the G3258 cpu, if you are just doing lightroom. If video then I would stick with what you are after but find a bit more cash for a new powersupply.
 
Personally i wouldn't worry too much about the watercooling side of things, unless you are looking to overclock the cpu then just use the stock cooler that comes with the cpu for now and consider a bigger version later on. You aren't adding a big heat generating gpu to the build currently so air cooled should be quite adequate. As for the comments previously regarding ram and power supply they are all very valid, my current build uses that same motherboard and i really like it, plenty of expansion capacity and good heat capacitors etc. My build only has 8gb of ram currently but i could easily add more if i needed to but as yet that hasn't been necessary (machine has quite happily dealt with opening 700 20mb+ raw files in camera raw and allowed pretty much seamless editing of them as i went through), it is worth pointing out mine has an intel i7 chip though and a designated graphics card, albeit not a monsterous one, which will probably have helped on that score.
 
I'd never normally say this, but can you wait a couple of months, or maybe six weeks?

Intel are releasing the 6th generation Core-i processors (codename: Skylake) they will offer anything from 10-30% performance increase per clock cycle, and they are based on a new socket motherboard LGA 1151.
Advantages are as follows:

New architecture, lower power consumption (less watts) for better speed/performance.
Uses DDR4 RAM offering higher speeds and more bandwidth
Better integrated graphics options with 100% or more improvement.
Most Z170 motherboards (new chip set) will come as standard with USB 3.1 ports using the new Type-C connector, as well as the normal Type-A. (Important for future proofing)
Built in hardware decoding of H.265 video decompression/compression.

Pricing will be slightly higher (due to demand) on release, but should settle down to the same as your i5 4690 choice, and the DDR4 RAM is starting to drop rapidly.
Another bonus is unless you are running some shoddy 450W PSU, any decent 450-500W PSU will suffice as long as it's not older than Cher. Typical quad core CPU will draw approx 80w, add in the board and ram and you are at about 110w max.

You'll also have a chip set that will support PCI-E SSD's in M.2 form factor using NVMe controllers, increasing the transfer read/writes to 2200MB/s/1900MB/s

All I am saying is, if you've managed this long, two months ain't gonna hurt, and it'll last you a good while.
 
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Thanks for the replies. :)

Just in the middle of replying when I was informed of your post Blu3fire. Unfortunately the parts have already been bought. :rolleyes: Timing is everything. :LOL:

I bought the parts last week, and was planning on building it over the weekend. Sadly, even though I have my current PC, and have two other older PCs, and planned to use some bits, I didn't realise that I couldn't use any of the 5 internal DVD players I currently have lying around, so I needed to buy a new SATA DVD player. :rolleyes: Ordered it on Thursday night, as no shop in Liverpool had any. :mad: Supposed to come today, but hasn't.

Back to my build. I wanted to use the water cooling I already have, if possible, because it is silent. The Processor came with a 'Thermal Solution', which is a fan to you and me. ;) :LOL: I'm going to use that initially to see how noisy it is. I don't know if the water cooling I have is compatible. I bought some Arctic Silver, but the instructions say

I think the reason the SSD I have in the current PC was no apparent speed increase was because a setting had to be changed in the BIOS on the motherboard. I think there are two settings, IDE and AHCI, and my mother board was set to the former. To get the best out of the SSD it needs to be set to AHCI. It apparently can be changed after the fact, but it requires some messing about with the Registry, and could do some serious damage. So no way I would touch that. The new motherboard has that setting enabled by default. :)

So I have ended up with;
Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H
Intel Core i5 4690 3.50GHz
2x Crucial 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
Crucial CT512MX100SSD1 MX100 512GB SATA 6Gbps
LG Internal 24x Super Multi DVDRW

That will be what will be in the box to start. I've assumed that the power supply I have will be good enough. I have to try and make some savings somewhere. :rolleyes:

Hope to try and do it sometime this week, if the DVD arrives.
 
Thanks for that info Blu3fire, when you say prices will be slightly higher are you in a position to give approx % increase, I am looking at similar build to redhed17 - apologies for going little off topic- and was hoping to use existing dell case and power supply, IIRC only 300 watts but dell usually use decent power supply(I hope/believe) TIA
 
nog said:
Thanks for that info Blu3fire, when you say prices will be slightly higher are you in a position to give approx % increase, I am looking at similar build to redhed17 - apologies for going little off topic- and was hoping to use existing dell case and power supply, IIRC only 300 watts but dell usually use decent power supply(I hope/believe) TIA
Click to expand...

Assuming you are not using huge amounts of hard drives, or wanting to install a massive graphics cards that draws 100+ watts of power then 300W is plenty for an i3/i5/i7. I regularly build 1U rack mount i5 rigs (65W CPU) that use an FSP 250W PSU, and they have loads of overhead left even with a low end Nvidia Quadro card installed.

As for the higher prices, it always happens with new tech, supply and demand etc. Your probably looking at 10% depending on how much the retailers are scalping at the time, it settles down after a few weeks or a month, if Intel keep up good supply. :)
 
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Well I put the computer together last night, and it all went together well. Well after dropping the Processor on the carpet at one point anyway. :eek: :rolleyes: :LOL:

The hardest bit was getting all the front case button and lights connectors onto the pins on the motherboard. :mad:

Slowly putting all the software I want on it. Over an hour of M$ updates initially, and then more over the day. Once I put Office 2010 on, then there were loads of more updates for that. :rolleyes: Better safe than sorry.

Overall the computer seems a bit faster. I put CS6 on and did some Panoramas that I had done before, and they were a lot faster in being completed. And I mean a lot faster. :)

The onboard graphics seem pretty good. Initially panicked when trying the HDMI as there was just a copy of my desktop with no task bar on the TV. Eventually worked out that it was set up to extend the display by default rather than duplicate. :rolleyes:

I have so far been disappointed with the USB3, which was one of the things I thought would be working at maximum. I copied some data back onto the SSD drive from a portable HD and it transferred at about 70mb/s. :( I think I have all the drivers up to date. I haven't got round to testing each USB3 socket yet to see if there was any difference.

Happy with the upgrade so far. :)
 
redhed17 said:
I have so far been disappointed with the USB3, which was one of the things I thought would be working at maximum. I copied some data back onto the SSD drive from a portable HD and it transferred at about 70mb/s. :( I think I have all the drivers up to date. I haven't got round to testing each USB3 socket yet to see if there was any difference.

Happy with the upgrade so far. :)
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Pleased to hear it all went well. I suspect the slow USB3 transfer rate is probably due to the HDD in the external drive. 70MB/s is more than USB2 speed so it is working as USB3. But even with good drives I only get around 130MB/s. Unless, of course, you really do mean 70mb/s which would be really slow.....
 
redhed17 said:
I have so far been disappointed with the USB3, which was one of the things I thought would be working at maximum. I copied some data back onto the SSD drive from a portable HD and it transferred at about 70mb/s. :( I think I have all the drivers up to date. I haven't got round to testing each USB3 socket yet to see if there was any difference.
Click to expand...

The USB 3.0 will be fine, this is 100% your external drive. 2.5" hard drives tend to max out at 150 MB/s on sequential reads, and that's for a 7200rpm drive, which yours probably is not. Then like I said large sequentially written files that are being read from the drive will go much faster. At least 70MB/s is better than the 20 MB/s you get usually from USB 2.0

Glad you are enjoying the new build, it's always nice having fresh hardware. :)
 
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