Upgrading motherboard, memory, and cooler (keeping CPU)

Are the parts I plan on upgrading to a good idea?

  • Total voters
    4
GilmourD

GilmourD

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jun 17, 2004
Messages
11,185
OK, boys and girls... Long story short... I'm finding that 4 gigs of RAM just isn't enough anymore in the system in my sig below. I'd upgrade that but there are a few things to consider (HSF is in the way of the other two slots, plus it's DDR2 in a DDR3 world). Also my board is an AM2+ board and I've got an AM3 chip on it.

Now I'm on somewhat of a budget with limited availability of funds (basically my Microcenter card, so other vendors are out of the question).

So, what I was thinking is:

Now, is this particular setup a good idea or no?

If not, suggest other pieces that are somewhere within the same price range from microcenter.com, please.
 
Motherboard wise, I'd recommend the more trustworthy, similarily priced, and longer warrantied Asus M5A97 instead:
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0382961

RAM and HSF are fine. Only get a 2 x 8GB set or single 8GB stick if you have Windows 7 Pro and above. Windows 7 Home Premium is limited only to 16GB of RAM max.

Now with all of that said, please answer the following questions:
1) Whats your max budget?
2) What are you doing with this PC where 4GB of RAM isn't enough?
 
Danny Bui said:
Motherboard wise, I'd recommend the more trustworthy, similarily priced, and longer warrantied Asus M5A97 instead:
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0382961

Note that you will probably end up replacing the motherboard again if you ever upgrade the CPU as current AMD FX CPUs aren't that much of a huge performance increase over your current Phenom II X4 955 (especially once overclocked). That is unless you manage to find a cheap Phenom II X6 CPU. In that case, no need to replace the motherboard

RAM and HSF are fine. Only get a 2 x 8GB set or single 8GB stick if you have Windows 7 Pro and above. Windows 7 Home Premium is limited only to 16GB of RAM max.

Now with all of that said, please answer the following questions:
1) Whats your max budget?
2) What are you doing with this PC where 4GB of RAM isn't enough?
Click to expand...

Honestly, CPU wise, I haven't felt the bug to upgrade like I used to. Everything that I actually use is still running pretty darn quick. So if Piledriver comes out and blows everybody's mind, great, but if not then I'm still alright.

Max budget is realistically... Not a whole lot. LOL Whatever I can get that's quality without busting the bank and give me a mild overclock while giving me the full feature set of the AM3 chip I have (which the current board is not).

And honestly, I do a lot of web based stuff, so I have tons of tabs open at any given time. Beyond that, I'm an admin for a TF2 server group so I've always got Steam going and almost always TF2 itself running. I've been keeping TeamSpeak open (which is negligible, since it has such a small memory footprint). Sadly, Facebook messenger (why is it such a huge memory hog?) so I can actually communicate with my non-techie wife who doesn't actually have access to any IM apps on her work computer. Got iTunes running for... uh... tunes. :p Oh, and I do some mild photo editing in GiMP (I have an older dSLR which is sadly underused, but when I do use it I take a good stream of pics).
 
All right then, you should be set with that list after the mobo swap. Though push for 16GB of RAM if you can.
 
Danny Bui said:
All right then, you should be set with that list after the mobo swap. Though push for 16GB of RAM if you can.
Click to expand...

Now, as far as RAM, I know that overclocking and filling all four slots back in the day was a no-no, but it doesn't seem to be that much of a deal anymore these days. What would you say?
 
GilmourD said:
Now, as far as RAM, I know that overclocking and filling all four slots back in the day was a no-no, but it doesn't seem to be that much of a deal anymore these days. What would you say?
Click to expand...

Not that much of a big deal unless you need every ounce of clock speed possible. These days, the clock speed hit from running 4 sticks of RAM isn't bad enough to outweigh the advantage of 16GB of RAM.
 
Danny Bui said:
Not that much of a big deal unless you need every ounce of clock speed possible. These days, the clock speed hit from running 4 sticks of RAM isn't bad enough to outweigh the advantage of 16GB of RAM.
Click to expand...
That's what I was figuring. Plus apparently the memory controller issues aren't as bad as they used to be.
 
Not that I have any doubts in Danny Bui's opinion... But nobody else has anything else to say or even vote? LOL
 
sure...

upgrade to i5 and ssd.
There's no point in sinking money into an old AMD setup. sell the cpu/mobo/mem as a combo $150
 
J Macker said:
sure...

upgrade to i5 and ssd.
There's no point in sinking money into an old AMD setup. sell the cpu/mobo/mem as a combo $150
Click to expand...

I would like an SSD at some point, but why spend more money to change platforms when what I have is doing what I need and I just need to adapt a little. The 955 Black isn't a bad chip.

If I were gonna go full hog I probably would go the i5 route but there's not enough budget for that right now.
 
OK... LOL Looks like nobody has much to say.

Well, sometime this week I'm going to stop by MC and pick myself up one of the boards, the RAM, and the HSF.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top