faetal on 27/10/2014 at 12:20

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Hello.

I have some queries about the best way to go about upgrading my somewhat differentially aged PC. It's my main PC which I use for gaming and music production. A bit of history about it - I built it back in 2008 and have upgraded the processor, hard drives and GPU in 2011. Here are the current specs:

Motherboard: Asus COMMANDO P965 Socket 775 Onboard Audio ATX
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66GHz Socket 775 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Memory: 2 x Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Kit CL5 1.8v (8 GB total)
GPU: MSI GTX 460 Cyclone OC Edition 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI Mini HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card
System HDD: Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM
PSU: OCZ GameXStream 850W PSU - Silent 120mm Blue LED Fan 4x PCI-E 6x SATA

Plus I have pretty decent cooling block and silver-based thermal paste, so I may be able to eke out some extra juice by over-clocking it, which I've never done.

So my question is this: I want to upgrade this and I can't really spare the money to buy a new system, so I see myself with the following options:

1) Try to find some ways to replace existing components cheaply to push a bit more out of the system for another couple of years.

2) Start saving money to buy an entire system outright further down the line when stuff which is great now is a bit cheaper.

3) Starting buying good components individually on a monthly budget, then build an improved machine once I have the requisite parts.

The way I see it is that 1 only works if I restrict myself to socket 775 CPUs and by extension, whichever GPUs whose bandwidth needs won't outclass the processor. 3 allows me to change CPU socket, but doesn't require an entirely new system, but I risk some of my components being lower in price than when I bought by the time it comes to building, so maybe 3 should actually be more like 2-lite: I save money for a moderate upgrade.

I need to buy a new hard drive in the very short term regardless as my system drive is just not cutting the mustard. At the moment, I have a 1TB system drive and 500 GB data drive, which I use to store all of my essential stuff, like music projects I'm working on. I'm thinking of retiring the 500 GB one (Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII Hard Drive 16MB Cache) and relegating the 1 TB one to be the data drive and getting a 2 TB system drive and creating a 500 GB system partition, a 1 TB dropbox partition (my dropbox can have up to 1 TB) for the aforementioned music files and work-related stuff and keep the remaining 500 GB drive for miscellany (plus probably a system drive image once I make a clean install). The 1 TB secondary drive can be used as a backup for the drop box drive, or I could just use it as a media drive.

Firstly, performance-wise, is it better to have my system drive and music files on the same disk? I assume that read/write access will be less laggy this way, but then I don't really know - maybe it will make it worse. Secondly - which SATA II disk would people recommend? I hear that Hitachi and Western digital are the most reliable and I'm particularly interested in the Western Digital Black drives for performance, but again, I don't know how much things like this really matter.

Lastly - what would people recommend overall I do with regards to the upgrade? I've only just recently reached the point where I've needed to start playing games with less than maximum settings and my music software is being pretty chuggy (which I put down to processor and the aforementioned disk issues). I'd like to find a solution for (ideally) €600 or less.

faetal on 30/10/2014 at 12:20

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:D

You're awesome BD. Regarding the RAM, I think 8 gb is the maximum for my board.
All of those other suggestions are solid gold.
When you say games drive, do you mean for installing games to? If so, does this not slow the gaming down at all?

faetal on 30/10/2014 at 13:45

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Also awesome. I will have a mull over that while I plan my yearly budget.
How much better is the second option versus the first? I'm not talking hard numbers, just an appraisal.

faetal on 30/10/2014 at 16:25

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Sold on the second option. Thanks as always BD.

faetal on 30/10/2014 at 17:46

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To be honest, because I'm in France, I'll probably just get them from the website which is easiest to use.