Updating the Old PC

[Turbo91Bird]

I haven't posted here in awhile. I missed my old tech board.

Anyways, a long time ago I built this PC.

Intel 3.4Ghz Prescott (presHOT is more like it, ha)
Asus P5ND2-SLI Mobo
OCZ Powerstream PSU
ATI X1800XT 512MB
DDR2-667 Corsair XMS2 (2GB) (512MB x 4)
74GB Raptor Drive
300GB Seagate 7200RPM SATA Drive


That was the old PC

Decided I needed to update my processor and main HD. But I needed to update my motherboard also if I wanted to do that (current one doesn't support dual-core or quad).

So I just bought these.

Asus P5Q Pro Mobo
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131299)

G.SKILL DDR2-1066 (2GB) (1GB x 2)
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231144)

Seagate 500GB 32MB Cache SATA Drive
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148288)

Intel Dual-Core E8400 (E0 Stepping) Processor
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115037)

I am keeping my X1800XT for now since it still plays a lot of my games (COD4, BF2, Warhammer Online) all on the highest settings still w/ good FPS.

I checked out the benchmark numbers on that new seagate drive and they were better then my raptor. Plus it is a 3.0Gb/s instead of my raptor 1.5Gb/s. The 74GB just wasn't cutting it anymore. Kept on having to always clean up my hard drive and back everything up to my 300GB drive. Gets annoying after awhile. It is just too bad it isn't 10,000rpm. But the 300GB raptors are just way too expensive for me right now.

But yeah, that's it. Good price too. Everything shipped for 414.00. I got the cpu at Microcenter. They have them for 149.99.

Only thing that went bad with my old setup was my motherboard (originally it was an A-Bit)

[Turbo91Bird]

Just put everything together last night. I am lovin this new setup.

It is at home right now finishing downloading the rest of my Half-Life games. I am going to defrag when I get home and that will be it.

Everything went real smooth. My Thermalright XP-120 fit with that motherboard with no problems. My E8400 runs at 31-32C at idle. Had to update the motherboard bios, it was reading the cpu temps wrong. It kept on bouncing around at 38-39C at idle. I updated to the latest bios and now it reads correctly.

Only grip is that the hard drive sometimes grinds or whines. But I heard from other people that it is notrious for making that noise due to less noise resistance material on the drive. Guessing why it was so cheap. Also had to remember to take that jumper off. No idea why a company would have their HD set to 1.5Gb/s as default. But the jumper is off so now it is at 3.0Gb/s.

The bios is very user friendly. Everything loads very fast.

I thought about upgrading to a 4870 card but that would require me to get a new PSU (for the 6 pin x2 cable and I am 30W short of the min. requirement) so I am just going to hold off on that. My X1800XT performs the games I play now on the highest settings.