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REBUILDING THE DREAM
Part two of an ambitious upgrade to a 3-year-old ‘Budget Surplus’ machine
| ORIGINAL BUILD | ||
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 2.8GHz Core i7-920 Running at 3.5GHz | |
| RAM | 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600 | |
| MOTHERBOARD | Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R | |
| GPU | Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 | |
| Cooler | Thermalright TRUE-120 1366 | |
| HDD | 1TB WD Caviar Black | |
| ODD | LG Blu-ray player | |
| OS | 64-bit Windows 7 Professional | |
| PSU | Thermaltake Element S / Corsair 850 TX | |
Here’s our aging warrior after the first round of upgrades in May—still X58, but with a modern GPU and more RAM.
In our May 2012 issue’s Build It section, we took a $1,400 gaming PC from our September 2009 issue and gave it a modest upgrade. The original rig was the midrange box in a trio of lean-year Dream Machines and was built around an Intel Core i7-920 and an ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. It had three 2GB DDR3/1333 DIMMs, a 1TB hard drive, an LG Blu-ray drive, and an 850W Corsair power supply. The case was a Thermaltake Element S mid-tower.
In the course of our May upgrade, we took that aging PC and boosted it from 6GB of DDR3 RAM to 12GB (by buying a 16GB kit and using only three DIMMs). We also swapped the ancient, power-hungry dual-GPU card for a sleek Radeon HD 7950, but otherwise left the rig unchanged. The goal was to offer an immediate performance boost while paving the way for a second, more comprehensive round of upgrades down the line. That time is now.
The Core i7-920 was an enthusiast CPU back in the day, and this Hyper-Threading-enabled quad-core is still no slouch. In fact, we could take the upgrades we’ve already made, add an SSD, and call it a day—and we wouldn’t blame anyone who stops there. We’d still be stuck with a dead-end socket that has no feasible upgrade path, so we’re biting the bullet and going for the major upgrade.
Since X58 was Intel’s enthusiast platform at the time, we want to stay in the enthusiast realm while offering a generous upgrade path, so we’ll need a CPU with plenty of juice now and a motherboard with room to grow. We hate to run a fancy rig without an SSD to improve load times and all-around system responsiveness, so we won’t.
We’ll keep the RAM and GPU from May’s upgrade, as well as the case, power supply, Blu-ray drive, and hard drive from the original build. Everything else gets an overhaul. In place of the Core i7-920, we’ll use Intel’s Core i7-3820. We briefly considered keeping the X58 platform and upgrading the CPU to a hexa-core Core i7-970, but they’re $650 new and around $525 used. The Core i7-970 would add performance for multithreaded apps, but paying so much for a CPU on a dead-end socket didn’t sit well with us. The Core i7-3820 is a quad-core Sandy Bridge-E part with Hyper-Threading that overclocks well despite not being an unlocked part. And our internal benchmarks indicate that its performance is competitive with older Westmere hexa-core chips anyway, so there’s no point in buying the i7-970 when we can get the i7-3820 and a new X79 motherboard for the same price
| UPGRADES | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| PART | URL | PRICE | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-3820 | www.intel.com | $300 |
| Motherboard | Intel DX79SI | www.intel.com | $270 |
| Cooler | Xigmatek Aegir | www.xigmatek.com | $68 |
| SSD | 240GB SanDisk ExtremeSSD | www.sandisk.com | $290 |
| Front-panel USB 3.0 | Biostar USB 3.0 Adapter | www.biostar-usa.com | $14 |
| 5.25-to-3.5-inch Drive Bay Adapter | Silverstone FP55 | www.silverstonetek.com | $16 |
| Front Panel Extensions |
NZXT Front Panel Connector Extension |
www.nzxt.com | $8 |
| Total | $966 | ||
We’ll recycle the three 4GB DIMMs from the first part of our upgrade, and add the fourth. This is why we bought a 16GB kit instead of a 12GB kit in May—so we’d have the extra DIMM ready when it was time to go quad-channel.
Because of LGA2011’s integrated universal backplate, we’ll need a new cooler—
Thermaltake doesn’t sell an LGA2011 mounting kit for the Ultra Extreme 120. We like Xigmatek’s Aegir due to its direct-contact heat pipes and powerful cooling performance.
Last we’ll add an SSD. Solid-state drives dramatically reduce load times and come with blazing-fast read and write speeds. SanDisk’s 240GB ExtremeSSD is a speedy SandForce-based 6Gb/s SATA SSD and is price-competitive with others in its class. 240GB is generous enough that we won’t need to micro-manage programs, though we’ll still want to make sure media and documents are kept on the 1TB drive.
Because the Element S is an older chassis, it has a few problems of its own. It doesn’t have front-panel USB 3.0 ports, and though it shipped with 2.5-inch drive‑bay adapters, they’ve long since vanished into the depths of the Lab. The front-panel connectors are just a few inches too short to reach the pins on the motherboard, though we split the blame for that between Intel and Thermaltake. Fortunately, all of those problems are easily solvable. Biostar makes an inexpensive 3.5-inch bay device with two USB 3.0 ports on an internal header, and Silverstone makes a 5.25-inch bay adapter that accommodates a 3.5-inch device and two 2.5-inch SSDs. A few NZXT front-panel connector extenders, and our case is ready for 2012.
And here’s what it looks like now, complete with quad-channel RAM, a hefty Turbo overclock, speedy SSD, and front-panel USB 3.0.
| BENCHMARKS | ||
|---|---|---|
| PRE-UPGRADE | ||
| Vegas Pro (sec) | 3,234 | 2,322 |
| Lightroom 2.6 (sec) | 394 | 256 |
| ProShow 4 (sec) | 1,184 | 857 |
| MainConcept 1.6 (sec) | 2,268 | 1,711 |
| stalker: CoP (fps) | 60.3 | 61.2 |
| Far Cry 2 (fps) | 1,185 | 121.8 |
Color us unsurprised: A modern Sandy Bridge-E quad-core at 4.4GHz trounces a 2008-era Bloomfield quad at 3.5GHz. Thanks to the overclocked i7-3820 and the SandForce SSD, we saw huge gains in CPU- and drive-limited benchmarks. Our MainConcept Reference score was 33 percent faster than the pre-upgrade rig, ProShow Producer showed 38 percent improvements, our Vegas Pro 9 score went up 39 percent, and our Lightroom test was as whopping 54 percent speedier.
With the GPU and RAM upgrades we made a few months ago, we’ve gone from an aging X58 gaming PC with a hot, slow GPU and a dead-end motherboard to a fresh, speedy gaming PC on Intel’s latest enthusiast socket—one that doesn’t lack for modern amenities like front-panel USB 3.0, a capacious boot SSD, or modern graphics.
Granted, the only parts this machine has in common with the one we built in September 2009 are the case, power supply, optical drive, and hard drive, but it’s still the same rig, right? Or maybe it isn’t. What’s important is that it’s blazing fast, actually draws less power than the original, and is ready for the future.
Comments are closed on this article
shoan
July 13, 2012 at 7:24pm
like Arthur replied I am shocked that a student able to earn $9035 in four weeks on the internet. have you seen this web link NuttyRichDOTc om
Athlonite
July 13, 2012 at 5:56pm
I do believe that once you replace a mobo it's a rebuild not an upgrade if you must also replace the CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD. PSU replacing any of those on their own or two of them is an upgrade and I don't class installing a clean copy of an newer OS as an upgrade
most those PC "Upgraded" on here really only needed more ram a better GPU and maybe an SSD to probably score 90~95% of the scores realized using the options chosen in this article
OmNomNom
July 12, 2012 at 9:15pm
I got excited for a sec when I thought it would be an XPS that used a BTX mobo. I had a XPS710 that had a mobo crap out and I just scrapped the whole PC. Between BTX case and the odd double 24 pin 800watt psu wasn't much to salvage but the old core2duo.
+1 on not calling it a "rebuild" if you have to upgrade the mobo.
Benjo
July 12, 2012 at 9:00am
This article has inspired me to finally ditch my P4 and Athlon 64 boxes. My last build involved gutting a Packard Bell mATX tower of it's Slot 1 Celeron innards and replaced with a socket 754 system.
I wonder how much of a speed boost these would give:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=COMBOA7L3B&cat=MBBI saw the high-end mATX build article here a while back. Drool-worthy, but I buy/sell/fix beater cars for that price :P
Hilarity
July 11, 2012 at 3:41pm
Just junk or sell all three and build a new box. For a gaming PC, 2yrs is it. Then its time to upgrade if you built with upgrades in mind or a whole new build. That's tech for you.
limitbreaker
July 11, 2012 at 1:25pm
Sorry but respectfully... This article is terrible. Like many other said, a lot of these are new builds and not upgrades. I think if you need to change the ram, motherboard, cpu and even the videocard then it is no longer an upgrade and you might as well get a new case with it too. And I feel a bit wrong with upgrading a gtx 295 purely to get dx11 because that card is still fast enough to play every game at max settings with a smooth fps possibly in 3dvision to top it off, there isn't enough mind blowing tesselation games out there to merit 500$ for one feature.
praetor_alpha
July 11, 2012 at 2:43pm
That's exactly the same reason why I'm still using a GTX 285. Skyrim is pretty much the only game I can't get running at 1920x1200 at 60 fps at all times, but that's because it's mostly CPU limited (i7 2600).
rshawnk
July 11, 2012 at 1:18pm
You guys must have been bored that day. "Hey, I know what we can do...".
jhains
July 11, 2012 at 9:16am
Only #2 qualifies as an upgrade in my book; #1 & #3 are basically new PCs housed in their original cases.
Upgrade implies replacing a few parts. Replacing the MB, CPU, RAM, GPU, HDD & OS, is building an entirely new PC.
Add to that the "upgrades" are essentially the cost of a new PC (add $100 for a case and PSU), this article is left wanting.
I think a better approach would have been to take the 3 PCs, and a budget of $500 each for upgrades, and demonstrating how changing specific items would affect the performance. For example, on PC #1, replacing just the RAM, GPU and OS; on PC #2 replacing just HDD and OS; and PC #3 replacing just the GPU and HDD. Then change it up, and replace $500 of different parts in each and show the results.
The data from those benchmarks would be much more useful to a potential upgrader, and would make for a far more interesting article.
strangelove9
July 11, 2012 at 10:49am
"I think a better approach would have been to take the 3 PCs, and a budget of $500 each for upgrades, and demonstrating how changing specific items would affect the performance. [...] The data from those benchmarks would be much more useful to a potential upgrader, and would make for a far more interesting article."
Perfectly said, bravo!
That would be a much more interesting article, indeed!
strangelove9
July 11, 2012 at 10:52am
Actually, the people who say these aren't technically upgrades, but full rebuilds, are right.
In the case of the first PC, for instance, everything got replaced, except the case. That's the definition of a rebuild.
MrMakapuu had the right idea - and his solution was much cheaper, too!
Please provide TWO (one could be just a fluke, and is not statistically significant) real-life instances in which a Quad-core Q6600, paired with enough RAM and a good ~$150 videocard, won't rise to the challenge of everyday tasks... and even most specialized tasks. And I dare anyone but the most hard-core gamers to claim that you can't play every conceivable game on that system at 1080p resolutions.
Not to mention that the article was misleadingly advertised on the MPC main page under the headline "Operation Upgrade: How We Resurrected Three Dying PCs"... They're anything but "dying", if they're still functional - and at least one of them is still kicking a$$ even against current competition!
kixofmyg0t
July 10, 2012 at 8:15pm
The second builds old 295 GTX got 772 fps in Far Cry 2?
Screw the 7990 I'm getting a 295 GTX instead!
EDIT: Til that the Radeon 7950 is a 3 year old GPU according to this article. (3rd build under original parts) and got over 1,000 fps in Far Cry 2. I take it all back. This article taught me that both the 295 GTX and the 7950 are 5 times(rough estimate) as powerful as a 680.
praetor_alpha
July 11, 2012 at 4:57am
Indeed. Guess this seals the debate I'm having as to whether or not to up my GTX 285 to something else, like a 680.
I doubt those are typos, as those figures are complete with commas.
PreacherSeven
July 10, 2012 at 7:44pm
I own Houdini's magic wand, when I first got it I had to replace the top white cap because it was loose. Last month I replaced the bottom white cap because it fell off, then the shaft broke last week so I replaced the middle section. Anybody wanna see Houdini's wand?
Zig
July 10, 2012 at 7:32pm
This is the knife my grandfather used to kill indians with (sorry, not pc). we've replaced the blade 3 times and the handle twice, but it's the same knife.
mikeyfree
July 10, 2012 at 7:46pm
I CANNOT FREAKIN BELIEVE YOU JUST SAID THAT.....YOUR GRANDFATHER WAS A COWARD AND SO ARE YOU. IF YOU WOULD HAVE SAID THIS ABOUT BLACKS OR WHITES THEY MIGHT ARREST YOU. YOU ARE A SORRY INDIVIDUAL.
YOU SHOULD BE BANNED AND I'M POSTING THIS ON ALL THE MEDIA I CAN.No white man ever killed and indian with a knife, they did it with small pox blanks, alcohol and false flags.
PreacherSeven
July 10, 2012 at 7:46pm
Relax, that's an old joke and it simply is not funny if not told correctly. Plus I don't.... wait I smell a troll-lo-lo-lo-lol
HeroOfCanton
July 10, 2012 at 8:14pm
I don't know. You could change it to Nazis and it would still work. Seriously, no one likes Nazis. "This is the knife my grandfather used to hunt Muppets" would also be pretty funny.
"I sure could use some help counting to four..." *gank* /TheState
Oh wait, I forgot we're supposed to be "outraged". Ahem... LET'S CALL THE INTERNET POLICE AND HAVE THEM DO A BACKTRACE!!
mikeyfree
July 10, 2012 at 7:54pm
I grandfather changed the handle on his whip cuz it broke whippin his slaves. He called it an upgrade. 1st known use of the word during the slave trading years.
Biceps
July 11, 2012 at 8:06am
Zig did mention when he posted that it wasn't pc (which stands for both Personal Computer and Politically Correct), and he was obviously just trying to make a point. To shuffle around all the indignation and actually get to the heart of the matter, I have to say the muppet-killing knife is actually NOT the same knife. BUT, it is an UPGRADED version of the same knife. The same goes for computers.
If you upgraded a computer and it was still the same computer after the upgrade, then you just blew a bunch of money in order to have the same machine.
The case on my computer cost about $400 and is kind of like a Ferrari body. I'll be using this case for partial and complete upgrades for years, as it has a 1000W power source and is built like a rock.
If you come back snarking about native Americans again, mikeyfree, then you are a troll. If you come back to the topic at hand, perhaps this can be an intelligent discussion.
PreacherSeven
July 10, 2012 at 7:28pm
The first thought that ran through my head as I was reading this was "they must like that Dell case because they just built a whole new pc inside it". Sure enough that's what happened, so I would consider that more than an "upgrade". Now about using two 460's and keeping the same cpu: using video cards that are 3 generations old is hardly an upgrade and these machines are meant to do more than just gaming so hyper threading might come in handy. That being said I think the only pc that was just "upgraded was the last one and the other two were a little excessive and leaning towards "new pc" rather than "upgraded"
SilverSurferNHS
July 10, 2012 at 9:53pm
while this is true to us, who haven't had those systems under our desk for months to years, for themselves or in a scenario where a person makes such changes to their personal computer, i bet when that person talks to friends and what not about their computer they will refer to it as a great upgrade from their previous computer
i wouldn't consider something a new build unless there's a new case and parts list for it, something that will ultimately run separate or at least mostly separate with a few carry over parts that could be quickly replaced... but yeah, its just semantics and we all define it differently - like where one might be in their own "upgrade" cycle.
Biceps
July 10, 2012 at 7:20pm
Ok, this article makes up completely for the lack of a low-end build in your monthly line-up. Well done.
mikeyfree
July 10, 2012 at 7:10pm
800 or more for an upgrade? Might as well put together a new build. Either 1 or 2 changes to your rig, like new video card w/psu, or change old hd to new ssd. Things like this is what I consider an upgrade, and the if I can get them on sale. Around 200.00 bucks would be a target price unless of course you have money to burn, and if that's the case you wouldn't be reading this article. You'd be driving your BMW around with your model girl friend smoking cigars and chewin gum.
Jeffredo
July 10, 2012 at 6:45pm
Two of the three aren't "upgrades". They're new builds in the old case. Once that motherboard comes out "upgrade" no longer applies.
Biceps
July 10, 2012 at 7:22pm
I upgraded a Core2Duo with to a new MB with a Core2Quad Extreme a (long) while back, inside a nice case. Everything except the power supply, the case and the cables was new. And I considered it an upgrade. I think you are arguing semantics.
renodude18
July 10, 2012 at 5:55pm
About ten years ago I bought Dell's Dimension 8300 desktop. For the majority of that time it was stock till a few years back when I decided to add a new video card, Power supply, Hard drive as the stock 80GB was way to small for its new purpose as my Entertainment system as I replaced it with a Laptop. I thought about upgrading the processor but the stock P4 does just fine with Windows 7. I dont know how many more years this machine has left but its ran great with no issues at all even with the upgrades. But I think windows 7 is the last OS upgrade that it will see sad to say. I'd love to get an Newer Old Dell and Upgrade it in this ones place at one point..
Also as an afterthought I think the only system worth upgrading is the Dell as the others are more newer were custom built.. I personally like to see OEM machines upgraded as they can be more of a challenge as noted at the beginning.
Strangelove_424
July 10, 2012 at 5:47pm
Awesome article. Most people I know do small step upgrades like these, in a trusty case, instead of re-starting from scratch every generation.
Also, for anyone with thermal paste to clean off, don't forget to use something that doesn't shed fibers... coffee filters do the trick.
MastaGuy
July 10, 2012 at 3:23pm
I have an old Dell Dimension E521, and I have done upgrading too, not at this level however. The problem is that Dell previously used BTX style cases and motherboards, making it impossible to add a new motherboard and CPU.
In case anyone is curious, I upgraded the Dell to a AMD Athlon X2 64 6000+ (the 89w version) a 60GB SSD, PCI network card, an EVGA GT430, 4GB of RAM, and Windows 7 64bit. I spend about $200 on that upgrade and I'm glad I did it. However I wish I could do more.
510Gamer
July 10, 2012 at 3:18pm
These seem like pretty substantial upgrades, $1000 seems excessive...
Also I think the formatting on the article is wrong, you have the new parts and their prices at the end in the results section, while the performance charts are in the middle in the upgrade section. There are also some line breaks because of pictures.
MrMakapuu
July 10, 2012 at 3:15pm
Oh and BTW you can overclock that Q6600 to 3.0 or higher on air easy...And if not buy a used Asus 775 board somewhere for under $100!!
MrMakapuu
July 10, 2012 at 3:09pm
When I saw the title of this article i was thinking you were going to just upgrade the components not everything in the case that doesn't make sense to me what you did and wasnt green or resoureful at all!
So I put a quick build below for you and the extra money you can save for the next generation after x79?
Anyways,
$1K for a upgrade? You can buy a new computer for that..
Try and be more resoureful bitches.
You still got a quad core there...And who uses HT for gaming anyways.. with these upgrades you can run Bf3 fine... looks amazing on 42" LCD in 1080p btw ;P
Use the old MoBo, go to ebay or craigslist you can probably pick up 2 used 460gtx's or AMD's version for under $200, use them in SLI or Xfire, max out the ram for another $50, and get a SSD for under $100... an OCZ 750watt for around $75 with rebate or equivlant on newegg or something, and x64 Win7 for $150... And you can take advantage of that extra GPU for folding or extra graphic processing outside the SLI...
$575 Total
I just saved you $494... you wasteful seaman!!!
CaptainFabulous
July 10, 2012 at 3:47pm
And you got something that's a fraction as powerful as what they built.
I'm sorry, what was your point again? That you know how to do a half-assed upgrade?
Try and be more intelligent bitch.
kixofmyg0t
July 10, 2012 at 8:32pm
You should see the 3 year old(according to this article) Radeon 7950! It got over 1,000 (complete with a comma) fps!
SilverSurferNHS
July 10, 2012 at 9:08pm
i stopped reading after a while cuz these r a dime a dozen - mpc needs to kick in come creative chaos to shake things up... the most fun i have on the site lately are watching trolls troll and flamers flame, all over... meh
