Motherboard Upgrade

the_syco

Thinking of upgrading the motherboard if at all possible, on the cheap. At the moment, I have 4GB's in the machine, but would love to throw in a mobo that takes the below DDR3 and also the current 775 LGA Q9550. Not looking to spend too much money, just looking to give the current rig a last push, as such. The case is a full tower Cosmos 1000, so mobo size isn't a problem (ie; prefer full ATX mobos).

1. What is your budget? Cheap'ish, so hopefully less than €200.

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming, Photoshop & Vegas

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? No

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer?
Socket 775 LGA Q9550 2.83GHz
Three HDD's and one SSD
PCI-E 4870
PCI Creative Soundcard
6*2GB 1600Mhz DDR3 PVT36G1600LLK

8. How can you pay? Bank Transfer and Laser

9. When are you purchasing? Next week (just after payday).

/edit
Or is there any point, and that I should just wait until I have the money to do a proper CPU/RAM/GFX/MOBO upgrade?

belcampprisoner

not worth it

over clock your cpu
format computer and reload windows after saving your info on external harddrive


add more memory if windows is 64bit

what windows have you got get windows 7

tuxy

Have you considered an AMD fx CPU and AM3+ motherboard? You could get that combo for €200

Serephucus

Changing only your motherboard won't do anything for you. Your best be it to overclock your processor and GPU. The 9550 and 4870 will go quite nicely together (in that they won't bottleneck each other) If you want you can add another 4GB of RAM to the system or something, but it depends what you're using it for. If it's gaming, you'd be best served by selling the 4870 for whatever it's worth, and dumping the lot into a new graphics card.

the_syco

belcampprisoner wrote: »

not worth it

over clock your cpu
format computer and reload windows after saving your info on external harddrive


add more memory if windows is 64bit

what windows have you got get windows 7

Mobo has 4GB on it. 8GB's on it would cost €120-€180 depending on speed of RAM. Last time I had checked, it costed a lot more. See no point in formatting the SDD. OS is Win7 64bit.

tuxy wrote: »

Have you considered an AMD fx CPU and AM3+ motherboard? You could get that combo for €200

Not really. The AMD chips are falling in price, but not sure how they perform in games and/or memory intensive programs (such as Photoshop).

Serephucus wrote: »

Changing only your motherboard won't do anything for you. Your best be it to overclock your processor and GPU. The 9550 and 4870 will go quite nicely together (in that they won't bottleneck each other) If you want you can add another 4GB of RAM to the system or something, but it depends what you're using it for. If it's gaming, you'd be best served by selling the 4870 for whatever it's worth, and dumping the lot into a new graphics card.

Have OC'ed the CPU to 3.2 I think (The CPU has a TRUE120 heatsink on it), but as I don't know the clock speed of the GPU, I couldn't set it as static. Oh. I just Googled it It seemed I OC'ed the already OC'ed card from 780 to 800. That could be the reason for the problems I was having :pac: Didn't find that the last time I looked, ah well. Anyhoo's, as above, 8GB's of RAM will cost me €120-€180 depending on what I go for, but probably €120.
The 4870 currently looks like this - case fan stuck to the card using Meccano as the original fan wasn't providing enough cooling. Have since added another case fan to the front of the case.

I don't think I can OC the CPU long term, as the room I'm in is badly ventilated, and currently the PC overheats quite easily (usually 2 hours into a game the 4870 will start showing glitches on the screen), and thus I can only game during the summer in the evening when the room (which is luckily North-East facing) is cold enough.