upgrade it or mothball it?

Macspower

Hi guys,

I built this machine on the advice from this forum in 2008/9 from Hardwareversand

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Name: 4096MB DDR2 Corsair Twin2X CL 5, PC6400/800
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Name: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R ,Intel P35, ATX, PCI-Express
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Name: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 boxed, 8192Kb, LGA775, 64bit, Kentsfield
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It has run flawlessly for the last number of years and never got switched off in 5 years.

anyway I had to get a new machine for work and this one has to get mothballed or will become a second computer for work.

I'm thinking of upgrading the OS to at least 7 maybe 10 and perhaps giving it a new lease of life with more ram and a SSD and maybe an overclock?

Opinions.. will it make much difference or should I forget it?

K.O.Kiki

I'd put a cheap 120Gb SSD in, but save up for a new build instead - you won't be running newer games at acceptable framerates on this dinosaur

If you find more RAM 2nd hand, that's nice too; just remember that you need a 64bit OS to use more than 4Gb.

daveharnett

That mobo is limited to sata 2, it will be limited to ~300 MBps rather than the 550-600 that newer ssd/mobo combos can achieve. Even so, it will make a huge difference over a regular hard disk.

I don't think the 6600 has got a lot of room for overclocking - the multiplier is locked, so you'll be limited to whatever FSB the mobo/ram can handle. Best guess is that you'd get to 2.6ghz with it.

If you plan to use the pc for anything other than rendering/development/shiny games, it will do the job very nicely for another few years. An extra 4gb of ram would be a bonus, if you can pick some up second hand.

I retired an almost identical rig about a year ago, and it's enjoying a second life running youtube, minecraft and kerbal space program in a kids' play room. It would also make a totally competent work machine (if a little noisy when the 8800 gets going).

Macspower

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I'd put a cheap 120Gb SSD in, but save up for a new build instead - you won't be running newer games at acceptable framerates on this dinosaur

If you find more RAM 2nd hand, that's nice too; just remember that you need a 64bit OS to use more than 4Gb.

Yeah sounds like a possibility

Macspower

daveharnett wrote: »

That mobo is limited to sata 2, it will be limited to ~300 MBps rather than the 550-600 that newer ssd/mobo combos can achieve. Even so, it will make a huge difference over a regular hard disk.

I don't think the 6600 has got a lot of room for overclocking - the multiplier is locked, so you'll be limited to whatever FSB the mobo/ram can handle. Best guess is that you'd get to 2.6ghz with it.

If you plan to use the pc for anything other than rendering/development/shiny games, it will do the job very nicely for another few years. An extra 4gb of ram would be a bonus, if you can pick some up second hand.

I retired an almost identical rig about a year ago, and it's enjoying a second life running youtube, minecraft and kerbal space program in a kids' play room. It would also make a totally competent work machine (if a little noisy when the 8800 gets going).

This sounds like what I want to do with it. It will be used as a family computer for internet, e mail, you tube, music, YouTube, etc etc . Tbh it's well capable of doing all this already but a little more speed would be nice and a new os.

Macspower

sugarman wrote: »

You could always sell the board/ram/cpu and graphics cards, you might get 70quid for the lot.

Another 150quid would be a good budget build for something half decent with your remaining components.

What would you put in it for this kind of budget?

TerrorFirmer

I probably wouldn't bother. €40 on a 120GB SSD and job done. My parent's PC is a Q6600/4GB/120GB SSD and it's perfect for desktop use - browsing, movies, music, etc.

Xenoronin

Yup, stuck a cheapo Sandisk SSD in my home PC, intel e7300 (dat price/performance sweetspot in 2008). It didn't really improve it all that much, but it works well enough. My parents mostly use the cheap amazon fire tablet I got them a few months ago now though.

TerrorFirmer

I would say that's a bit dramatic - the Q6600 with 4GB at my parents is used for Kodi and plays HD content including H265 10-bit flawlessly.

If any Q6600 based machine is struggling with standard def video there's something else seriously wrong at play.

Xenoronin

Definitely, even that old workhorse e7200 (mistaken earlier, it is the slightly slower one) can play 1080p video files just fine. Then again, I always have had it paired with a GPU so I'm not relying on the internal graphics, but even without I wouldn't expect it to struggle much.

Interestingly, it looks like my old CPU had some overclocking potential. Might be worth giving it a bit of a kick to see if it can't run for a few more years. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclocking-core-2-E7200,2072-12.html