Building a New Old Machine

Kintarō Hattori

I'm leaning towards a 4th Gen i5 and for the moment I'll use the existing R9 270 that's unused but then I'll upgrade to an R9 290. The TT case is M-ATX and not ITX.

Homelander

I'm not sure that is a great plan. The R9 290 is a power/heat monster for what is very modest performance these days. I mean, the card is 7 years old. You can get an RX570 2nd hand for €100 or similar that will be as fast and use a ton less power/produce heat.

What sort of money are you thinking about spending? I mean these days for €500 you can buy a new Ryzen 3300X + RX570 based build with 16GB DDR4 RAM for about €500 off-the-shelf that would absolutely destroy a 4th gen i5/DDR3/R9 290 combo as well as be way more modern/new with warranty.

grogi

Homelander wrote: »

I'm not sure that is a great plan. The R9 290 is a power/heat monster for what is very modest performance these days.

Absolutely agree. Sapphire R9 270x Dual-X is still a very fine card and there is no point in upgrading it to something like R9 290.

A bit of love and care could be given - remove the radiator (4 screws), remove the fans (another 4 screws), clean properly with a brush and vacuum cleaner. Replace the thermal paste and put together.

Homelander wrote: »

What sort of money are you thinking about spending? I mean these days for €500 you can buy a new Ryzen 3300X + RX570 based build with 16GB DDR4 RAM for about €500 off-the-shelf that would absolutely destroy a 4th gen i5/DDR3/R9 290 combo as well as be way more modern/new with warranty.

Again - absolutely agree It's fine to use the R9 270x + 4th Gen i5, but not really much sense in upgrading it further.

Kintarō Hattori

Homelander wrote: »

I'm not sure that is a great plan. The R9 290 is a power/heat monster for what is very modest performance these days. I mean, the card is 7 years old. You can get an RX570 2nd hand for €100 or similar that will be as fast and use a ton less power/produce heat.

What sort of money are you thinking about spending? I mean these days for €500 you can buy a new Ryzen 3300X + RX570 based build with 16GB DDR4 RAM for about €500 off-the-shelf that would absolutely destroy a 4th gen i5/DDR3/R9 290 combo as well as be way more modern/new with warranty.

I hear you chief- I'm out of the loop as you know. Really this started off being really fairly budget and I had planned on the old Dell machine with a GTX 1050Ti. After my brother asked for a new machine and I started looking around I got the itch again to build a system again from scratch.

I guess I'll just use the RX270 then for the time being. I'll see how much time I can get to actually do some PC gaming. The missus doesn't know yet that a machine is going into the living room so that could impact time spent.

If it turns out I actually get time to play some games, then in 6 months or so I might look at building a new machine with modern components and if that happens I'll be here to you guys asking for some advice. You've all been super helpful and it hasn't been unappreciated.

Kintarō Hattori

So below are the final specs:

Intel DH87RL Motherboard
Intel Core i5 4440 CPU
8GB of Corsair Vengence 4GB x 2
Sapphire R9 270X (to be upgraded at a later date)
Arctic Cooling Alpine 12 LP CPU Cooler
Thermaltake Core V21 Case
Kingston 128GB SSD and a 240GB SSD
EVGA Supernova 750 G2 Power Supply


Thoughts? (They've all been ordered btw)

grogi

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

So below are the final specs:

Intel DH87RL Motherboard
Intel Core i5 4440 CPU
8GB of Corsair Vengence 4GB x 2
Sapphire R9 270X (to be upgraded at a later date)
Arctic Cooling Alpine 12 LP CPU Cooler
Thermaltake Core V21 Case
Kingston 128GB SSD and a 240GB SSD
EVGA Supernova 750 G2 Power Supply


Thoughts?

That cooler, while performing reasonably well, will block the first DIMM socket. Get something more flexible, ex. Antec A40 pro...

Homelander

This is confusing now. This is the old PC you talked about being transplanted into a new case? Or you're buying 2nd hand parts?

If you're buying 2nd hand, an i5-4th gen and 1150 motherboard are a total waste of time.

If you're just talking about transplanting that Dell into a new case it's fine assuming the board will fit.

The Arctic cooler uses standard push-pin so can't see how it would block a dimm slot. But it's not going to be much better than an intel stock cooler.

Kintarō Hattori

Homelander wrote: »

This is confusing now. This is the old PC you talked about being transplanted into a new case? Or you're buying 2nd hand parts?

If you're buying 2nd hand, an i5-4th gen and 1150 motherboard are a total waste of time.

If you're just talking about transplanting that Dell into a new case it's fine assuming the board will fit.

The Arctic cooler uses standard push-pin so can't see how it would block a dimm slot. But it's not going to be much better than an intel stock cooler.

Apologies for the confusion. I am going to give my brother the old Dell machine. After buying the V21 case, I decided to build a machine for myself as I had some parts from my old machine that I could still use.

Again, I decided to build to a budget as it's just for the pre-existing steam library.

Homelander

So what parts do you already have to work with exactly?

Kintarō Hattori

Homelander wrote: »

So what parts do you already have to work with exactly?

I already had:

A kingston SSD
The R9 270X
The EVGA 750W

I edited the post above to state that I've already ordered all the parts so eh, dang.

Ah listen, it's going to be a million times better than the old Q9500 machine I had that hadn't been turned on in years. While I may have fecked it up a little, it'll suffice. I'll make sure though to ask first before I order anything when I decide to build a machine with contemporary parts.

Homelander

I suppose it really depends what you paid for them. You can get H81M chipsets for €30 on Ebay, and i5 4th gen for about €30 from CEX with warranty.

New, you can get A320M for €50, and Ryzen 3100 for €100, which are nearly twice as fast.

Ebay prices are pretty terrible so I would suspect you paid over the odds for what is basically a totally outdated 7 year old CPU.

grogi

Homelander wrote: »

The Arctic cooler uses standard push-pin so can't see how it would block a dimm slot. But it's not going to be much better than an intel stock cooler.

It will. Speaking from personal experience.

Kintarō Hattori

Homelander wrote: »

I suppose it really depends what you paid for them. You can get H81M chipsets for €30 on Ebay, and i5 4th gen for about €30 from CEX with warranty.

New, you can get A320M for €50, and Ryzen 3100 for €100, which are nearly twice as fast.

Ebay prices are pretty terrible so I would suspect you paid over the odds for what is basically a totally outdated 7 year old CPU.

I hear you chief. I paid the following, with shipping included:

€66 for the mobo
€39 for the CPU
€36 for the Ram
Case & a Corsair CX430M that was included - €69
CPU Cooler (I just ordered the recommended one) - €33

Total outlay not including SSD's & GPU - €243

Let me see:

Board - €50
CPU - €100
RAM - €50
Case - €70
SSD for OS Install - M2 or SSD? €25 or o either way

Total - €300 or thereabouts. I guess I was a bit thick.