Bargain Hardware Thread

[RMAC9.5]

Petrw1,
The answer, like always, is "It depends" and again, like nearly always, "We need more information".

First question -
What components from this PC and/or other PCs are you trying to reuse?
PC case, power supply, CD-Rom, DVD, floppy drive, hard drive(s), video card, sound card, modem, printer, etc.
Next question -
How "new" do you want to go and how much are you willing to spend?

Here's why these questions are important:
Your current MB probably has 2 IDE slots for up to 2 IDE HDs and/or 2 CD-Rom/DVDs. The newest MBs only have 1 IDE slot.
Your current PC probably has a 250 or 300 watt power supply. The newest, high powered PCs have 500+ watt power supplies.
Your current PC probably has an AGP video card, newer PCs have PCI-e video card(s).
Your current PC probably uses a LPT port and parallel printer cable to connect to your printer. The newest MBs have dropped the LPT port.
Your current PC (if it came from a vendor like Dell or HP) may have some other proprietary aspect which will add to the difficulty of upgrading it.

Once you add the cost of a new PC case & power supply to the cost of a new MB, CPU, and memory, it becomes feasible to keep your current PC for factoring to low bit levels and simply build a new, low cost PC from scratch using a MB with built in video and sound. Also, new desk top PCs from Fry's and NewEgg are incredibly cheap when you find them on sale and send in the mail in rebates.

[Kevin]

I think anything other than paying maybe up to $20 for a significantly faster CPU (assuming your mobo supports it) either won't make much of a difference or won't be cost-effective. Even upgrading the processor probably wouldn't be worth it.

I think your best option would be to pretty much scrap this one when you have enough capital to go for a new dedicated box. It's nearing the age where it's not really even powerful enough to be a basic word processing/surfing/e-mail box you can give away to a friend or relative. Put the money you'll save by reusing the hard drive/cd-rom drive towards a better processor/memory on the new computer. Even just a 100-200mhz clock speed increase on a new quad core is going to give you more throughput than keeping the PIII around.

[henryzz]

beware when upgrading cpus
i tried puting a socket 939 Athlon 64 3800+ in place of a socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+ when the 3800+ pc was upgraded and the motherboard wont have it
cpu-z said there was apsolutely no difference except for the multiplier being x12 instead of x9
i have searcher for information about the cpus on the web and have found no other difference
the motherboard was http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.as...l=939NF6G-VSTA

[IronBits]

You should always check to make sure you update the BIOS before changing to a new CPU in any motherboard.
Put the old cpu back in, flash your BIOS, then install the new cpu, you should be ok.
YMMV

[henryzz]

Originally Posted by IronBits

You should always check to make sure you update the BIOS before changing to a new CPU in any motherboard.
Put the old cpu back in, flash your BIOS, then install the new cpu, you should be ok.
YMMV

might try again at some point
http://www.asrock.com/mb/cpu.asp?Mod...F6G-VSTA&s=939 says that all BIOS versions support that CPU
it doesn't have the latest BIOS
it is my dad's pc
i will try to persuade him to try again with the latest BIOS tomorrow but he is always slightly reluctant to upgrade BIOSes

[lavalamp]

Before trying anything drastic like flashing a BIOS, I would simply try loading the optimised defaults, then save and exit. Go back into BIOS after the reboot and change any settings back to how they should be.

[lfm]

The AMD Phenom II model 940 and the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 are exactly the same price here in town. I assume I can get comparable motherboards for each and they both use DDR2 memory so I was wondering if the people here think one or the other is better for prime hunting.

They have different cache systems but both seem to pass the 1mb cache per core or better needed for the best mprime speeds.

I would probably run linux 64 on it.

The benchmark tables show the two neck and neck for both stock clock speeds and for over-clocking.

[CADavis]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...-_-Combo205338

1. AMD Phenom II X4 940 Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor (3.0GHz), $189.99
2. ECS A780GM-A Ultra AM2+ AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard, $54.99 After $20.00 MIR

Combo Discount: -$64.99
Combo Price: $199.99
Combo Price After MIR: $179.99

[Kevin]

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1518153

$412 for a quad core with 6 gigs of memory...not bad for a crunching machine.

[moebius]

[quote=henryzz;163303]beware when upgrading cpus
i tried puting a socket 939 Athlon 64 3800+ in place of a socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+ when the 3800+ pc was upgraded and the motherboard wont have it

A upgrade to Athlon64 3800+ socket 939 should work!

CPU Support List:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/cpu.asp?Model=939NF6G-VSTA


List of the AMD Athlon64 microprocessors
(in german because of CPU Rev.)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_d...64-Prozessoren

[henryzz]

[quote=moebius;187088]

Originally Posted by henryzz

beware when upgrading cpus
i tried puting a socket 939 Athlon 64 3800+ in place of a socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+ when the 3800+ pc was upgraded and the motherboard wont have it

A upgrade to Athlon64 3800+ socket 939 should work!

CPU Support List:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/cpu.asp?Model=939NF6G-VSTA


List of the AMD Athlon64 microprocessors
(in german because of CPU Rev.)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_d...64-Prozessoren

i think i had looked at those pages
i certainly saw similar

they are both E6 Venice models i compared them with cpuz several times
i am guessing a fault in the motherboard

the only differences are the TDPs and multipliers

i have given up with trying to sort this out
hopefully it will mean he upgrades his pc earlier