Upgrade Advice

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dabean

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It looks like it's finally time to upgrade my Q6600 after 5 years or whatever. The only reason really is that it can't keep up with Aeon Visualizer which bugs the crap out of me. It's used as a media center, download PC and for re-encoding video occasionally. No games or anything, hooked straight to a HDTV without a physical keyboard or mouse attached.

Current Specs:
Coolermaster Silencio 550 case
Intel D975XBX2 board, 2.4GHz Q6600, 4GB RAM
Geforce GT640 (after the fan on my old card started rattling recently)
1x 120GB SSD
1x 3TB
1x 1.5TB
2x 1TB
1x 500GB (next on the upgrade list when space is needed)
1x SATA optical

I forget what PSU is in there but it's at least 650W and good enough.

I was thinking of getting a Core i5 with 8GB RAM. Should I get the cheapest board I can find with a SATA expansion card or a decent board with enough ports? I haven't really kept up with hardware in a while. I wouldn't like to spend more than 4 or 5k.

The other option is keeping it as a download PC and getting something small, fast and quiet for media duty. Any advice appreciated.
 
So just to clarify, you keeping all your existing hardware, and only want to do a CPU and MOBO upgrade?
 
That's right. The biggest issue is the motherboard (7 SATA devices at the moment, at least one of them should be SATA 3).
 
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Thanks that's the CPU I had in mind. I don't use an expansion card at the moment, my current board has enough ports. Never had any experience with them either.

It feels a bit overkill to put such a high-end board in system that'll never use half of the features. At the same time the idea of a cheap board and expansion card worries me slightly.
 
dabean said:
Thanks that's the CPU I had in mind. I don't use an expansion card at the moment, my current board has enough ports. Never had any experience with them either.

It feels a bit overkill to put such a high-end board in system that'll never use half of the features. At the same time the idea of a cheap board and expansion card worries me slightly.
Click to expand...

Esquire is having a special on that board this week for R1982.46 inc.
 
avid-dreamer said:
This is the most reasonable board I could find with 8 sata ports http://www.wootware.co.za/asrock-z77-pro4-lga1155-intel-z77-atx-desktop-motherboard.html Its quite reasonable and the brand is becoming more popular in recent times
Click to expand...

Only has six internal SATA slots, with two e-SATA on the rear I/O panel.

OP, I'd recommend keeping your machine as-is and getting a smaller/better one for media purposes. I can recommend...

AMD A6-3670K @ R1188
GIGABYTE GA-A55M-S2V @ R717
Corsair Vengeance DDR3-2000 4GB kit @ R401
Sapphire HD6570 1Gb GDDR3 @ R691
OCZ Agility 3 60GB @ R645
Cooler Master GX 400W @ R507
Cooler Master Elite 342 @ R302
Total: R4451

Obviously, whichever route you're going to take it'll end up being expensive. I'd rather set up a smaller PC that serves as a media center while your other PC does all the hard work as a server. This one I'm recommending also could play games very well so long as you stick to medium to high settings at 720p, so that's a nice option down the road if you wanted to get the same experience console players have but with better hardware.

Edit: I see you took the i5 route. Good luck to you, sir.
 
NAG - Wesley said:
Only has six internal SATA slots, with two e-SATA on the rear I/O panel.
Click to expand...

Z77%20Pro4%28m%29.jpg


I count 8, 6 on the left and two next to the power connector.


Edit: I thought about a smaller PC but it would have to be much smaller (like an Acer Aspire Revo) to justify the space/wall-plug it takes up. It just seemed easier to upgrade what I had.
 
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