Out with the Old and in with the New?

[Oranje]

Way back in 2010 I bought what I thought at the time was a pretty good prebuild. 8yrs is a long time and it now feels like an old dog that probably needs to be put down.

Do I chuck it in the bin, start afresh a buy a nice new shiny toy or try and upgrade and fix up the old dog and try and stop it from limping?

1. Intel Core i7 950 3.06Ghz
2. Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 DDR3 Motherboard
3. OCZ Vertex 2E 60Gb 2.5" SATA-II SSD
4. Xigmatek Dark Knight CPU Cooler
5. Corsair XMS3 6Gb DDR3 1600Mhz Trip Ch.
6. Corsair ProSeries Gold AX1200W Power Supply
7. Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5970 2048Mb GDDR5 Graphics Card.
8. Seagate Barracuda 1Tb SATA II 32Mb Cache
9. Coolermaster HAF 922 case
10. Ms Win 7 Home Prem 64-bit

I also have 3 x Samsung 23" 1920 x 1080 which I’m still quite happy with...

What I’m not happy with is the size of my current SSD.

Also this old dog seems to have developed an intermittent issue where the screens go blank when a fan comes on... randomly happens once in 3 months or has been known to happen 10 times in one day - switching off and on cures it but it is def getting more irritable as am I about the whole thing. Not sure if it’s the fan coming on in the graphics card which does something to the power and or output from the card to the screens but I fear this now needs serious attention. Eyefinity was never my favourite but only solution at the time to run 3 monitors. The graphics card could be knackered or maybe the settings could be dabbled with but either way I have no idea what to replace a card like that with or even if the new stuff would be supported by my existing kit...

Very happy to hear solutions ideas and upgrade thoughts... I’m tempted to try and do it myself that way if I mess it up I can throw it all in the bin and buy a new one anyway... assuming the old dog isn’t worth anything?

Money no object... I clearly want something better than a modern day toaster but I don’t need something to look after NASA either... I don’t mind the odd premium product like a good graphics card but something reasonably priced that works well will ultimately suffice...

Thanks in advance for any insight...

 

[orbitalwalsh]

Advantage of new system or most of core parts, large data 3 SSD were games and OS can be stored .

Quicker solution, buy GPU as your PSU is plenty .

We recommend 16GB on ram on here normally or 8GB if budget is low, so second hand ram might be needed

Going for almost new but saving penny's, refresh Ryzen 8 core with 16GB on 1st gen flagship board and not most recent flagships .
Board also comes with free 480gb ssd
Vega 64 which is deacounted, and a lot cheaper then Nvidia old and new flagship £680/1000...
Also Freesync monitor - cheaper then Nvidia g-sync, 1440p ultra wide and would replace your 3 monitors and offer a lot more pixels on screen with 75hz refresh rate

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x AMD Promo Bundle - AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, Gigabyte X370-Gaming K7, Team Group RAM *FREE 480GB SSD* = £638.96
  • Memory Capacity:Team Group Vulcan T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD416G30
• 1 x Gigabyte Radeon RX VEGA 64 WindForce OC 8GB HBM2 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £439.99
• 1 x LG 34UM88-C 34" 3440x1440 FREESYNC IPS WideScreen Super-Wide LED Monitor= £599.99

Total: £1,691.54 (includes shipping: £12.60)


Windows 10 highly recommended though ! Cases are personal choice and if your happy with current save some cash, along with PSU was a damn good one at release

Believe board comes with FarCry 5 and Vega comes with 3 free games via AMD

Had i7 860 and p55 board clocked at 4ghz from 3.2 haha. Went to i5 7600k at 5.2 and there were huge gains . Architecture from first gens to 2/3rd was a good jump, after that..*** all !​

 

[skyripper]

If your graphics card is going off when the fan comes on (or speeds up), it sounds heat related. The fan is coming on in reaction to increased heat in your gfx card.
TBH, 8 years from a 5970 is very good going.

Having an OCZ Vertex drive still going after all these years is probably a record too!

I'd replace those, and look at changing to 12GB of Ram or more.

The x58 platform has a strange longevity to it, a cheap and effective upgrade is a secondhand xeon 5650, which will give you many cores and hyperthreading and normally happily overclock to 4Ghz.

So thats Gfx card, Ram, SSD and a CPU.
Which is 50% of a new system! So it really depends on budget and what you want to do - upgrade or replace. Others will be along to spec you Ryzen or something I'm sure...

 

[DrBombcrater]

Very happy to hear solutions ideas and upgrade thoughts... I’m tempted to try and do it myself that way if I mess it up I can throw it all in the bin and buy a new one anyway... assuming the old dog isn’t worth anything?

Definitely don't bin it. The PSU is worth a good bit, as is the motherboard. X58 motherboards fetch good prices even now because they can take 6 core / 12 thread "Westmere" Xeons. Those chips are available for peanuts (like £30 or less) and compete really well with current mid-range chips when overclocked. plus X58 used nice cheap DDR3.

Given the current outrageous price of DDR4 memory you could easily upgrade your system to a 6-core Xeon, a bigger SSD and 24GB of RAM for less than the cost of a pair of 8GB of DDR4 modules.

Edit:typo

 

[Oranje]

Thanks for your insight guys...

This morning the fan issue happened 4 times, so the card got taken out, removed a lot of dust (which I don’t think was the problem) and put back in. Also downloaded a Trix Utility program from Sapphire which mentions fixing a fan issue but now I can control the fan in the card manually, don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier. I have no idea if this has solved the fan issue, probably not... but I don’t think it was ever a heat issue as it would often happen from start up. Maybe the temperature sensor spikes a faulty reading sending it in to overdrive shutdown or something? Anyways fingers crossed it maybe a little more stable for now.

I like DrBombcraters ideas as it seems a relatively inexpensive way to have some fun with the upgrade, it does pose some more questions though...

Firstly you don’t mention the Graphics Card, are you suggesting I try and keep it or is there perhaps a direct replacement that would suffice. Obviously at the time it was almost the only thing with 3 outputs for the 3 monitors but I’m guessing nowadays there’s more on the market to cater for this scenario? Will the RX VEGA 64 above fit my board ok or is that just for the board suggested above?

You all mention RAM... I currently have 3 x 2gb DDR3 and the board appears to have 3 unused slots. Is it best to upgrade to 3 x 8Gb to get 24Gb or 6 x 4Gb maybe.... or even 6 x ?? Is it possible to have too much RAM? If DDR3 is so cheap could this be maxed out?

Obviously a new SSD is required. I’m guessing a 500Gb SSD Should be fairly cost effective. Does the old one go in the bin, can it be kept as a side/extra storage or does the board only allow for one SSD? New SSD will undoubtedly benefit from win10... where the hell do I set a copy of that from or could I keep and reinstall win7?

Finally... how much trouble will I get myself into changing over to a new or second hand Xeon chip... and where would I get one of these £30 chips from... is it necessary as my current system is 3.06Ghz @ 4.00Ghz... I guess I’m a little scared of taking it completely to pieces...