Cheap upgrade for older 775 gaming pc

[toberemembered]

Hi, A friend of mine has asked me to try and speed up his rig for him as its getting pretty long in the tooth. His budget is a max of £200 but he'd prefer to spend no more than £150. His requirements really are that he can keep it going playing new games for another year or two untill he can afford an all new PC.

The Current Spec is as follows:

E2200 CPU (not been overclocked, dont know why?)
Freezer 7 Pro cooler
4gb PC6400 Ram
GA-P35C-DS3R Mobo
460W Coolermaster PSU
320GB HDD
Leadtek 8800GT


The way im thinking is theres a few good options with the existing setup, the motherboard is fairly versatile with a reasonable amount of oveclocking potential and has 2 DDR3 slots and 4 DDR2 slots and his existing RAM sells for about £40 on ebay so an upgrade to DDR3 RAM would be pretty much free. He is a bit hesitant in buying second hand parts on ebay, but doesnt have a problem if I overclock things.

-Overclock the e2200 as high as possible with the 3rd party cooler (free) OR
-Buy a different socket 775 CPU with better cache and some overclocking potential, say Q6600 for £65-70 on ebay

-Upgrade RAM to DDR3 (unless this hampers overclocking) (FREE)
-Buy 1TB HDD for £37

-Rest of the money on major GPU upgrade, theres some pretty powerful chips for £110+ and the 6*** series seem to be dropping in price pretty fast atm.
-Is it possible to overclock the GPU much? this model has a pretty impressive looking 3rd party heatsink and afaik is at stock speed.

I guess im wondering where you folks would spend the cash to make the biggest difference. Im currently thinking both the CPU and GPU are big bottlenecks.

[c.ruel]

Main problems are the cpu and gpu. CPU really doesn't have enough cahce and the gpu is old. Of course like you say if a Q6600 is compatible go with that.

On a side note another forum member is trying to sell his old 775 system. Someone was interested in the mobo but not in anything else. But the cpu was a Q6600 for £65 or better I think, which if it was compatible with your 775 mobo would be amazing he was also trying to sell an 850w (same brand as urs i think) psu for £45. You could also get the aftermarket cooler he was trying to sell as well ... a cogage arrow for a tenner.

That leaves you with about 80 quid of your max 200 budget on a gfx card. Either buy one of those sapphire xtreme HD 5830 for 80 quid if they can still be found and put the 850w psu to good use or get a 2nd Hd 5850 or Hd 5870 off ebay or 2nd hand GTX 460.

The forum member is crazyfool and the post is here.

GL

[mrt9888]

You should overclock that CPU first, the motherboard and RAM are fine and dont't need to be changed, you could overclock to 3ghz with the RAM running at default speeds (800mhz). But at £65 the q6600 is tempting. The PSU and freezer 7 don't need to be upgraded for that specification.

The 5830 from ebuyer as mention by c.ruel would be good price/ performance wise or a gtx 460 / hd 6850.

The CPU, graphics card and hard drive are the only things that you will need to change if you want to stick to the budget. Overclock the CPU, the hard drive could added in addition the old one and the graphics card should be upgraded.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is what I would get:

1.)XFX 550W PSU

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...l-power-supply

2.)HD6850 1GB

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/scanf...-6850-pci-e-21

You should hopefully be able to get an E2140 to around 3GHZ or thereabouts.

Another alternative is to get a secondhand Q6600 for no more than £65 to £75,the XFX 550W PSU and a HD5830 1GB.

Edit!!

An HD5850 1GB is also worth considering too:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...source=froogle

[toberemembered]

He's definitely for spending most of the money on the GPU, say £80-125 depending on whats the best deal of the moment. We are going to try overclocking the e2200 and see how it does, a quad core is tempting but I think its worth seeing how the existing CPU performs at a higher clockspeed first.

I appreciate the PSU isn't the best brand but I think he's going to save upgrading that till a new build in a year or two, this upgrade is about making the system better to use in the meantime.

I am pretty rusty on overclocking, I take it having 1:1 FSB:RAM is an advantage. And DDR2 is lower latency than DDR3 so would it be a bad idea to upgrade the RAM?

[CooperXS]

Keep the RAM. The 400FSB it's capable of is enough for good OC potential of the CPU and DDR3 won't result in much gain.
Used Q6600 is probably best bang for the buck assuming you won't be able to find cheapish Q9450/Q9550.
As for graphics HD5850/GTX 460 1GB are still good all-round performers and can be had for appealing price second-hand. Try getting one with some warranty on it just to be on the safe side.

Assuming you will go this path your PSU may also need an upgrade. Could you check which exactly model is there atm ? 460W today and 2 years ago are different beasts

[scaryjim]

I am pretty rusty on overclocking ...

Then read Clunk's Core 2 Overclocking Guide - should be all the reminder you need

[helpiveimploded]

I dunno if we're allowed to post eBay links here, since I've never seen any (so I won't), but there are a few Q6600s available there now at a pretty low price. It might be worth a look, but of course eBay's not the most reliable, so it's up to you.

[toberemembered]

Thanks, I am in two minds about buying a cpu from ebay. What sort of price are they going for, £65 seems to be about the average price i've seen? I know the e2220 is never going to be that powerful no matter how much we overclock it.

So far we have ordered:

1tb Samsung f3 £37.78 @ scan
XFX HD 5830 £77.99 @ scan
=£115.77
Plus possibly recouping up to £35-£40 for the old GPU
(-£35 = £80)

So we have the budget to stretch to a q6600 or similar if the e2220 just isnt cutting it.

or maybe even upgrade to an AM3 mobo (maybe this one that CAT posted http://www.ebuyer.com/product/255178 ) and x3 450 (or a cheaper x2 chip if waiting for bulldozer) and DDR3 RAM (selling the DDR2 for about £35) = ~<£100 and hopefully compatible with the new bulldozer chips

[toberemembered]

Keep the RAM. The 400FSB it's capable of is enough for good OC potential of the CPU and DDR3 won't result in much gain.
Used Q6600 is probably best bang for the buck assuming you won't be able to find cheapish Q9450/Q9550.
As for graphics HD5850/GTX 460 1GB are still good all-round performers and can be had for appealing price second-hand. Try getting one with some warranty on it just to be on the safe side.

Assuming you will go this path your PSU may also need an upgrade. Could you check which exactly model is there atm ? 460W today and 2 years ago are different beasts

The PSU is a coolermaster RS460-PC-AP-A3 http://www.coolermaster.com/product.php?product_id=3686

Hopefully up to the job of Quad Core + Mid Range GPU

[CooperXS]

Yeap should be good for a quad and GPU with single 6-pin power connector.

[toberemembered]

Thats good to know thankyou.

So I have been playing with overclocking, sadly havent been able to get it stable over 3Ghz yet but its fine at that speed on slightly raised voltage and maxing out at 55 degrees.
Some people have managed to get this series of chips to 3.6 or higher so will be having another go soon as i find the patience for it

Current settings are:
12x multiplier
250 FSB
3.2 Ram ratio for 800mhz

I have settings to raise the CPU, memory, memory controller voltage but none for northbridge, apart from cpu at 1.33 everything is at stock.

[toberemembered]

So a week into the upgrade and it looks like a new cpu is going to be needed as even at 3.0ghz the e2220 is just too sluggish for modern gaming. My friends budget is pretty much shot as he bought a new monitor so £70 for a q6600 is a bit of a stretch.

What about a 2nd hand e6600 or similar? or one of the other cheaper s775 cpus?

What will make the most difference to games, more cache, more cores, better speed?

I think realistically his budget is no more than £40 for now

[Terbinator]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/61?vs=53

Heres a comparison of an old Core 2 and a Q6600.

[toberemembered]

So it looks to depend on the game whether the extra cores make a difference, thats interesting. It is essentially a gaming only pc. I find it frustrating that the older model core 2 duos are still so expensive compared to i3's and am3 athlons

[Terbinator]

So it looks to depend on the game whether the extra cores make a difference, thats interesting. It is essentially a gaming only pc. I find it frustrating that the older model core 2 duos are still so expensive compared to i3's and am3 athlons

Pretty much. TBH if you can pick up a Core 2 second hand and overclock it i think you would be fine. Does your board not take any of the 45nm Core 2's?