Time to Put Together a New Machine, Recommendations Please!

[techiemon]

As far as I know you cannot upgrade from XP to Win 7 directly. You have to have Vista to do that. And I planned on buying the full version of 7 anyway.

You know, one of the reasons I bought this P5B motherboard was the fact that it was upgradable, and I spent over 200 bucks on it, and have never upgraded it. I suppose I should get my money out of it.

Jason do you have any recommendations on RAM brand? I think I want to buy OC type this time for sure, the old memory was great, but when I bought two more sticks of it, everything just stopped working. So now I have 2gb of Adata DDR2-800 RAM I cannot use, anyone need it?! hahaha. PM me!

How about for HDDs, what do you guys do for the OS? Do you buy a small HDD just for the OS? I partition my drive as CDE. C is for OS only. D is for program files and mail and E is for photos and other stuff, but they are all on the same drive. I thought about buying a small drive like 200-300gb just for the OS and then 2 other drives for other things.

I have a new 1TB WD drive I bought about 6 months ago and still haven't used it. Though I planned at at least buy one more and transfer all my other drives to it and then use the old drives for backups/long term archiving.

I can install the new Win 7 on another hdd and have it detected when teh computer starts up? Or do I haev to put it on the same drive just different partition? I have fogotten how to do that already. I want to have access to both OS until I get everything reinstalled on my new OS.

I have a lot of installed programs so I hate reformatting which is one of the reasons I have not done it. When I bring up my programs it is three columns long!

 

[jazon1]

As far as I know you cannot upgrade from XP to Win 7 directly. You have to have Vista to do that. And I planned on buying the full version of 7 anyway.

You know, one of the reasons I bought this P5B motherboard was the fact that it was upgradable, and I spent over 200 bucks on it, and have never upgraded it. I suppose I should get my money out of it.

Jason do you have any recommendations on RAM brand? I think I want to buy OC type this time for sure, the old memory was great, but when I bought two more sticks of it, everything just stopped working. So now I have 2gb of Adata DDR2-800 RAM I cannot use, anyone need it?! hahaha. PM me!

How about for HDDs, what do you guys do for the OS? Do you buy a small HDD just for the OS? I partition my drive as CDE. C is for OS only. D is for program files and mail and E is for photos and other stuff, but they are all on the same drive. I thought about buying a small drive like 200-300gb just for the OS and then 2 other drives for other things.

I have a new 1TB WD drive I bought about 6 months ago and still haven't used it. Though I planned at at least buy one more and transfer all my other drives to it and then use the old drives for backups/long term archiving.

I can install the new Win 7 on another hdd and have it detected when teh computer starts up? Or do I haev to put it on the same drive just different partition? I have fogotten how to do that already. I want to have access to both OS until I get everything reinstalled on my new OS.

I have a lot of installed programs so I hate reformatting which is one of the reasons I have not done it. When I bring up my programs it is three columns long!

i would go with some ocz or corsair ram for sure,there are a few other that are ok but these are the only two brands i like.
and for your os i would get a SSD a 60-64 gig will be fine for your OS and is probably the best upgrade a person can make these days.
and as far as a dual booted os that's easy just install to a new drive and windows 7 will install the new boot manager,and you get the choose at boot to load windows 7 or "older version of windows"

 

[techiemon]

I'm not sure I can buy those brands here. The most popular ones are A-Data, Transcend, and Hynix which are all made here. There are a few others but I need to check.

As for the booting issue, I figured that would be what would happen, but I wanted to make sure.

I will consider the SSD, but the cheapest 64gig I found was like $175!!! I found one that costs almost $600 also, thats a huge range.

 

[jazon1]

I'm not sure I can buy those brands here. The most popular ones are A-Data, Transcend, and Hynix which are all made here. There are a few others but I need to check.

As for the booting issue, I figured that would be what would happen, but I wanted to make sure.

I will consider the SSD, but the cheapest 64gig I found was like $175!!! I found one that costs almost $600 also, thats a huge range.

well ive heard a few good things about a-data and as far as the ssd i wasn't convinced of the performance difference for the money ether,but im telling you its huge! but you might as well save that for your next build too,if i were you i would just stick to a clean install of xp,and save your money up for a new system.with the wear you've put on that system i wouldn't spend anymore money on it,its like a car with 200,000 miles on it after being running 3 years with no down time,lol its probably more like a car with 300,000 miles.id just reinstall your os and run it to the grown and when it dies then buy a new one

 

[techiemon]

I have A-Data now, the first two are fine, the second two I bought won't work with the first two, so I cannot use them now.

So when I change out the RAM I will buy 4x2gb, plus maybe two more for replacements in case.

My first PC back in like 1993 was a Quantex 486. That pc lasted me until 1998. And even at that time it still worked fine, I just got tired of being so slow. It never rested either.

I will consider about the SSD, any recommended brands with good performance at a reasonable price? Are you sure 64 is enough? I put all my documents, mail, photos, and programs on different drives. The only thing I would put on the SSD is the O/S and maybe those programs I use often like Office, Acrobat Reader, maybe my browsers.

What will be the difference in speed between the SSD and a normal HDD? You say it is significant, so I am curious..

 

[jazon1]

here is the SSD that i went with and 60 gigs is plenty for your os and a few extras. well with the SSD i can click on most anything on my desktop and it will be open and running before i can let off the mouse button i clicked to start it.the os starts up in a few seconds time and shuts down as fast.id say the read and right speeds are about 3 times faster then my raptor hdd was.and dont bother with more than 4 gigs of ram unless your going to be using x64 os like you were thinking about.and i admit pc did seem to last alot longer back in the 90s i had a few that lasted forever also,but like cars(once again) they dont make them like they used to.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227469

 

[jason4207]

I don't think the PC will wear out in 3years. My old P4 rig ran for over 5yrs at 3.9GHz (3.0GHz stock) and still works great, but right now it's sitting in the closet retired. I'm using the old 20-pin 500W Antec PSU from that rig in my file server now, and it's still running great as well. If you buy high-quality components they last a while and you don't have a drastic OC anyway.

I would avoid doing an upgrade, and do a clean install of Win7 (or XP if you want to save your money). If you want to dual-boot I would still recommend re-doing XP b/c of all the problems you're having.

The mobo you have requires a good dose of NB voltage to run 4 sticks of RAM. Did you try that when you had all 4 sticks in? You also might be able to OC that CPU higher, but it just depends if you're RAM has any OC in it (try to loosen the timings if you want more speed), and if your NB can handle it.

I haven't bought any new RAM in a while. I'm still stuck on the old D9 chips that OC like crazy. My DDR2-800 Ballistix do DDR2-1250 5-5-5-10 at 2.3v (not stable there, but I am stable at DDR2-1132 for 24/7) and I got them for $10/GB! The newer Ballistix use new chips and don't OC like this.

You have a good number of decent HDDs and thus a lot of options on how you want to do things. Right now I have a 300GB VR in my main rig that's for OS/Programs/Games, and I use my file server for storage. I have never understood the reasoning behind using another partition for Programs b/c if you re-install the OS you will still have to reinstall all those programs. And the setting files are typically in a different folder on the C: anyways. If anything the My Documents folder should be mapped to another partition/HDD so that settings can be easily restored after a re-install. Just my $0.02.

Ideally you want to use a small fast drive for OS (SSD or VR), and then a large drive for storage and another large drive for backups. But given what you have you should...well what exactly do you have?

Which model WD 640GB is that? And which model WD 1TB do you have?

Also, do you have the ability to sell any of your HDDs to help fund a more ideal scenario?

 

[techiemon]

Here is a list of what I have.

1x 1TB WD WD10EADS/P 32MB cache (Have not used this one yet though bought it about six months ago.

1x 1TB Seagate ST31000528AS-EY/P

3x 320GB Seagate ST3320620AS

1x 640GB WD6400AAKS-22A7B0 ( I thought this was a seagate, but I guess I was wrong)

I think I will probably try the SSD for my OS and maybe some of my programs, would like to see if it really has any effect. And if can use this for 10 years, that would be great.

No one buys used HDDs here, they can go to the market and get new ones anytime.

Like what you said, was what I was kind of doing. I had three partitions on my first drive to do O/S, documents and programs and then photos. But this time I do not want my info on the same drive as my O/S.

And yes I will probably still reinstall XP on another drive and just keep the one I have as a workable backup even though it is not functioning well.

How much does the NB need with four sticks? The problem I had was that two sticks were bought 3 years ago and two sticks were bought a year and half ago, they just were not compatible at all. My system went nuts, sent them back to A-data one of them was bad so they fixed it, did a memtest overnight no problems put them back in and then still had issues..

Jason, I am worried if you say my NB needs more voltage, I will have to go back into my system settings when I install everything and change that for OC. Is it ok that I pm you with the new link on how to oc this motherboard with 4 sticks so you can give me the numbers for both ram and nb? If you know that is... Let me know.. I would say probably this will happen sometime next month.

ne more thing, if I decide to stay with the MB and just change out the RAM, maybe the CPU and buy a new SSD, am I going to need a bigger power supply than what I already have? Right now what is in the machine is this:

2gb ram
cpu
video card
tv card
4 hhd
1 floppy
1 CD RW
1 DVD RW
4x exhust fans
1x intake fan

you can look at my signature to get more details.

 

[jason4207]

That PSU should be fine. You don't have a monster gfx card and that is usually the main deciding factor. Seasonic makes good PSUs.

What I'd do:
If you're getting an SSD, use that for OS/Programs, and then use the 1TB Seagate for storage, and the 1TB WD Green for backups.

Sell the other HDDs or use them in other PCs.


You can PM me if you want, but it's been a long time since I messed w/ that particular board. I OC'd an E6300/P5B-Deluxe system for a friend several years ago, but I only used 2 sticks of RAM. I got it to 3GHz on the stock cooler and it was actually undervolted. With a decent cooler a lot of folks would push for 500x7 3.5GHz, but you do need RAM that can run DDR2-1000 to be able to do this. The NB loosens timings at 500FSB, though, so you may be able to jump over a FSB hole if your RAM can take it.

In my research about P965 I learned they need a lot of NB voltage to run 4 sticks. Don't be afraid to go into the yellow or even red on the BIOS setting. That chipset can take a little juice.

It might be that your RAM won't be compatible since they are different no matter what we do, though.

If you keep the questions in here more people may be able to chime in, and more people may benefit from the log.

 

[techiemon]

Jason, well I will be quite conservative, let me put it that way. If I do not upgrade my cpu I will only OC to 2.8G like I was doing before, I think I still have those instructions somewhere, but that was with only 2GB, with 8GB I have no idea if the same settings would work or not. I probably will not OC the RAM, thorugh I will buy higher quality RAM that can handle anything I do. If I buy a new CPU I will still be conservative. I am not looking to massively increase the speed. An extra gig would be just fine. The 2.8 was working quite nicely until I tired to install more RAM, since then I haven't bothered to reinput all the CMOS settings. I was running at 400FSB, it was fast enough for me. I am not using any other cpu fans other than what Asus and intel gave me for the E6300.

I will buy new RAM, I will buy 5 or 6 chips so I have spares if any one of them should die. I will start from scratch on that.

What I meant by pming you was only to let you know where the link was, but I can just add it to this thread and pm you when it's here. I agree that putting stuff in the forum is much better so others can join and comment. But this may take me a few weeks to get all the components. I don't have much time this month so it may actually not happen until April, but I am hoping for March. Lots of things to do.

The 1TB seagate is already full. I will need to buy two more drives. The SSD and another HDD. I may opt for a 1.5 or 2TB drive.

I can pick up a WB 1.5TB / 7200RPM SATAII 300/64MB for about $125 and a 64gig SSD for about $156-$230 depending on the brand.

 

[techiemon]

In addition to the above...

What is the difference between the blue, black and green WD drives? 1, 1.5 and 2TB? Which one did I already buy?

From what I have seen PSU's typically last about 2-4 years. Mine is just over 3, not sure how much longer it's going to last. Indeed SeaSonic is one of the best, no thrills, but high quality.

 

[jason4207]

You bought the Green drive.

Greens spin slower and use less power. They have less performance as a result, but they are great storage drives.

Blues are faster, and Blacks are the fastest. Blacks also have a longer warranty; 5yrs vs. 3yrs on the others.

That 640GB AAKS you have is equivalent to a Blue, but you might have a 5yr warranty on it iirc.

 

[techiemon]

Ahhhh, ok. I will have to go to WD website to get the model numbers. I will use the one green I have then for storage only and back ups. And I will buy another black for documents and stuff. the AAKS is about 2-3 years old. I cannot really tell anymore what is fast and what is slow as my entire system is just creeping sometimes. After I do the new install I am sure everything will be much better.

 

[techiemon]

Which OCZ drive is better?

Apex
Vertex
Summit

And out of these brands for SSDs, which ones do you feel are reliable, stable and have great performance for long term use?

OCZ Technology
Kingston Technology Corp.
Patriot Memory
Transcend
Corsair Memory
RITEK
A-DATA
Crucial Technology
DANE-ELEC
FILEMATE
Imation
Intel
Mushkin Enhanced
Plextor
PQI
SAMSUNG
Western Digital

 

[retrogreq]

from everything ive read, the intel X25-m is one of the best drives out there...someone correct me if im wrong though, for i have no hands on experience with SSD's...just reading.

 

[techiemon]

Hmmmm the intel drive must be expensive though. I need to check it out, not sure i can even get that one here.

Maybe someone can relist mine in order of preference for permance, stability and long term usage.

 

[tomballard2]

Well I do a lot of research and can never find anything in my bookmarks so I just leave them all open so I can get to them quickly. When I research something I will open up many sessions of the same website, for example even this forum right now I have about 10 opened. I hate constatntly trying to find the link I want.

I have like 6 bookmarks and I keep 1-3 tabs open at a time, maybe FF and IE at the same time. I shut down all my apps when I'm not using them. I will never understand this "hoarding" mentality of leaving 98 apps running at once. To me it feels like I haven't wiped my butt enough or something.

Just close the damn stuff and reopen it.

 

[Austin3334]

for the ram id go with gskill and there headquarters are in Taipei, Taiwan

 

[techiemon]

If Gskill is located in Taiwan, that would be a first I have heard that, they either don't sell their product in Taiwan or they market it under a Chinese name that I haven't figured out yet. I will have to go to their website and give them a call.

Any ideas for the SSD's as my last post?

 

[techiemon]

Ok this is what it looks like I can still get here: any recommendations? I see above someone did, but the E's and Q's look wrong, and I want to make sure I get the right chip.

Intel Core2 Duo E7500 2.93G / LGA775、FSB1066、L2-3MB
Intel Core2 Duo E7600 3.06G / LGA775、FSB1066、L2-3MB
Intel Core2 Quad Q8200 2.33G / LGA775、FSB1066、L2-8MB
Intel Core2 Quad Q8300 2.5G / LGA775、FSB1066、L2-4MB

Am I right in assuming that I cannot use the FSB1333 with this motherboard?
If I can then I can also get:

Intel Core2 Quad Q8400 2.66G / LGA775、FSB1333、L2-4MB
Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66G / LGA 775、FSB1333、L2-6MB
Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 2.8G / LGA 775、FSB1333、L2-12M
Intel Core2 Duo E8400 3G / LGA775、FSB1333、L2-6MB