Idiot with a socket 939 motherboard wants to upgrade CPU.

[DeadlyNinja]

My friend wants to upgrade, but he doesn't want to change motherboards. It is a huge pain in the ass, after all. Do they still sell socket 939 CPUs? I'm looking at some old threads and the newest was from 2007. I'm looking at newegg and I don't see anything. Do they even sell Socket 939 CPUs? If they do, know any good CPUs and trust worthy sites that sell them?

My friend has a 4200+ and wants to upgrade from that. Anything good for Socket 939?

 

[swaaye]

Top choice is something like a Athlon 64 FX60 or so. Nothing worth trying to buy because it would be "in demand" and pricey for goofy reasons.

Time to move on.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Figures he's screwed.

 

[entity279]

Overclock

 

[Richard]

My friend wants to upgrade, but he doesn't want to change motherboards. It is a huge pain in the ass, after all.

The pain comes from exchanging the CPU with thermal goop falling over the place if you're not careful and then trying to put the new heatsink/fan in place while trying NOT to break the mobo in half.

Replacing the mobo is easy; unless he's concerned about reinstalling the OS, at which I'd reply "it's probably in need of a reinstall anyway".

 

[Ty]

You should ask him WHY he wants to upgrade. Is he CPU limited in the first place? He could possibly be upgrading pointlessly.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

He has a 4200+. He's definitely CPU limited.

The pain comes from exchanging the CPU with thermal goop falling over the place if you're not careful and then trying to put the new heatsink/fan in place while trying NOT to break the mobo in half.

Yeah, that too.

 

[DJ12]

Just looked and the fastest 4800+ 939 processor is upwards of $220 a 5800+ is $90 I dare say a motherboard would be the same price so it's going to be cheaper just to upgrade the whole lot

 

[swaaye]

Tell him he can get a fabulous new 45nm AMD Phenom II X4 940 quad core for cheaper than a top Socket 939 dog.

Or just get one of those nifty new $100 3.1 GHz Phenom II X2 550s that can apparently be turned into a quad with the right mobo.

OR if he feels all nostalgic for the Athlon name, there's the super wonderful new $90 3 GHz Athlon II X250!

ALTERNATIVELY, perhaps a visit to Intel could be fun ?



The choices are endless.

 

[Tahir2]

$90 3 GHz Athlon II X250

I would second that.

Replace motherboard, RAM and CPU. Good to go for a few more years.

 

[Davros]

he may be able to keep his ram (not sure what ram a 939 uses)

 

[BRiT]

Most Socket939 boards use DDR1. Nearly everything new today uses DDR3 with slightly older boards using DDR2. However, for the price of a higher-end S939 CPU you can get the CPU+MB+Ram.

 

[vazel]

Even someone as strapped as me was able to upgrade recently. I ordered all these parts on Amazon.com so I paid no taxes or shipping.

Intel Pentium e5200(45nm cpu with 12.5x multiplier, easily overclockable to 3-3.5GHz on stock cooling) $70
GIGABYTE GA-EP43-UD3L mobo $85
xms2 4gb ddr2 $48
XFX ati 4850 $120

 

[LunchBox]

It really would be cheaper to just upgrade mobo + cpu + RAM than buy a 939 Processor... unless he can buy it at a mom and pop store that might be clearing some 939 CPU...

If he is really bull-headed about it... there are some Dual-Core Opteron CPUs that work on 939 Mobos... but it depends if his mobo would support the CPU...

I upgraded my really old 939 socket to a Dual-Core Opteron a couple of years ago, they don't run as hot as their X2 siblings and seems to OC better...

Problem is, 939 Opterons are really pricey if you find one nowadays...

 

[Davros]

the fastest chips for a particular socket usually are expensive

 

[Tahir2]

UK prices from a good and cheap online retailer:

CPU
Athlon II X2 250 - £65
Motherboard
Sapphire 52025-00-40R, 780V, AM2+, mATX - £40
RAM
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2, PC2-8500 (1066) - £40

£145 ish

Some retailers here are selling the Athlon II X2 245 for about £55 so another £10 saving.

Additional info:

1. Do not purchase that particular motherboard if you want to overclock and do not know HEX. I think Sapphire released an update to make it simpler to overclock the processor but you may as well go for an ASUS or Gigabyte model.
2. The Athlon II X2 245 is listed on some sites but I don't think it is in the wild yet even though some sites are showing it to be in stock. Seems to be a case of retailers exploiting Google Shopping to get traffic to their sites.

 

[Mize]

His best bet is to sell the motherboard for big bucks to someone with a 939 cpu and dead mboard and then move on...

 

[digitalwanderer]

Does his mobo use DDR1 or DDR2? If DDR2, it's a HELLA lot cheaper to just upgrade the mobo/CPU, and he'll get a much better rig for it.

 

[mrcorbo]

My friend wants to upgrade, but he doesn't want to change motherboards. It is a huge pain in the ass, after all. Do they still sell socket 939 CPUs? I'm looking at some old threads and the newest was from 2007. I'm looking at newegg and I don't see anything. Do they even sell Socket 939 CPUs? If they do, know any good CPUs and trust worthy sites that sell them?

My friend has a 4200+ and wants to upgrade from that. Anything good for Socket 939?

As others have pointed out this is a pretty bad idea. The MB he is trying to hold on to likely also has some "miles" on it. If it were to fail, he would then be out looking for a overpriced and obsolete MB to accommodate the overpriced and obsolete CPU he just bought.

If the hang-up is a desire to avoid having to do a clean install of the OS, this is something that can be avoided (though it's not recommended). I personally upgraded from a 939-based system to a Intel X58-based system without doing a clean install (running Windows 7 x64) and shockingly was able to boot into the OS without issue. I did do an upgrade install from within Windows after this, though.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I've went from a 939 system to a AM2+ with no reinstall myself.