Blue died, it's time to bring her back to life.

Lazy morning, copy/pasta-ing from my Facebook posts late last night:

This is my parts list:

Kingwin USB 3.0 to SATA/IDE Adapter
Toshiba P300 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA III 6Gb/s 3.5" Desktop Internal Hard Drive - HDWD110XZSTA
Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01 Mid Tower Gaming Computer Case
AMD FX 8320E Black Edition PileDriver 3.2 GHz Eight-Core AM3+ Boxed Processor
ASUS 970 Pro Gaming/Aura AM3+ ATX AMD Motherboard
Azio Vision Backlit Large Print Keyboard

So I can drive up to MicroCenter in Chicago which is about an hour away and pick all that kit up for $330. I'm gonna look at keyboards while I'm there to see if there might be one better that she'd like, but this is currently my game plan to fix my wife's PC in time for her birthday. (Which, btw, is tomorrow...)

Any suggestions? And yeah I know it seems stupid to buy an FX CPU and AM3+ mobo on the day the Ry5 comes out, but she's not really a gamer and uses her PC for web cruising/watching viddies...and this should be great for that.

I don't know, I spent all afternoon/evening swapping out mobos and CPUs trying to get her PC working and it's just gotten to the point where all my backup parts are just too old and broken and her PC was a mess to begin with. It's main drive is an IDE and her other drive is a 4200rpm laptop drive I tossed in one day since I had it...the 1Tb is long overdue and she doesn't need an SSD yet, a good 7200 should be impressive enough to her. (And I can always add an M2 later when they get a bit cheaper. )

I dunno, it just seems like a good idea and a good price for what I'm getting...but I need reassurance or someone yelling at me that I'm wrong and no one around here is objective enough for me to really value their opinion on it. You folks know your shit, so I really like the feedback.

Thanks in advance again, I'd go nuts if I didn't have you people to talk to about my PC problems. My family's eyes just glaze over when I start talking about it.

And a bonus, a picture I took yesterday before putting the mess of non-working bits away:

 

then just buy her a pre built base unit
eg
http://www.microcenter.com/product/474800/Aspire_ATC-780A-UR12_Desktop_Computer

 

That wouldn't be rebuilding her, that would be buying a new computer. I refuse to let Blue die! She's technically our second computer, I bought her from CyberPowerPC back in 1998 a few months after they opened and have kept upgrading her ever since. (Theseus's ship stuff. )

Plus she's already on the fence about spending $330, $390 and she'd still need a new keyboard and adapter for the SATA to IDE makes it a whole lot more to her and out of reach. I know that's not logical, but I also know how my wife thinks.

 

lol the IDE drive + very small laptop drive is what I did recently, it's a decent thing on linux - I don't want to bore you to death but you can install the OS on one drive (like C:\) and the user files on the other drive (like C:\Documents and Settings or C:\Users) and have the swap on both (so you run out of swap less easily)

This is actually quite good, as the "disk heaviness" of the operating system is about between that of Windows XP and 7.
A friend got something spilled on his keyboard and so he donated me a PS/2 keyboard gotten from somebody else while I gave him a USB keyboard he could use. So, I just got a new keyboard and it's quite a better one than usual! (from when lenovo bought IBM PC I guess)

I do have to rebuild it. new mobo for getting > 8GB ddr2, clock the CPU higher or get the same with more cores, and well either use a different case or reshape it with a hammer (!) as something HEAVY fell on it once. But I'll have to hit from the inside and optical drive bays etc. are in the way. That is embarrassing, no matter the good wash it could get if all PC parts were out. I've kept it because it's slightly big and the steel is thick, well I think it was manufactured back when steam engined cars, horses and street cars roamed the streets.

 

That PC Davros posted is impressive for the price. BTW it includes a keyboard and mouse although I don't know if the free KB will do. If you can convince your wife to go for the new machine I'd do it, its a great deal.

edit - actually there is one thing that bothers me about the machine that Davros posted... it says it uses SO-Dimms.

 

Wow it's absurdly fast indeed. So-DIMM looks like it's a typo or something wrong and it uses DIMM. They did provide DDR 2400 instead of 2133 too (but needs a second stick for dual channel)

The only thing wrong is the OEM BIOS (and also typical, the lack of reset button) and perhaps also hassles of getting Windows 7 to run if that's wanted here.
Dumbed down BIOS is the biggest hassle that can prevent heroic rescues of dying hardware e.g. when it start failing after 10 years you can run with underclocked RAM and dead controllers.
I've forgot mine was purposefully stuck at 100% CPU fan speed which is only around 1800-2000 rpm.

 

but as long as u copy the old HDD to the new one, its the same old Blu!

at least that was my PC and laptop haha (keeps getting upgraded from XP or ME era hahaha)

 

It's a fantastic PC linked, but 300W PSU?!? Could I swap in my Corsair 650w? And what about her 7950, would that work with this?

If so, that would be enough to be a very f-ing persuasive argument...because if I'm not mistaken that would be better than the best computer we've ever owned in all regards but GPU.

Damn it, I asked my son to read this thread and give me his opinion and he was just, "Dad, that's an ungodly system compared to what you're looking at and if her power supply will work with it I would say it's a no brainer.".

He agreed the 300w PSU was highly suspect, we haven't used power efficient parts in a loong time and our PCs do double-duty as portable heaters. (Which we both actually count as a plus) But I don't know about the onboard graphics or upgradability, any ideas?

And damn it Davros, if you talk me in to buying an Intel i5 rig on the day after the Ryzen 5 was released I will be amazed/overwhelmed/grateful/hateful/speechless/and bewildered. Congrats on that. You have no idea how many people have tried to get me to at least try the switch, but you actually have me contemplating it since it would be a rock solid unit for my wife that would last her for quite some time in style compared to what she's been used to.

 

DAMN IT!

It's got a PCIe 16x, which should do the 7950 fine and it's under the required height. Wish I could get a look inside it to see how the PSU is mounted and such....intels take an 8-pin CPU header instead of a 4, right? Or does it need an 8 and an extra 4 like the bloody Crosshair Formula V did?

(Me feels like a newbie, and it's giving him a fizzy feeling down there! )

 

I thought you said she wasn't a gamer? If not why not leave her on integrated for a while if the power supply doesn't work out? BTW I was curious on how the CPU's compare so I used anandtech's bench... here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1402?vs=1833

edit - BTW shouldn't kabylake have much more up to date codec's for videos?

 

She isn't a gamer, but that's mainly because her rig can't game. We used to have family lan parties doing team deathmatches in UT, I'd LOVE to be able to do something like that again.

She does enjoy gaming, not as extreme as me but some games catch her and hook her in. Saints Row 2, Need For Speed Undeground, and she even wants to play GTA V after seeing me and my son playing it so much.

I'd like her to have that option again, hell I'll trade her my r9 980x for her 7950 since she'd be better able to take advantage of the graphics.

But cheap is the key option. If I could just get a decent replacement mobo/cpu/hdd for cheap that would perform just a bit better I'd be happy with it. She HATES spending money on computers, it's a quirk of hers.

 

Have you looked at microcenters in store only cpu motherboard bundles? I don't know about now but last year when I was looking they were great.

edit - BTW is her power supply haswell ready?

 

The 300W power supply isn't suspect at all, the PC as is eats under 100W at full load. Realistically this works with four hard drives and a GTX 1050 Ti or RX 460 and such. GTX 1060 with power cable adapter if you don't care about parameters or never want someone to tell you the odds.

It's also like your typical old Dell with Intel graphics, those with a ridiculously fast Pentium 4 or Core 2 Duo surrounded with low end hardware

It depends, on AMD FM2+ it's got an 8-pin but the motherboard's manual says it takes a 4-pin in.
On Intel it can be the same and sometimes if the motherboard is really low end, it has a 4-pin.
I also did the "trick" of using a 20-pin ATX power supply with a 24-pin ATX motherboard (relatively early ones), it does work although if I put a Phenom II X4 980 in there everything would melt (the motherboard's power circuits won't like it anyway)

Alright, if you zoom in on the Acer's sideways open picture you can see the 4-pin power connector. I must commend either microcenter or Acer for the picture as we usually see hundreds of OEM branded PCs without ever seeing the interior. Acer is a Taiwanese brand like Asus, Asrock, MSI and Gigabyte are and also FSP (Fortron, Sparkle) and VIA. I feel like wanting to thank them all for the basic respect they have for their customers even though there were a few fuck ups with some Pentium 4 motherboards and Athlon chipsets (MSI and Gigabyte have good laptops, they're just thick enough for RJ45 and with no stickers)
You can also see the free slot for a case fan which you'll definitely want with your big Radeon (perhaps the Radeon can be undervolted very slightly, I don't know)

In all : Taiwan makes motherboards and PSU (both fairly important to make laptops, and they also make graphics cards so they know everything about cooling)
South Korea makes RAM, flash memory and LCD
Intel/AMD make or design CPU (and IBM, ARM, Sparc), Malaysia likes to package them
Japan/Thailand and Singapore make hard drives
People's Republic of China makes your keyboard, mouse and cables (but also about anything else with various success, except hard drives. no one wants to make them because they're too hard and everyone is pissed after they failed in 3 months. They also do chips and boards for 3G/4G towers)

 

Ugh, horrible thought hit me and I did a stupid. Check it out:

AMD FX 8320E Black Edition PileDriver 3.2 GHz Eight-Core AM3+ Boxed Processor
Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Socket AM3+ mATX AMD Motherboard
Toshiba P300 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA III 6Gb/s 3.5" Desktop Internal Hard Drive - HDWD110XZSTA
Cooler Master Elite 130 mini-ITX Computer Case - Black

Not as snazzy, but the mobo has an IDE port on it eliminating the need for the adapter and the whole setup would only cost $212.22 after taxes.

Toss in the PSU, (which has the correct 8-pin header, I checked. A lot of them have the 4 with a bloody capacitor next to it so you can't use an 8 on 'em, VERY annoying!), 8GB of DDR3, and the 7950 and Blue should be better than she's ever been.

 

GODS YES! Some of their CPU/mobo deals can be an incredible steal! It's $120 for the CPU & mobo and it comes with a cooler!

 

And the thing is i picked it just because it was on the same page that you linked to

 

Change the mobo to the ASRock 970M Pro3 AM3+ mATX since it supports the faster SATA speeds and just generally looks better, and add back in a USB to IDE reader and the total is up to $273.76.

I'm gonna drive myself nuts over this, aren't I? <sigh>

 

Whoa so you gutted Blue's spine, replaced part oh her brain, added a bunch of stuff to her nervous system...

On top of that... Why not add and SSD and move her personality into it? She'll be the same blue you love, but faster at serving your wife's needs

I know I know, you said she said she doesn't need SSD. But I'm pretty sure she will appreciate the snappier Blue with SSD.

Think of it as a gift for her. She deserves it, for being together as part of the big family for many many years.

 

What she doesnt need is a high end radeon and a high wattage psu

 

She likes the high end radeon for videos, she swears they look better to her since I upgraded it. I don't consider 650w a high wattage PSU by any means, my rig has struggled with her 850w so I picked my son up a 1300w for his BD last year. I count 1000w & over as "high wattage", but that's just a personal thing.

The SSD is an added expense, period. Trying to avoid those. She'll be impressed enough with a 7200rpm drive and sata III performance, I really am trying to keep this as cheap as possible as she really doesn't like spending monies on these things.