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Upgrading my PC after almost a decade - Help & how about you?

ShadowOwl

ShadowOwl

Member
Yes, no new system. Instead of putting my rusty old PC to rest I invested about 250€ to get both new and used components.

What I have got before:
  • CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
  • Mainboard: Asus P5Q Pro
  • RAM: Geil 2x 2 GB PC2-8500 DDR2-1066 (4 GB in Dual Channel)
  • GPU: PowerColor Radeon HD 5770, 1 GB memory (got it used just a year ago, had a Zotaq GeForce GTX 260² before which supported DirectX 10 only).
  • CPU Cooling: Scythe Mugen 2 (replaced an classic EKL Alpenföhn at some point)
  • Case: Some low budget Asus shit case
The Radeon is as loud as a jet engine when running games and even too loud while idling. The old case was of pretty low quality and had big issues with the front panel (audio ports got interference noises when USB devices were plugged in at the front). Also, the 4 GB RAM just don't cut it anymore.

I ordered a new Cosair Carblide 100R case and already moved my existing components into it, it's so much better than my old one. Also got an USB 3.0 card/controller to get my front ports up and running. The GPU will be a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050 Ti OC (4 GB). Current AMD cards in the same price range appear to be inferior options overall and need much more power. This GTX 1050 Ti is said to be extremely quiet (fans aren't running in idle). I know the CPU will be a bottleneck for the GPU but it still does pretty well in many new games. To upgrade my RAM I'm ordering two modules same as my old ones from Ebay to upgrade to 8 GB in Quad Channel. I know that 16 GB appears to be the standard these days but I guess this will do until I get around to buy a full new system.

I might want to add a SSD with the next months but my board only got SATA2 ports (3 GB/s) potentially bottlenecking the performance. What are my options here?

Also, are there any PC GAFers around sticking to an old system such as mine? I'm mainly focused on indie titles and older games but I want to dive into an AAA title from time to time (looking at you, DOOM 2016). I'm pretty confident that this system is going to do quite well in this regard.
 
B

BrettHeazy

Member
edit - did not read the full body of original post.

1050ti is a nice step up.
the RAM will do you fine for now.
Deffo consider an SSD for your OS and main Apps, and then get a 1TB HD for everything else.
 
Lister

Lister

Banned
Not a bad upgrade.

SATA III is backwards compatible, so SATA SSD's will work fine on your PC. YOu obviously won't be getting the full bandwidth that a modern SSD is capable of, but you cna always keep it for your full new PC build whenever you decide to do that.

In the meantime, an SSD as your main OS drive will make your PC feel like it's brand new. It's a game changer for regular OS use and multitasking.
 
ISee

ISee

Member
Overall reasonable upgrades considering the budget.

I had the Q9550, the Asus P5Q Pro and a 9800 GTX for quiet some time. Would be interesting to see if 60FPS are possible on this old CPU.
 
ShadowOwl

ShadowOwl

Member
Thanks for the feedback!

ISee said:
I had the Q9550, the Asus P5Q Pro and a 9800 GTX for quiet some time. Would be interesting to see if 60FPS are possible on this old CPU.
Click to expand...
My GOG and Steam libraries are huge, so there will be plenty of games to test the upgraded rig. :) I will report back when I got the GPU. Getting the memory might take a week.

Lister said:
SATA III is backwards compatible, so SATA SSD's will work fine on your PC. YOu obviously won't be getting the full bandwidth that a modern SSD is capable of, but you cna always keep it for your full new PC build whenever you decide to do that.
Click to expand...
So, the difference compared to a default HDD will still be pretty huge despite SATA II? Consider me interested.
 
B

bomblord1

Banned
OP that CPU is going to be more than just a bottleneck you're looking at a CPU that's beat out by modern tablet CPU's .

I also remember a while ago reading how old CPU's were failing to run some new games like No Man's Sky because of lack of support for new instruction sets.

You did good for your budget there OP but your CPU is going to choke in CPU heavy games like GTA5 and outright refuse to run others making it feel like the extra power is a waste.

You do have a decent upgrade there OP but your CPU is going to choke in games like GTA5 and outright refuse to run others. Personally, I'de actually go with an RX 460 and attempt to squeeze a better CPU in. Kaby lake pentium or i3 should be a noticeable jump. I've been there on CPU bottlenecks used to think it wasn't that big of deal but after getting burned on it twice I realized the importance.
 
llien

llien

Member
1050Ti is a tad lacking to my taste, I'd go with 470 or 3Gb 1060. (both are to be had at $160-170 and both are basically a tier faster than 1050Ti.

But with your CPU... it might even be better to go for something slower than 1050Ti.

Total power consumption is too small to care about differences between AMD/nVidia in this case, I'd think more about whether you want to go with an adaptive sync monitor.
 
A

Akoi

Member
If you still are using a stock cooler swap it out for a 3rd party one and overclock that cpu to as close to 4ghz as you can.
 
Duxxy3

Duxxy3

Member
I had to pick between a 1050ti and an RX 470. I picked the Rx 470. I think there was a $20 difference between the two.
 
ShadowOwl

ShadowOwl

Member
bomblord1 said:
You do have a decent upgrade there OP but your CPU is going to choke in games like GTA5 and outright refuse to run others.
Click to expand...
This guy on YouTube claims to run GTA5 on a system with a Q9550, GTX 660 and 6 GB RAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYtIno6-LdI
Doesn't look to bad if you ask me! And no, I don't expect 60 FPS ace performance in all of my games running on this old rig.

I know the games not supporting older instruction sets might be a system killer at some point but even No Man's Sky fixed that lack of support later. No other cases such as this come to mind right now.

Akoi said:
If you still are using a stock cooler swap it out for a 3rd party one and overclock that cpu to as close to 4ghz as you can.
Click to expand...
Already got a Scythe Mugen 2, didn't OC anything yet though.
 
G

GameAddict411

Member
the GTX 1050 ti will be severely bottlenecked with that CPU. The GTX 1050 ti seems to on par or faster than a GTX 680/GTX 770 and those cards are several leagues faster than the HD 5770. I would highly recommend spending the money for a core i3 upgrade. You can find them used for really good money.
 
B

bomblord1

Banned
ShadowOwl said:
This guy on YouTube claims to run GTA5 on a system with a Q9550, GTX 660 and 6 GB RAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYtIno6-LdI
Doesn't look to bad if you ask me! And no, I don't expect 60 FPS ace performance in all of my games running on this old rig.

I know the games not supporting older instruction sets might be a system killer at some point but even No Man's Sky fixed that lack of support later. No other cases such as this come to mind right now.


Already got a Scythe Mugen 2, didn't OC anything yet though.
Click to expand...

Inconsistent framerate like that on PC can be literally (as in literally) headache inducing on a non freesync (or gysnc) monitor. I wasn't able to finish Skyrim on an older rig because of it jumping around at 30-45fps on every setting due to a CPU bottleneck.
 
Lister

Lister

Banned
ShadowOwl said:
So, the difference compared to a default HDD will still be pretty huge despite SATA II? Consider me interested.
Click to expand...

One of the biggest upgrades over a harddrive is latency/seek time. IT's glacial on spindle drives, and why OS's tend to cache as much as possible to system RAM (and why big RAM upgrades usually make a big difference to older machines on spindle drives in terms of responsiveness of the UI).

OS's and programs hit the dirves with lots of small randomd reads, and an SSD is going to mean those things will be super quick to look up vs your old hard drive. You will definitely feel the upgrade.

I'll second the suggesiton of invesitng $20 or so into a nice cooler and OC'ing that CPU as much as possible. Will pay off dividends in gaming performance.
 
ShadowOwl

ShadowOwl

Member
Chacranajxy said:
I wouldn't have bothered, honestly. A 1050ti, with the rest of that stuff? I don't get it.
Click to expand...
Might (!) move to a new system sometime next year and that one certainly wont cost one grand this time around. Even then I don't plan on plan on playing each and every game with 60 FPS on high settings. Might switch to a better GPU later.
 
Duxxy3

Duxxy3

Member
I'd suggest not upgrading your ram in your old machine.

G4560 for $60
MSI B250 mobo for $65
8GB DDR4 for $60 (ram is still expensive)

That would give you a much cleaner upgrade path than what you have right now.
 
Freshmaker

Freshmaker

I am Korean.
ShadowOwl said:
Also, are there any PC GAFers around sticking to an old system such as mine? I'm mainly focused on indie titles and older games but I want to dive into an AAA title from time to time (looking at you, DOOM 2016). I'm pretty confident that this system is going to do quite well in this regard.
Click to expand...

I have the same CPU and a 1050ti in my older system right now just have 6GB's RAM tho. It actually holds up rather well now given a 1050ti's basically equivalent to a 770.

I've had no trouble running Witcher 2, KI, and SFV on the system with high (or in KI's case maxxed out) settings. Runs the Heaven Benchmark at full screen 1080p on max settings at around 29fps (IIRC).

Haven't bothered to download Doom, but it should handle that fine.

*edit* looking up comparisons with other newer CPU's the 1050ti does get bottlenecked. Witcher 2 hovers around 47 fps while a newer system has no trouble pushing ~75fps at 1080p... That said, the 1050's still a major improvement for my system relative to a 750ti however.
 
ShadowOwl

ShadowOwl

Member
Freshmaker said:
I have the same CPU and a 1050ti in my older system right now just have 6GB's RAM tho. It actually holds up rather well now given a 1050ti's basically equivalent to a 770.

I've had no trouble running Witcher 2, KI, and SFV on the system with high (or in KI's case maxxed out) settings. Runs the Heaven Benchmark at full screen 1080p on max settings at around 29fps (IIRC).

Haven't bothered to download Doom, but it should handle that fine.
Click to expand...
What does "KI" stand for? Going to try the DOOM demo on Steam. ;)

Freshmaker said:
*edit* looking up comparisons with other newer CPU's the 1050ti does get bottlenecked. Witcher 2 hovers around 47 fps while a newer system has no trouble pushing ~75fps at 1080p... That said, the 1050's still a major improvement for my system relative to a 750ti however.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info, really appreciated.
 
M

MrBS

Member
Nice I had the same CPU/mobo way back, MrsBS uses that PC now albeit with a gtx1060 inside for maximum overkill and bottlenecking ;)

Man I purchased my upgrade to a 2600K build six years ago and I've done one GPU upgrade in that time. I might do a new build this year, maybe.
 
S

Soldiussnaku

Member
Good upgrades op, in all fairness a gpu upgrade and ram upgrade is sensible for such and old system. However the cpu will age very very fast so start saving as soon as for a mobo, psu and cpu upgrade. Will massively massively improve all aspects of you pc usage.


I would also second a SSD upgrade. Sure it'll be a bottle neck with the current saga interface your mobo has however it will represent a huge leap in performance for you daily tasks and gaming needs over a stock 7200rpm drive.
 
S

Shaneus

Member
No advice, just popped in to say I had almost the same CPU/mobile combo too, but with a P5K. Was a beast!

Only had one major upgrade since then, to a 2500K. Hope your next upgrade lasts as long!
 
E

eternalthree

Member
Retired my q6600, 4gb build back in december of 2015. cant believe you held out as long as you did. originally had a XFX 7950GT card in there, then went to an ati 4870, and finally a radeon 580. gave into temptation and upgrade in december 2015 in anticipation of VR and got a i5 6600k, with 16gb of ram, and a 980ti. i should have gone with a 970, which was much more budget friendly. hahaha ... good times. i'm going to try my best to run this one into the ground and not have to upgrade for a LONG while.

o wait, shoot, my q6600 still runs, what am i talking about. it's my secondary backup system, hooked up to a large screen tv. i just finished the first one or two dungeons of Twilight Princess HD on it last month.
 
Wonko_C

Wonko_C

Member
Cool thread. I'm thinking of one last upgrade and my current specs are similar (Q9600, GTX750, 4GB RAM). The problem is it seems like my motherboard which is compatible with DDR3 too is to finicky for 8GB of RAM and the only sticks that seem to work are these: http://www.gskill.com/en/product/f3-10666cl9d-8gbrl

1050 Ti seems a bit overkill so I'm going to get a GTX 1050 instead. Hopefully that will be enough for Quake Champions even at 720p lowest, I don't care as long as it's playable and smooth. as it stands it runs poorly, with very fluctuating framerate that can go from 60 to 20 and anywhere in between, and lots of loading pauses during play which can prove fatal.

Keep us posted with how your games run after the upgrade.
 
M

MrBS

Member
ShadowOwl said:
*bottleneck high-five* Sweet, what is MrsBS playing on your old rig?
Click to expand...
A lot of games on bigfish that don't require much of anything. That and some of the older Assassin's Creed games and Diablo III. As a Diablo III machine it handles the game quite well.

She had a run of No Man's Sky as well and performance at the lowest setting was terrible, CPU playing a big part there I'm sure.
 
W

Waaghals

Member
I had a q9550.


Towards the end of its life I bit the bullet, bought a new cooler, and overclocked it to 3,8Ghz.

It ran cool and stable, but even at 3,8 it didn't cut it most new games.
 
T

texhnolyze

Banned
ShadowOwl said:
The Radeon is as loud as a jet engine when running games and even too loud while idling.
Click to expand...

I know, because that's my GPU from back then. It's still a quite decent though.

Also, are there any PC GAFers around sticking to an old system such as mine?
Click to expand...

I did. My Phenom CPU lasted for almost 8 years before I replaced it entirely earlier this month.

I was originally just only planning to replace my CPU and GPU, but the motherboard is too old it couldn't support any newer CPUs.

Overall, it's a pretty decent upgrade, as 1050Ti is indeed a pretty quite and power consumption friendly. However, you'll desperately need a better CPU down the road.
 
K

KingpinZero

Member
Just a word of advice: if you plan to upgrade such an old build, do it from scratch.

That core 2 duo won't cut into anything these days and assuming it will be "ok" for the next years is wrong.

You don't need to go fully fledged into the actual lineup, you could also think of some past generations, maybe you can get a pretty good deal out of some second-hand components.

Personally if budget is strict i would look into an intel i5-4xxx + mobo + ram, then pair it up with a 1050ti.

Just my two cents.
 
S

Sad Affleck

Member
I think the Q9550 should be fine for the next few years if you are aiming for 30 fps. 60 fps will be out of the question for most big titles though.
 
D

data

Member
If you're getting a 1050ti, I'd recommend the RX 470 instead. It's way more powerful for a meager price increase. I'd also recommend changing out your mobo and cpu and atleast going for the G4560 someone recommended above. (So you can have an upgrade path)
 
S

SmartWaffles

Member
data said:
If you're getting a 1050ti, I'd recommend the RX 470 instead. It's way more powerful for a meager price increase. I'd also recommend changing out your mobo and cpu and atleast going for the G4560 someone recommended above. (So you can have an upgrade path)
Click to expand...

The RX470 consumes significantly higher power (120W TDP vs 1050Ti's 75), his PSU is likely very old by now so it might stretch things too far. Unless OP plans to upgrade his PSU as well (which he should!).
 
ShadowOwl

ShadowOwl

Member
Really didn't expect so much feedback to this thread. Thank you very much!

Too all those who recommend me to get a new CPU and mainboard: my budget is just too tight to get all this. I would have to pass on a GPU and there's no way around that. Also, my old case is a messy pile of crap and had to be replaced. The Scythe Mugen 2 is, despite its age, a pretty sweet CPU cooler and I don't think there's need for a replacement right now.

Why the PSU upgrade recommendations? PSU might be old (it's an Enermax MODU82+, either 525W or 625, have to check on that when I'm back home) and lack efficiency compared to new models. But the the power consumption should even go down overall with the new GPU and there should still be room for upgrades.

There's some news though. A friend of mine might give me his old Intel Core i7-920 and Asus P6T SE mainboard, 8 GB memory included. Not a system revolution but at least a slight upgrade.
 
ShadowOwl

ShadowOwl

Member
So, the PC is up and running with the new GPU installed. System much less noisy and temps are cool. I was surprised that the new card doesn't even need an additional power plug.

Well, I couldn't resist and got myself DOOM after doing a short test in the demo version. Damn, it runs very, very well on Vulkan and Ultra settings (with very few options modified). Constant 60 FPS with very rare drops to the 50+ region, drops down to to 40+ FPS are even more uncommon. Oh and I'm also enjoying the game a lot. It's been that I have had this much fun with a shooter.

Funny thing is that I still have 4 GB of memory installed - DOOM's minimum requirements state 8 GB. Further testing to follow once the memory modules arrive...
 
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