5 Year Old Laptop GPU Dead - Time For An Upgrade, I Guess

[sixteenth]

For starters:

At this point, I'm not even looking to fix this thing. The problem lies with the GPU which is soldered ever so nicely onto the board. It's an ASUS Intel CoreDuo 2.4Ghz w/ 4gb of ram and an Nvidia 9500m w/ 512mb (lol). So, **** it. It's time for a long needed upgrade.

Here it goes. I haven't built a PC since 2006, so I've just learned quite a bunch within the past few hours. Here's what I'm looking at.

Intel 2500K
ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard (I hear you need Z68 for SLI, which I plan to do in the future)
Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W Continuous @40°C,80 PLUS Certified, Single 12V Rail, Active PFC "Compatible with Core i7,i5" Power Supply
Samsung by Seagate Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ/ST500DM005 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Stuff above is pretty much for certain. I'm a little cautious about the ASRock board (I've never heard of them), but it's gotten a lot of popularity within the past few months and is currently the highest rated Z68 board on Newegg.

As for GPU, I'm stuck between the 560Ti and the 560Ti 448.

As for RAM, either between these two (because I am unsure if the board will run 2133 since it says 2133(OC) under the description. Also, would I even notice a difference really?)

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL

G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory Model F3-17000CL11D-8GBSR

That should cover it. Also, I do have a ATX case from 2006. Anyone know if that's too old to fit the modern mainboards?

 

[Stigmata]

Core i5 2500k is a great choice. The i7's only significant extra feature is hyperthreading, and games can't make effective use of that.

SLI and Crossfire aren't all they're made out to be. Lots of games have issues with multi-GPU rendering, the drivers are hit-and-miss, you need a hefty PSU to support multiple cards, and the performance gains are less than linear. You're better off just sticking with a single GPU at a time and switching it out whenever the time comes. The 560Ti is a solid card, it overclocks very nicely so it should last you a while.

As far as I'm aware, Rosewill is a decent but mediocre PSU brand, while OCZ and Antec are solid brands. But I could be wrong, so make sure there aren't too many one-egg reviews for the one you want.

As far as RAM speed goes, you won't notice a difference at all. Beyond DDR2 you get extremely marginal gains in instruction execution rate that only really become apparent if you do heavy media encoding or software compiling or the like. But you'll need DDR3, since it's an i5 board. The DDR3-1600 set should do just fine.

And your case will fit everything fine (except possibly the GPU, but that's unlikely). ATX is still standard

 

[Higlac]

Looks nice, ASRock is good, it's what I'm running. With an aftermarket cooler, you can crank the 2500k up to 4.6 without any issues. As for the ram, just check the compatibility list from ASRock. I'd recommend a corsair power supply though.

 

[sixteenth]

Thanks the responses!

Even though games at the moment may be having some issues with multi-card rendering, I'm going to stick with a Z68 because that may change in the future. It's only about a $10-20 difference between a Z68 board and a P67 board anyway.

I'll stick to the lower speed RAM. I didn't think I would really see much of a difference.

But any thoughts on the 560Ti vs. the 560Ti 448? It's an $80 difference for an additional 64 cores. In comparison to 570 prices, doesn't really seem worth it. Plus, reviews say driver support is pretty bad. I'll likely just stick to the regular 560Ti.

That Roswell PSU does have some pretty good reviews on Newegg. There is an Antec for $10 more that I'll look into tomorrow.

Good to hear that the industry standard for case sizes hasn't changed. I have an Antec case that resembles the old Alienware desktops from years ago (it actually still carries an AMD x64 processor and a 6800gt). That'll do nicely.

I guess there's only one thing left to ask: Any recommendations for a cooler?

 

[Higlac]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

 

[sixteenth]

Hey, thanks everyone. This is going to be a little review about where I bought the parts and how I am liking the PC so far.

I found all of the parts at a MicroCenter in my area. After rebates, I saved about $60 going there rather than Newegg. Saved on shipping too, I guess. I was hesitant at first due to all of the bad reviews about the chain, but I checked and doubled checked everything before checking out. Also, fyi for anyone who is going to shop there in the future, be ready to ignore the blabbering from the employees. I shit you not, they will push a bundle or some marked-up item while you walk around the entire store. For example, the guy was trying to get me to buy 2600K ($250) and a motherboard with a $50 discount if I bought both together. Even though I stated that I was buying a $110 motherboard and the $175 2500K, he didn't believe that I would be spending anymore money on the bundle. I',m not saying the bundle was a rip-off (in fact, it was a great deal), but it simply would have cost more to go that route (I had my price ceiling, and I was sticking to it). Other than that, not a bad experience. These dudes will cut each-other's throats for a commission. Once again, I shit you not. The first guy who came up to me was trying to force that bundle on me. After he finally realized I knew what I was talking about and wasn't interested, he turned away. I picked the motherboard I wanted, and some new employee came up and asked if I needed assistance. Out of nowhere, the original dude came up and said "Randy, I was here helping this gentleman first. Would you kindly step out of the way and find another person to help?" Then the dude helped me get every single item I needed for the build; got me a cart too when the basket started overflowing and we both couldn't carry stuff anymore. That part of the service was ****ing awesome.

Since I live in Chicago and have no car, I had to take the bus home with all of the equipment. Something about carrying $750 worth of electronics on your back and in a bag on a city bus makes you think about your surroundings a little bit more hah. Plus it was raining. But I had everything bagged (I had remembered to bring some trashbags in the case the rain got bad, which it did). Got home with no problems. Immediately stripped the chassis I had from 2005. Put all of the new equipment in, and...

...POST on first try, bitches. It surprised me at first because of the contrasting experiences I had with builds 6-7 years ago. It'd usually take me an hour or two to get something to boot-up back then. Maybe I just wasn't as cautious since I was younger. Who knows. Installing Windows 7 became a huge ****ing hassle, though. I didn't purchase a DVD drive since I can't remember the last time I used physical media, so I was stuck. I also didn't have 4gb+ flash drive. So a thought occurred, "Why don't I use one of the DVD drives from my old system?" "YEA!" I thought. But, as it turns out, the modern computer age has moved past the ribboned IDE interface for a more streamlined SATA connection. Yea. That's how old those drives are. So, I have a SATA/IDE to USB adapter that I used to get data off my past, deceased laptop hds. I went on my roommates laptop and used the adapter to create an 8 GB partition on the brand new 500gb I bought at MicroCenter. I made the partition bootable, then copied the Windows 7 installation files from the DVD to the partition. Voilà. I felt like I was a genius for a short-while after that, until i realized what I did is the same thing that is done for recovery partitions on HP, Toshiba, Dells, etc. Whatever. I still feel awesome.

I love this thing. I've only had a short time with it, but I couldn't have imagined the difference compared to my laptop. Playing Skyrim at ultra settings and playing Skyrim at 800x640 on low settings are two completely different games. I'm starting over the campaign just to marvel at everything I missed while playing on my laptop. Crysis 2 with HD textures simply looks amazing. I just bought Saint's Row 3 and I can't wait to try that out. And I love how I can play a game and actually 'alt-tab' out without something crashing; as well as download stuff on Steam whilst playing something without a hiccup. Photoshop is going without a hitch, and iTunes actually works. I've been away from the (somewhat) latest tech for years, and it feels so, so good to be back.

Forgot, here are the parts I bought:

Thermal Take TR2 500W PSU
Intel i5 2500K
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
Corsair XM3 DDR 3 2x4gb 1600
500gb Seagate 7,200
Zotac 560 Ti 1gb OC (Yes, I went with the overclocked version. It has a much bigger fan).
Coolermaster Hyper 212 (thanks Hig)
Dynex Wired Keyboard (lol)

 

[sixteenth]

Holy **** is overclocking way easier than it used to be.

So far I have my 2500K pushing 4.41 Ghz at a 1.32 vcore, with a highest load temp of 59 C (using Prime95). I could probably push it further, but I honestly don't think I need any extra power for what I am doing. The Hyper 212+ really does its job efficiently, eh? I am a little worried about the voltage. It probably is a tad too high, but I'll mess with that tomorrow.

I've overclocked my 560 Ti to 1000 Mhz core and 1150 Mhz ram at 1.1 volts, with load temps between 67-69 C (using Furmark). I've profiled the oc settings with MSI Afterburner (a ****ing wonderful utility, btw), and only use the profile for gaming. I could probably push this further, as well, if needed.

I am so used to the days where overclocking stress testing meant looking for artifacts in games or having to deal with BSODs. Now, the display drivers just crash, there are sufficient utilities to check temps and fan speeds, and great stress test applications. It's so much more precise and simple than it used to be. I'm loving it.

 

[Doomination]

If you want a rig that can play almost any modern game and you want to save money...

http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/consoles/xbox-360-4gb-console/78479

or

http://www.gamestop.com/ps3/consoles/sony-playstation-3-160gb/92398

 

[Krynn72]

If by "modern games" you mean "games being held back by 8 year old technology" then yeah, go ahead and invest $200+ into obsolete hardware.

 

[Dinnesch]

And expensive games. Consoles are bad in the same way as cheap printers.

 

[Doomination]

Krynn: By "modern games" i mean (most, of course) games released in the past 5-6 years. It's not my fault that developers are catering more towards consoles, I'm not a developer. All I can do is take advantage of the price difference.

Dinnesch: So the extra 10 dollars per game is enough to get you to spend an extra 600-1000 dollars on the system you play it on..? Perhaps you buy more games than I do. Oh, and cool avatar by the way, I've been meaning to tell you that.

I know a lot of people on this forum hates consoles, but I never understood why (I've already read all of your anti-console arguments, so there's no reason to repeat them here). I guess I'm not the video game perfectionists you guys are. Oh well, carry on. I'll retreat back into my hole.

inb4 infraction

 

[Higlac]

Krynn: By "modern games" i mean (most, of course) games released in the past 5-6 years. It's not my fault that developers are catering more towards consoles, I'm not a developer. All I can do is take advantage of the price difference.

Dinnesch: So the extra 10 dollars per game is enough to get you to spend an extra 600-1000 dollars on the system you play it on..? Perhaps you buy more games than I do. Oh, and cool avatar by the way, I've been meaning to tell you that.

I know a lot of people on this forum hates consoles, but I never understood why (I've already read all of your anti-console arguments, so there's no reason to repeat them here). I guess I'm not the video game perfectionists you guys are. Oh well, carry on. I'll retreat back into my hole.

inb4 infraction

Well, you can buy a decent gaming pc for $600, which really isn't that much more expensive than a new laptop. Also, steam sales mean that games which cost $60 on ps3 or 360 cost about $25.

 

[sixteenth]

Don't know why this thread got hijacked so severely, but I spent about $700 (after MIRs) on a machine because my laptop crapped out. Instead of buying a very capable $400 setup, I decided to put in an extra $300 to get something that would play all modern games. I could have gotten a console with that extra $300, but I bought parts for a single thing that would accomplish both computer-essential work and gaming. Furthermore, that extra $300 dollars not only allows me to play all modern games, but play most of these games at max settings.

I don't think this is the correct thread for a console v. pc argument. I, probably, made the best decision that complies with the preferences I have.