Well, I've thought about upgrade my computer for a long time, but I never really got to it until now. Maybe going to Melbourne was the final push that tipped the boat.


Anyways, stuff I bought~ [Note: Bought about 1.5 weeks ago.]

CPU: AMD Phenom x4 9550. [$198AUD]
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H   (Is supposedly very good. Has won lots of awards). [$125AUD]
RAM: 2x2GB G.Skill DDR2 800 RAM [$60AUD]
HDD: 640GB WD 7200rpm SATA. Blue Cavalier model. (This model faster than the other model for the 640GB WD HDD) [$94AUD]
(NEW) Chasis: Cooler Master Centurion T-05 /w 460W Cooler Master PSU. [$112]

Total cost: $589AUD. IMO pretty good value.

AUD » USD exchange is something around 0.7 right now, so $1AUD = $0.7USD.

Carried over from before~

V7 21inch LCD Monitor
Pioneer DVD Burner
FDD
250GB IDE HDD
Razer Diamondback Mouse
Some generic keyboard
Some average headset
Box and PSU (are peices of poo poo) EDIT: Shitty no brand PSU broke. Upgraded both.

What I upgraded from (is really weak)~

Sempron 2800 @1.6ghz (weak)
1+0.5GB DDR 400 RAM
OLD motherboard that doesn't support SATA, DDR2, nor PCI-E. (lol).
Integrated graphics the power of a GeForce2. (OMG Guild Wars runs under 10fps on low settings and 800x600. Even Warcraft 3 lags, on highest. It supports... Pixel Shader 1.1!!!).

Ok... to some of you guys, it's probably not much of an upgrade, since none of the parts are super high end and uber hardcore, but consider what I usually use my desktop for. That is, mostly firefox, school work, watching movies/anime and encoding. I pretty much hardly ever play games these days. So... no, I don't need a core i7 extreme edition + 2 4870x2's in crossfire + 16GB DDR3 RAM + $300mobo + water cooling. I'm way more of a price/value kind of person than an enthusiast.


Thoughts and comments~

• Windows loads MUCH faster than previously, which I'm quite happy about. Like 5+ times faster. I attribute it to a combination of: faster CPU, less bloat in current windows install, less fragmentation, faster HDD.
  
• Similar to Zinga's situation for his recently upgraded system, my mobo also takes about 4 seconds before the beep and BIOS loads. Sort of annoying, but it's actually not that bad, since I generally leave my comp on for long durations and don't really restart often.
  
• The fan my CPU came with is pretty poo poo. Same model fan as my old Sempron2800. 2000RPM on idle, 3000RPM on load. (6000RPM when I close my shitty box with no ventilation whatsoever. EDIT: Got new box. Don't have this problem any more.)
  
• Tried and successfully ran 2 1080p (1920x1080) vids simultaneously at full speed. My old comp barely runs and sometimes lags on a single 720p (1280x720) vid (using FFDShow. CoreAVC does fine).
  
• It seems I really should have upgraded my box and power supply. Box has no fans whatsoever, and traps heat like a furnace, and my power supply somehow also goes way hot (can barely feel the heat on my brother's power supply). If I close my lid, the inside of the box heats up, and the CPU fan goes up to 6000RPM and becomes WAY loud. EDIT: Power supply is GAY and blew. Getting new box and power supply. Looking at the CoolerMaster Centurion T05. EDIT2: Got my new Centurion T-05 case. Seems much better than my old box, has decent ventilation and everything.
  
• EDIT: I can overclock fine. It's just the problem with the power supply. EDIT2: Easily overclocked to 2.64GHz (20% overclock), ran Prime for 8hrs without any errors. I could quite easily do more, but I can't really be bothered, tis enough.
  Spoiler for old stuff:

  Tried to overclock, and couldn't even do a measly 5%. Crashed 2hr into stress test. Probably mostly due to a combination of my box, fan and power supply being poo poo, or maybe the motherboard, which runs quite hot. What's weird is that Prime95 never returns an error, the whole system just crashes with no signs of error whatsoever. And when the system crashes, it cannot be turned on without completely draining the power. That is, pressing the start or restart button does nothing. Only way to start it again is to pull the power cord, and put it back in. I'm thinking it probably has something to do with the motherboard or power supply rather than the CPU or memory, due to the weird behaviour of the crash. I'm going to try underclock the memory and the cpu one by one to try to isolate the problem.
• Guild Wars @ 1400x1050, max settings besides for AA runs at 30fps on my integrated ATI x3200. Sufficient. That and WC3, CS and UT2004 are like the only games I've played in ages. And none of them need a good GPU. So I can't really be bothered getting one until I need it.

(This post was last modified: 08/03/2009 06:03 AM by Assassinator.)

Try ATi's AVIVO (hardware accelerated H.264 decoding).  I haven't tried it yet, but I think I read that it's just a DirectShow filter.  Basically video card does the decoding, offloaded from your CPU, and supported on all RadeonHD 2xxx series or later cards (integrated graphics should still do it).
Your heat issue sounds like my old AthlonX2 - fan goes at like 6000+RPM under load, and I had to keep the case open to allow extra airflow.  Can you lower the core clock on your CPU? (my AthlonX2 couldn't) - you could do a downclock that way.

My custom cooler does work well, though it's pretty much $55 for a big chunk of metal (and some thermal grease).  Can do a stable 2.4 » 3GHz overclock without any noticeable (or significant) temp changes under load.  Probably could easily go further, but can't be stuffed (2.4GHz runs well enough)
Generally system instability is caused by the voltages not being high enough, if the mobo isn't cutting the power from overheating.  Memory timings are also a source of instability.  Obviously, more voltage = more heat energy to dissipate, so you'll need to watch that (generally, you should aim to keep the CPU under 70C under load).

Otherwise, a pretty good value build, though I do like my Core 2 Q6600.
If you could have waited, would've got a Phenom II when the prices come down - apparently AMD improved heat issues a lot with the Phenom II (also due to the die shrink as well).  You could still upgrade, but really not worth it...


EDIT: Oh, make sure you enable all the speed stepping stuff in the BIOS too.  Not sure if your motherboard has it, but if it has, install and enable Energy Saver if you haven't already.

(This post was last modified: 11/01/2009 01:03 AM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

Zer0kevin Wrote:sounds like a good comp to me o and im new hiya lol

Thanks and welcome to the forums!

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Try ATi's AVIVO (hardware accelerated H.264 decoding).  I haven't tried it yet, but I think I read that it's just a DirectShow filter.  Basically video card does the decoding, offloaded from your CPU, and supported on all RadeonHD 2xxx series or later cards (integrated graphics should still do it).

Ok, I'll try it sometime.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Your heat issue sounds like my old AthlonX2 - fan goes at like 6000+RPM under load, and I had to keep the case open to allow extra airflow.  Can you lower the core clock on your CPU? (my AthlonX2 couldn't) - you could do a downclock that way.

I can easily do a downclock by reducing the multiplier or something, but the thing is... I don't really want to underclock.

What goes on in an overclocker's mind... My $150 cpu > your $200 cpu. And underclocking would be the other way around. That's like not really cool.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:My custom cooler does work well, though it's pretty much $55 for a big chunk of metal (and some thermal grease).  Can do a stable 2.4 » 3GHz overclock without any noticeable (or significant) temp changes under load.  Probably could easily go further, but can't be stuffed (2.4GHz runs well enough)

I don't think it's anything to do with the CPU being too hot. My issue with the fan is just that it goes loud. My cpu is only rated at 95W, and isn't that much of a heat generating beast.

According to this, cpu isn't that hot at all. That's with x264 running @ about 75% cpu, and case open. I don't really know what these 3 temperature values in the middle are, but they seem pretty hot. CPU only ever hits about 45 doing Prime95 (a stress test. extremely intensive on both processor and RAM), but the bottom 2 of the 3 unknown values goes well into the 60's.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Generally system instability is caused by the voltages not being high enough, if the mobo isn't cutting the power from overheating.  Memory timings are also a source of instability.  Obviously, more voltage = more heat energy to dissipate, so you'll need to watch that (generally, you should aim to keep the CPU under 70C under load).

What do you think is cause of the whole system not being able to turn on after crashing, unless if I reset the power? Sounds like something to do with mobo or power supply rather than CPU or memory.

I'll probably go and get myself a new case + psu sometime. Because it would also allow me to setup my old system again, which is currently lacking just that.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Otherwise, a pretty good value build, though I do like my Core 2 Q6600.

You should be able to overclock decently with that. Phenoms are supposedly pretty bad at overclocking, much worse that the c2d and c2q chips.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:If you could have waited, would've got a Phenom II when the prices come down - apparently AMD improved heat issues a lot with the Phenom II (also due to the die shrink as well).  You could still upgrade, but really not worth it...

Thought about that. Or rather, I thought about the Phenom 2 pushing down the prices of the regular phenoms. Getting a phenom 2 on launch would probably net you some ugly premium.

The problem was that I won't be at Melbourne any more. And prices in Canberra are like 30% worse. So I just decided to buy rather than wait.

(This post was last modified: 11/01/2009 01:49 AM by Assassinator.)

MysterySword Wrote:What OS are you putting on it?

Windows 7 is a nice OS, by the way (even if it is in Beta, it's still pretty stable). XP doesn't have cool effects, and Vista is a RAM hog, but Windows 7 has the effects, and runs better than both...

Currently XP 64bit version.

I've so far kept away from Vista because it doesn't offer much more benefits than XP besides for looks. And back then I didn't have enough RAM.

Since I now have quite a lot of RAM, I guess I could run Vista and Windows 7.

As for running Windows 7, is there good driver/program support currently?

(This post was last modified: 11/01/2009 01:39 AM by Assassinator.)

Assassinator Wrote:

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Your heat issue sounds like my old AthlonX2 - fan goes at like 6000+RPM under load, and I had to keep the case open to allow extra airflow.  Can you lower the core clock on your CPU? (my AthlonX2 couldn't) - you could do a downclock that way.

I can easily do a downclock by reducing the multiplier or something, but the thing is... I don't really want to underclock.

What goes on in an overclocker's mind... My $150 cpu > your $200 cpu. And underclocking would be the other way around. That's like not really cool.

Multiplier underclocks generally don't work as well.  Well, underclocks are a cheap way to reduce heat/sound...

Assassinator Wrote:I don't think it's anything to do with the CPU being too hot. My issue with the fan is just that it goes loud. My cpu is only rated at 95W, and isn't that much of a heat generating beast.

According to this, cpu isn't that hot at all. That's with x264 running @ about 75% cpu, and case open. I don't really know what these 3 temperature values in the middle are, but they seem pretty hot. CPU only ever hits about 45 doing Prime95 (a stress test. extremely intensive on both processor and RAM), but the bottom 2 of the 3 unknown values goes well into the 60's.

That's actually better than mine...
Three temps in the middle could be misc motherboard sensors or something like that (like chipset temperatures).

If that's the case, a ~$30-50 heatsink/fan should get rid of the noise if it's a bother.

Assassinator Wrote:

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Generally system instability is caused by the voltages not being high enough, if the mobo isn't cutting the power from overheating.  Memory timings are also a source of instability.  Obviously, more voltage = more heat energy to dissipate, so you'll need to watch that (generally, you should aim to keep the CPU under 70C under load).

What do you think is cause of the whole system not being able to turn on after crashing, unless if I reset the power? Sounds like something to do with mobo or power supply rather than CPU or memory.

Ah, missed that part.  But try raising the voltages slightly, since you seem to have plenty of room heatwise.  I know my Gigabyte board won't resume from sleep if the voltages are too low.
Does sound like a power issue though.  What's the brand/power rating of the PSU?

Assassinator Wrote:Currently XP 64bit version.

By the way, have you gotten any BSoDs with the Catalyst 8.12 driver?  I've gotten some, but don't really know why they occur...

MysterySword Wrote:Yeah, Windows 7 has support for all Vista drivers, and some XP drivers.

Should install most, if not all, Vista drivers, but shouldn't be able to do XP drivers.

i would never make a beta my primary OS. lol

i tried windows 7 on vbox but it keeps crashing on me. I just hope windows 7 doesn't cost an arm and leg.

assassinator can you give a link to where i can find that hard drive? please.

^ It's just the standard WD SATA2 model (non Green Power one).

Costs $98 here: http://umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew...&sid=30836
So I went with the Samsung instead...

(This post was last modified: 11/01/2009 02:24 AM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

79 us dollars is a great price for a WD. Its funny how before i was set on getting an intel CPU. Now im thinking of going AMD on my next PC.

(This post was last modified: 11/01/2009 02:28 AM by Incadude.)