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Old 11-14-2017, 12:24 PM   #1 (permalink)
Daox
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Location: Germantown, WI
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Upgrading my computer - faster & more efficient

My current computer has been faithfully chugging along since its initial build back in 2008! I did a processor and video card upgrade in 2011, and added some additional ram in 2013. However, its getting a bit on the slowish side, and power consumption on the newer setups is drastically lower than my current setup. So, I am looking to upgrade to something faster, and more efficient.

The current setup is:

Athlon II X3 455 3.3ghz 95w
MSI K9N2G Neo-FD AM2+/ AM2
XFX Radeon HD 6870
G Skill DDR2 800 2x2gb + Kingston DDR2 800 2x2GB
OCZ Vertex 3 Series MAX IOPS 120 gig SSD
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250gb HDD
2x ancient optical drives that rarely even are plugged in (this saves on power consumption)
Rosewill Green 530W 80 PLUS certified power supply

Samsung 21.5" LED LCD
Acer 24" LED LCD
Running windows 7


This wonderful machine (just the box, not monitors, etc) idles around 130W doing absolutely nothing. This is after much tweaking to reduce it. It used to be well over 150W. Looking at reviews on newer systems, they should idle around 20W!

So, this is the new setup that I am considering.

Intel Pentium G4560
MSI B250M PRO-VDH
2x 4gb sticks of PC2400 ram
Samsung 850 EVO 500gb M.2 SSD

I'll reuse the power supply, monitors, rarely used optical drives, and reinstall Windows 7. The rest of the old compy pieces will go on ebay to recoup some of the cost of the upgrade. I checked this and was pretty surprised at what I think I can get for those older bits.

I haven't finalized or ordered anything. If anyone has any suggestions for the new build I'm all ears. I use the computer mainly for office applications and web work. It occasionally does see some SolidWorks use, but its not too drastic. I am hoping the integrated graphics will do well enough for this.

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