Upgrading a 10 year old machine

Thyrom

Hi all,

A lot has happened in the past 10 years but I am back and hoping to update my PC

I first posted about this back in 2010 and Quizzical was extremely helpful and provided me with a great build spec that lasted a few years. I have many happy memories from this and have always been very grateful. Unfortunately, this was put in storage and only recently pulled out and dusted down. I'm wondering what peoples thoughts were round upgrading this? Is it possible?

I'm not after anything fancy, just something to get back into WoW on mid settings would be absolutely brilliant.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Please see below for a list of the key parts:

• AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3)
• Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card 
  
• 2 x Crucial 4GB DDR3L Memory
  
• Asus M4A87TD/USB3 870 Socket AM3 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
  
• LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter
  
• XFX Pro 550W Core Edition Power Supply
  
• An old fashioned HDD

Any pointers would be much appreciated.

Thank you,

Thy

Quizzical

For a computer that old, you should be thinking replace, not upgrade.  Nice computer for its day, but basically everything in it uses old standards that wouldn't be what you'd want for modern parts.

Unfortunately, you kind of can't buy a new video card today because the ethereum miners are buying them all, so to the extent that you can find anything in stock, it's likely to cost double what it would have a few months ago.

Mendel

Upgrading will require replacing almost every component -- motherboard, graphics card, drives, memory.  Chances are you will need a new power supply.  You *might* be able to salvage the processor and maybe the graphics card -- but too many things want 4GB of video memory to really stick with the old card for much longer.  You will probably need/want an OS upgrade, too.  Steam also eats local drive space, if you have/want a lot of games from Steam.  It's very easy to look at your 2TB hard drive and find it confining.

I went through the same, when I upgraded my 1999 era EQ machine, so I feel your pain.  It's a terrible shock to the wallet, but in the long run, better for your health.  You could probably get a very usable system for under $1500, but like @Quizzical said, that's really going to depend on the graphics card you use and the availability.

Thyrom

Ah thank you and I really appreciate your help. That puts an end to my idea!

Po_gg

What Quizz and Mendel said.

(I too was in the same shoes a few years ago)

For an upgrade you barely could find any components, unless maybe used on ebay, etc. since during the generations a lot of changes happened with sockets, etc.

Replace would be the optimal route, but as mentioned above, it's a very unfortunate time for building a new gear: covid made a dent in production, the USA-China quarrel didn't help either, and then there's the returning popularity boost of crypto mining...

GPUs are in shortage and their prices are through the roof, there's a prognosed RAM and SSD price increase as well for the following months - not the best time to be a PC builder sadly.

I'd say if there's no issues with it, try to keep it running for a few months more, maybe the crypto bubble bursts and prices normalise a bit

What you can do however is putting in an SSD. If you only have the HDD, it will give a nice and noticeable speed boost to the whole system, and fairly cheap.

Thyrom

Back to the xbox I go...it's just not the same!

Nanfoodle

Parts for an older PC sell for much higher then you would expect and normally used. I agree with most of the thread, best just buying new. 

Ridelynn

Nice build for it’s day.

I do advocate for building your own, but parts availability being what it is, some of the prebuilt and boutique builders are able to get stock
now where us near mortals are not. So that is an option.

Thyrom

Thank you RideLynn. You were also very helpful 10 years ago when I had some issues so a big thank you.

I suppose it's not surprising given the age. I actually managed a few levels on WoW last night and it played OK but a little laggy in parts. It would more than likely be unplayable in a busy area! I naively hoped a quick cheat would be to update the graphics card some something newer...bearing in mind newer is not what the rest of the world thinks us new!

Anyway, typically I now have the money but not the time. It was the opposite 10 years ago! 

I hope people on here do follow your advice. It was invaluable to me.

Thanks again and stay safe.

Thyrom

I'm in no rush

Vrika

Ridelynn said:

Nice build for it’s day.

I do advocate for building your own, but parts availability being what it is, some of the prebuilt and boutique builders are able to get stock
now where us near mortals are not. So that is an option.

Adding to this, some small local computer store might agree to get you rare parts if you order all needed parts from them at once, even if you assemble the computer yourself. Large shops are unlikely to do special arrangements, but for small shops if you promise them a big sale they may be happy to reserve one of their incoming rare parts for you to secure that sale.

Don't ask any local shop for AMD's GPU because AMD is at the moment manufacturing so few of them. But NVidia's GPUs and AMD's new generation CPUs are being manufactured at good enough pace that your local shop should be getting a constant stream of them to sell.

Thyrom

I've quickly accepted my Xbox is the future. I am lucky to be the dad to two lovely young children so simply can't justify spending a lot of money on something which won't get much use.

I'm happy to wait another few years. Or, if there is a good deal, I will jump on it.

Hopefully wow will wait for me!

Quizzical

Thyrom said:

I've quickly accepted my Xbox is the future. I am lucky to be the dad to two lovely young children so simply can't justify spending a lot of money on something which won't get much use.

I'm happy to wait another few years. Or, if there is a good deal, I will jump on it.

Hopefully wow will wait for me!

GPU stocks could come back pretty quickly if Ethereum prices crash.

Thyrom

What goes up must come down. I'm happy to wait for the crash

Quizzical

Actually, depending on what tier of performance you're looking at buying, you probably could get something now that isn't crazy.  The Ethereum miners are only buying up all of the video cards that can mine Ethereum, and ignoring the ones that can't.  The Ethereum mining algorithm requires a little over 4 GB of memory, so miners will ignore anything with 4 GB or less.

It's hardly a higher end card, but this sits about halfway between WoW's minimum and recommended system requirements:

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-radeon-rx-570-rx570-4g/p/N82E16814930010

While $210 today for a video card that had an MSRP of $170 when it launched in 2017 is hardly ideal pricing, I'm sure it would be able to handle WoW on medium settings just fine.  And that particular SKU has been in stock for at least several hours now, so it's not just something that is there for ten seconds and then gone.

While I haven't looked through everything, I think that getting a decent video card is the real sticking point.  The real question is whether you're willing to pay $1000 for a desktop today that will be no better than a $1000 desktop from a year and a half ago, and likely worse than an $800 desktop six months from today.  That's not ideal, but it's not ruinously expensive, either.

Wizardry

IDk how he was doing it but LTT has had videos building a decent $500 PC.
Here is one for example.....

Good thing is LTT also has forums and MANY vids to watch so you can setup your own.
BTW W10 is free ,search You Tube and you'll find answers.I mention Linus Tech Tips because he is in Canada Burnaby BC,so if he can build a $500 PC anyone can but of course he might be getting special deals idk.

Thyrom

Just to finish the thread, I have found a solution to my problem. 

Play a less demanding game...EQ2.

Thanks again everyone and hopefully EQ2 will keep me busy for a while.