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Video Upgrade for Old PC


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@Kodiack, get over here. :P

 

A couple of days ago, I reacquired a rather old (almost ten years) tower from my parents' place as part of their effort to shed excess material during a move, this being the machine I used to use when I lived with them. Here is a general rundown of the specifications of the parts within. Everything on this page is going to be accurate to my own machine, with a couple of exceptions:

 

  1. It is using four 1-GB DDR2 RAM sticks, as opposed to the mere two with which it came.
  2. Its operating system was upgraded from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate.
  3. Its HDD might have been upgraded, but I don't honestly remember. It could still be using the drive that came inside of it.

 

This is a list of upgrades destined for this machine; however, for now, the only pertinent items are the video card and monitor. Everything else is tentative, and beyond me financially at the moment. It is my intention to repurpose this machine as my room/office desktop primarily for schoolwork, with modest (by today's standards) media playback/streaming (local and online) capabilities--maybe old games (think Age of Empires II HD) as well. This is why the monitor is so big; I want it to double as a media viewing display for when I'm laying in bed. I intend to make this upgrade within the week (or whenever the parts arrive).

 

I wanted to know if I can reasonably expect this machine, with all the rest of its relatively old internal components, to be able to comfortably make use of the display listed, along with any full-HD (1080p) media, but the most intensive thing I might try to do with it is run virtual machines via Oracle Virtualbox for university purposes. I wouldn't say that's absolutely required right now, though.

 

Is this good, or would it be too much?

Edited by Schmengland
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I am confused as to what the hell you want to do with this thing.

Honestly, my dude, just leave it as is if you're just going to use it for that. Remove all the bloat off windows, maybe throw some sort of linux on it, and you'll be good to go.

 

your list of components is similarly confused

you're buying a gt710 but also buying a nearly $200 cpu

why tho

also where's your psu because your HP's is probably old and shit

 

also you're basically building a completely different computer at this point

just forget the upgrade thing and buy the parts to build a new one over time.

your new best friend

 

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I know of Logical Increments; in fact, I consulted it for a little bit when building this list.

 

I'll consider investing in a new a power supply. I mean to test the machine first to see if it turns on and stays on without any problems.

 

About the rest, though, I think you're misunderstanding:

12 hours ago, Schmengland said:

This is a list of upgrades destined for this machine; however, for now, the only pertinent items are the video card and monitor. Everything else is tentative, and beyond me financially at the moment.

The reason there's a GT710 in the same build list as a new AMD Ryzen processor is because I do not intend to purchase the latter right now--mostly because if I did, I'd have to purchase the new motherboard, the new RAM, probably a new power supply...

 

I don't have the money or willingness to start investing in parts for a whole new rig right now. All the parts in here besides the video card and monitor are there as tentative placeholders for the hypothetical big upgrade that could happen later. The monitor in question would carry over to that upgrade (I don't care about 4K), so really, the only "Band-Aid" part on this list is the ~USD$45 video card--which is not too bad of a price.

 

The reason I want the new video card in the first place is because the machine as-is has a VGA port and nothing else. This may be a quick patch-up, but I still have a minimum standard. I would like HDMI capability so that I can have audio passthrough to the monitor--which has built-in speakers, meaning that I don't have to invest in (probably cheaply-made) external computer channels. The monitor itself was chosen because IPS monitors with relatively low input lag are another minimum standard of mine. This one just so happens to occupy a good sweet spot between features/performance and price for me.

 

The monitor and video card combined cost about USD$200 and some change, which is acceptable to my budget right now. I just need to know that they will play nice with the existing components in this machine.

Edited by Schmengland
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Yes, I understood quite well that you can't build it right away.

 

I'm not questioning the GPU, as it sounds like you have a decent use case for it.

I'm saying you're still better off just building a brand new PC from scratch later on than trying to frankenstein this shit.

 

I suggested a PSU because pre-built computers are notorious for coming with cheap and underpowered ones, which is certainly not something you want to throw a $200 CPU into.

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Mmm, I see what you're saying. I still want an office computer within the week (or whatever) because I'm still schooling and would like to use something other than my laptop for homework and whatnot.

 

But, yeah, the PSU is one of the things I was hoping to get some advice about. It's 250W, though for reference, the PSU in my HTPC--which has far better specs (attached for reference) only uses a 300W PSU. I'm assuming that the 250W in this old machine will suffice for the video card and the older components?

 

Spoiler

Capture23.PNG

 

Edited by Schmengland
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If you're going to upgrade anything, get a solid state drive. Otherwise, don't worry much about salvaging anything from that computer and build completely fresh when you can afford to.

 

The GT 710 is also a horribly valued card, even for workstation and media builds. I need a card that's capable of  simply driving 3+ monitors at work and I wouldn't even consider using that card for such basic use. If you're just driving 1-2 displays at most, rebuild fresh and grab a CPU with modest integrated graphics. Or maybe consider one of the newly released GT 1030 GPUs as a stopgap.

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A solid state drive is, indeed, in this machine's future, but I plan to sift through the documents on the existing drive for archiving and backup before wiping it.

 

And, I'll look into the card mentioned, but once again, half the reason I'm getting a card in the first place is for the video outs, since the motherboard only has VGA. The card itself doesn't need to do anything super crazy, except handle 1080p video playback to just one display. That in mind, is it still preferable to invest in a different card as a stopgap?

 

Edited by Schmengland
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Full disclosure: the current Ryzen processors are placeholders for me. I'm honestly waiting for their companion APU's.

 

I guess it'll depend on whether or not I end up wanting to actually make this a gaming rig (in which case, I'd go for a CPU and pair it with a dedicated GPU), but that's not likely. Tend to prefer consoles for everything except RTS games, and I don't actually play a lot of those. My builds are tend to be HTPC's, and madVR doesn't seem to make enough of a difference to justify the power--at least when JRiver's Red October standard just works perfectly out of the box.

 

The most graphically intensive game I have on Steam is literally Star Wars: Republic Commando. Most of these old Star Wars games haven't been re-released for modern consoles, so there's not much choice in the matter.

Edited by Schmengland
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I would still recommend a GT 1030 over a GT 710 just because the price:performance ratio is so much better. Even for an HTPC, you still get the additional benefits of two generational leaps. The GT 1030 is roughly twice the cost, but is nearly 3.5x as powerful.

 

Here are some additional benefits with the GT 1030:

  • DisplayPort 1.4
  • HDMI 2.0b
  • HDCP 2.2 (e.g. 4K Netflix!)
  • Supports resolutions up to 7680x4320
  • Improved NVIDIA PureVideo VP8 (up from VP5)

Even for - or perhaps especially for - an HTPC, these are massive benefits. The GT 1030 will do a more efficient job decoding video using modern codecs, and it will also be the only way to experience e.g. 4K Netflix using the PC. These benefits result in lower overall system power usage, more consistent video playback at high resolutions, and a smoother overall experience.

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7 hours ago, Snowy said:

With something as old as that, you're bottlenecking yourself with just age. You can build a pretty decent computer for anywhere between $500 and $700 I'd say. That's with newer parts that are actually gonna last you.

 

That's his ultimate goal, and it's definitely what should be done. Picking up a solid state drive along the way would help a lot for general use in my opinion, but aside from that, it's not going to be worth investing much (if anything) into the existing build.

 

Still, if there's hardware that can be put into that build and then immediately carried over to a fresh system, that can be worthwhile. SSD and GPU both fit the bill there, particularly since Ryzen does not have integrated graphics. Ryzen + a GT 1030 makes for a solid HTPC build.

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I've gone ahead and made this order.

 

For the record, the monitor and SSD will carry over in a future upgrade, so the only stopgap in this order is the video card, which only cost me about $40. Not too bad for a stopgap, at least until I can afford the better builds y'all are talking about.

 

Tested the machine as-is before ordering. Thing runs pretty well for its age--no hangs to speak of. Only problem is the egregious startup time, but that's for what the SSD and a clean install will be. After that, it'll effectively be a regular workstation for the time being.

 

Spoiler

Capture24.PNG

 

Edited by Schmengland
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15 hours ago, Kodiack said:

 

That's his ultimate goal, and it's definitely what should be done. Picking up a solid state drive along the way would help a lot for general use in my opinion, but aside from that, it's not going to be worth investing much (if anything) into the existing build.

 

Still, if there's hardware that can be put into that build and then immediately carried over to a fresh system, that can be worthwhile. SSD and GPU both fit the bill there, particularly since Ryzen does not have integrated graphics. Ryzen + a GT 1030 makes for a solid HTPC build.

Having windows on my SSD is honestly the best thing I've done.

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So I've installed the components listed above into the old machine. Took about a day of work and troubleshooting, but I have it working now.

Spoiler

Operating System
 Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU
 Intel Pentium E2160 @ 1.80GHz 67 °C
 Conroe 65nm Technology
RAM
 4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 333MHz (5-5-5-15)
Motherboard
 ASUSTek Computer INC. Leonite2 (Socket 775) 57 °C
Graphics
 VC279 (1920x1080@60Hz)
 Intel 82945G Express Chipset Family (HP)
 1023MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 (ZOTAC International) 61 °C
 ForceWare version: 382.05
 SLI Disabled
Storage
 298GB Western Digital WDC WD3200AAJS-65RYA0 (SATA) 39 °C
 111GB PNY CS1311 120GB SSD (SSD) 30 °C
Optical Drives
 HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GSA-H60L
Audio
 JRiver Media Center 22

With these specs, it obviously labours just a little bit harder than my other machines, but otherwise, it runs surprisingly well. Three pleasant surprises when I was fixing it up:

  1. The thumb drive I have has a readily-deployable copy of Windows 10 Pro, instead of Windows 7 Ultimate. I had forgotten that I had prepared this stick about a year and a half ago when upgrading my other machines. This is a relief because it saves me a bit of money and will help with workflow, given OneDrive integration.
  2. The CPU can and does handle 64-bit Windows. I had no idea because the machine originally came with a 32-bit copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, and I had always upgraded it along those lines.
  3. The CPU fan and heatsink are actually upgraded, with both being massive compared to what were originally inside of it. I think that was an upgrade made years ago, by myself and one of my best friends, about which I simply forgot after all this time.

I have yet to test it with any games, virtual machines, or online-streamed videos. It cannot comfortably stream 1080p content. Playback is choppy, with lots of frame drops; nevertheless, it handles locally-streamed 720p H.264 content like a champ, never mind lossless audio. The relatively old 10/100 network interface does not appear to be a hindrance at all, either in that or in regular downloading via browser. It's also running noticeably smoother after the Creator's Update. The aforementioned fan and heatsink do their job so well that it's almost as quiet as my HTPC, which is liquid-cooled; the only noticeable noise occurs when putting a disc in the optical drive, but even that dies down after a minute or so.

 

6349427236.png

(Not as good as my other machines, but these results honestly seem worse than the actual performance I'm getting.)

 

I really like making good, functional machines by applying upgrades around old components at low cost, so this turnout is very satisfying to me so far. If it handles everything else well enough, I might just decide to leave it as-is, keep it solely as an office machine, and apply any future upgrades to the HTPC instead.

Edited by Schmengland
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