Question for PC builders...

[Mobius1]

I'm looking to upgrade my ageing system but I've decided I want to do it myself, buy the parts and install them. I can open my PC and I've installed GPUs, RAM, HDDs and optical drives. However, I've never installed a mobo or a CPU.

Basically my system's body is fine but it's heart is old hat. So I want to change the CPU and by extension the motherboard and RAM. The rest of it is fine and quite up to date. Firstly the components that I want to buy are as follows:

ASUS Crosshair IV Formula motherboard AMD 890FX / SB850
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T CPU
8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 PC3-12800C9 Dual Channel RAM

Can someone confirm that these components, particularly the RAM, are compatible? I have plenty of patience and I want to do this, but how difficult am I likely to find it? I'm mildly concerned about taking the old board out and I don't especially want to have to cut any wires?

The system I have currently has a Lian-Li PC60 case, Tagan 520W PSU, an Intel X-25M 80GB SSD and a WD Caviar Black 640GB HDD for storage. It has a GeForce 8800GT which I will be keeping at present with a mind to upgrading later- for information.

Feedback and recommendation on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

[daffy654]

I built my own PC a few months ago with no experience at all. Like you I had previously installed RAM, optical drives, and GPUs before. Fitting a Mobo can be fiddly but isn't actually hard, you shouldn't need to cut any wires whatsoever as all wires from the PSU to the Mobo will have push in connectors.

[ChuckFickens]

Only had a quick check, but all looks good to me, gut feeling says your PSU is a little on the low wattage side, Would think it will be fine for now but you'll probably need an upgrade if you put a serious GPU in it in the future.

Most important thing to be aware of is the mounting posts for the motherboard, be very careful that they all line up with holes in the new motherboard and none of them are going to short out the board. Other than that it's a piece of cake :)

[Mobius1]

Thanks both. Chuck, do you have any recommendations as to a PSU. A particular brand, and it going modular PSU worth the extra cash?

[ChuckFickens]

Can't help you there I'm afraid, I have to stick to OEM PSUs for warranty reasons normally and as I'm not a PC gamer I don't get involved in that side of the hardware much. I do know that high end graphics cards are drawing anything upto 500W on their own now though!!

[Hymie]

If you are running Windows XP – by making such drastic changes to your system, Microsoft might decide that you are trying to run the operating system software on a second PC (and not allow it).

My understanding of the way Windows XP tries to stop users running it on multiple systems, is that it allows a small number of PC component changes. But should the aggregate score of these changes exceed a predetermine level, then the software will deem that you are trying to load the software on a second PC (even though it is the same PC) and not allow it.

For-warned is for-armed.

[Old_Geezer]

If any use, the last time I built a PC I went by this site's advice (with substitutions where I needed to save a bit of cash).

http://www.bit-tech.n...guide-november-2010/1

[SlackAlice]

Also had a quick look at your specs and they all seem good to me. As Chuckfickens suggests your possibly minimal on PSU.

I would go for a minimum of 850 watts, depends on how many GPU's you end up with. Modular cabling is worth it in my opinion easy to do and tidy cable runs. My psu is a Corsair 750watt and its been faultless despite a hard life in my gaming machine. Other makers to consider are Antec, Coolermaster and Zalman. All the cables have fitted connections and its very difficult to get wrong.

The only other issue is cooling, I suspect you will not use the stock cooler for the cpu, so unless your watercooling make sure you have good clearance inside the case to fit the cooler. The 8800 series cards are well known for getting very hot so make sure your case fans are up to it, I've got 4 fans in push/pull setup.

Take your time over the build, especially mounting the Motherboard and use good quality thermal paste on the cpu.

Good luck.
You just made my mouth water at the specs, should make a good gaming machine.

[SlackAlice]

Hymies point about Windows authentication is a good one, If you do have these problems there is a phone number on the Microsoft website for support where you can talk to a real person and try to persuade them your just up grading :)

[ChuckFickens]

Have to admit, it does look like it will be a serious bit of kit!

Another point, is it's burger all use you getting 8GB of ram unless you have a 64bit operating system, 32bit versions of windows can only see 4GB of ram (and normally only use under 3.5GB)

To use 8GB you need a 64bit OS and the programs you are running need to support it too.

[AlBags]

6 core should whistle along ok .. Many games didn't used to be optimised for multiple cores .. but some are now. That makes a big difference with fr's.
Windows 7 or XP 64bit?
32 bit will be lucky to see over 3Gb of the memory.

Overclockable I see.
I have done a few Athlon 64x2 .. currently 4800+ running 2800Mhz instead of 2400. Great memory helps .. I use Corsair, Kingston Hyper or OCX fast ram.

[AlBags]

I have swapped processors over ... RAM ... cards .. graphics loads of times .. sometimes swapped CPU's over and tried them .. ) even the old motherboard swap-over trick with the drivers ready on the desktop once) many times.
Never had re-validation issue crop up.

[AlBags]

Best bet when setting up a system like that is to start up with just one stick .. then set-up and drivers .. updates .. then add another stick and check memory capacity on boot (if it boots ok)
Then try adding more.

[ChuckFickens]

Why on earth would you spend well over 1K on hardware and not reinstall the OS!

Give it a clean install, all updates and latest drivers. and then keep it clean. a clean streamlined software install will do more than a hardware upgrade most the time.

[Mobius1]

Thanks for all the tips so far. I've got a full kosher copy of Windows 7 that I'm using at the moment. I don't imagine I'll have any problems activating it although that remains to be seen, since the base hardware will be different. Thanks for the buyer's guide OldGeezer.

I have decided to get a new PSU as well. I used the Antec PSU calculator and decided on a 750w TruePower New modular unit. I didn't forget the thermal paste - I bought some Akasa 5G stuff. I didn't know if it was necessary since the CPU is a retail unit and comes with heatsink and fan, but it was a just in case thing. The fan will be stock for now since I'm not overclocking until I'm happy that it's working well. I'll get a Coolermaster fan for it when I feel OCing is necessary like I did with my present system.

The thing I'm most worried about is just getting the nerve up to get my hands dirty with it really - all this grounding of the mobo and whatnot.

[ChuckFickens]

It's really not that hard.

Best bet if you're not sure is remove all the mounting posts and then put them back as per the motherboard manual (the case will have multiple places to screw the mounts in to suit all motherboards) count how many you've put in and count that you've screwed a screw into all of them, then there can be no extra ones.

Other than that it's pretty much a case of it it don't fit it's not the right place.

[AlBags]

I like Tagan : )

[Mobius1]

I intended to do a clean install, although I have recently done one with my Intel SSD drive's arrival. It took less than 10 minutes to install Win7 64-bit, and then about an hour to transfer over data files onto the secondary hard drive, so it's not like it's a hassle.

I know that futureproof is a dumb term when it comes to PCs, but when I upgraded to what I've got now back in '06 - my X2 4400+ was overkill, cost a lot and games didn't really use both cores. Despite being a dinosaur my present CPU still does a good job relative to it's age, so I do feel it's worth the initial seemingly overkill outlay as if I'm lucky I won't feel the "need" to upgrade the processor again for another 4 or 5 years.

[Mobius1]

Is Tagan even going anymore? I can't find them on the internet. It wasn't until the other week I realised that BFG has gone bump too. So much for a lifetime warranty on my 8800GT eh?