• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Old PC CPU Upgrade

What's your budget for a graphics upgrade?

There are a lot of 4GB ex-mining cards from about £75 that are worth buying, though you have to be careful about what condition they're in.

Below that, pricing of used graphics cards doesn't seem very appealing - at least not in terms of a significant upgrade from the 750Ti.

Did see these mining cards on ebay, but had no idea what they were, not sure on budget really ,as dont want to spend much but then wont get anything reasonable , and has already been said,this system isnt really worth spending much on.

so how old is the psu?

About 3 years old now i think, 650w , forget the brand as cant remember without taking it out ,was a replacement for my old Antec 550w


EDIT- CPU just arrived, so time to start work :D
 
Did see these mining cards on ebay, but had no idea what they were, not sure on budget really ,as dont want to spend much but then wont get anything reasonable , and has already been said,this system isnt really worth spending much on.
About 3 years old now i think, 650w , forget the brand as cant remember without taking it out ,was a replacement for my old Antec 550w :D
Ah okay. If it's an 80+ certified model, even if it's only bronze-rated, a recent 650W PSU is overkill and will handle any modern graphics card.

Spending more money on a graphics card isn't a terrible idea because you can transplant a newer graphics card into the next machine. It's not a dead-end, discontinued platform like your CPU/board/RAM would be. At the same time, it's a gamble because anything you buy may simply be too new for your 11-year old BIOS.
 
EDIT- CPU just arrived, so time to start work :D
Nice, keep us updated.
BTW, the following should be of interest.
With games, it a bit hit and miss with current AAA titles, but everything a starting a few years ago run perfectly. Common PC computing tasks like browsing, office stuff and watching video's and whatnot should not be a problem.
 
CPU installed and working at stock values atm 2.66ghz, but unfortunately, had a bit of a hiccup with the cooler, managed to break a couple of the plastic tabs that hold it in place arghh!!
so after traveling all around the local towns, I managed to find a used stock s775 hs/fan, just couldn't find anything else. So overclocking probably not a good idea with that :( while idling typing this, real temp is saying cores are between 39c - 41c, which isn't too bad, but not tried running anything yet.

Does anyone know where I could buy a half-decent hs/fan suitable for OC on my LGA775? , a bit confused with the newer ones as they seem to say they support 775, but they don't look the same... unless it's my imagination.

But anyway, at least it's up and running now eventually :D
 
To be honest, if it's high profle stock one, it should be OK for 3,2GHz OC.
Just set CPU Voltage at 1,25V and it should be fine.
 
To be honest, if it's high profle stock one, it should be OK for 3,2GHz OC.
Just set CPU Voltage at 1,25V and it should be fine.
This. And with a stock cooler you should be able to 1.275v if the CPU needs it on a 200mhz FSB without worry of over heating.
 
  • Like
Reactions: xu^
If you do want to replace your GPU on a tight budget , here is an open box/refurbished RX460, they come with a 6 month warranty for peace of mind, a 460 equates in performance terms to a GTX950 so substantially faster than what you currently have............….
https://www.box.co.uk/(Refurbished)-POWERCOLOR-RADEON-RX-460-2_2466863.html £58.99

Edit: Half decent S775 cooler - https://www.box.co.uk/(Grade-B)-Cooler-Master-Hyper-612-Ver.2-_2557284.html

Review...………… https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cases_cooling/cooler_master_hyper_612_v2_review/1
 
, a bit confused with the newer ones as they seem to say they support 775, but they don't look the same... unless it's my imagination.
They are Designed to fit multiple CPU's with a mounting kit

 
  • Like
Reactions: xu^
To be honest, if it's high profle stock one, it should be OK for 3,2GHz OC.
Just set CPU Voltage at 1,25V and it should be fine.
Yeah, 3.2 fsb 400 is barely even overclocking by Core2 standards. That generation of 45nm is 3GHz 'stock' in the Q9650. You may not even need extra voltage if you're lucky!
 
Yeah, 3.2 fsb 400 is barely even overclocking by Core2 standards. That generation of 45nm is 3GHz 'stock' in the Q9650. You may not even need extra voltage if you're lucky!
Catch is, if you don't know what stock voltage is set at (in BIOS), setting a of the head "locked" one that's too low is quite easy (Vdroop, LLC, etc. can make a reasonable BIOS Vcore value to drop below stable point). Regardless, it all ends with temps you get at load.
Higher Vcore = better stability, but it gets higher temps.
You simply have to make a compromise between speed/higher Vcore, and temps.
I mentioned 1,25V because it's a good starting value for any Core 2 class CPU.
 
Last edited:
But... he already bought Q9450 ?
Let's not waste money here.
 
running the Q9450 @ 3.2ghz now , temps in the low to mid-40s while pottering in windows, played Left for Dead 2 for 15 mins and temp was around 50 - 52c will try something that pushes the machine a little more later, but for now, it doesn't seem to bad, suprised it worked so easily tbh, was expecting problems with having 4 sticks of ram.

But at least it hasn't crashed or locked up so far which is always a plus :)
 
Default RAM settings on your memory should be 800MHz CL6.6.6.18 CR2T at 1,8V.
With FSB Termination at 1,2V or 1,3V you should be able to get 3,4-3,6GHz out of it.
Higher than that are probably memory limits (increasing DRAM Voltage and/or NB Voltage to make things stable again).
 
  • Like
Reactions: xu^
running the Q9450 @ 3.2ghz now , temps in the low to mid-40s while pottering in windows, played Left for Dead 2 for 15 mins and temp was around 50 - 52c will try something that pushes the machine a little more later, but for now, it doesn't seem to bad, suprised it worked so easily tbh, was expecting problems with having 4 sticks of ram.

But at least it hasn't crashed or locked up so far which is always a plus :)
Excellent! Glad it working great for you! Tatty's earlier suggestion of the Hyper heatsink is a good one if you can afford it. If money is a bit more tight and the heatsink you have now continues to do well, perhaps a GPU would be a better next step in the upgrade path. For an upgrade on a limited budget;
While the same gen as your 750, the 770 is leaps and bounds a better performer. Anything more is going to be bottlenecked by the Q9450 as demonstrated in the video from Phil's Computer Lab earlier posted.
And at 45PB UK, it's affordable.
 
  • Like
Reactions: xu^
Excellent! Glad it working great for you! Tatty's earlier suggestion of the Hyper heatsink is a good one if you can afford it. If money is a bit more tight and the heatsink you have now continues to do well, perhaps a GPU would be a better next step in the upgrade path. For an upgrade on a limited budget;
While the same gen as your 750, the 770 is leaps and bounds a better performer. Anything more is going to be bottlenecked by the Q9450 as demonstrated in the video from Phil's Computer Lab earlier posted.
And at 45PB UK, it's affordable.

Thanks will deff have a look at that, is it really much of a jump from my 750 ? , I've just run Wreckfest in medium settings and a solid 30-50 fps, never dropped under 30, so pretty impressive so far.
I don't expect this PC to run new stuff but is a couple of games I'm after 1 of which was Wreckfest, and the other being Age of Empires 2 - Definitive Edition, as well as my older stuff that I play now and then.
 
Thanks will deff have a look at that, is it really much of a jump from my 750 ? , I've just run Wreckfest in medium settings and a solid 30-50 fps, never dropped under 30, so pretty impressive so far.
I don't expect this PC to run new stuff but is a couple of games I'm after 1 of which was Wreckfest, and the other being Age of Empires 2 - Definitive Edition, as well as my older stuff that I play now and then.
GTX 770 is basically twice as fast as a 750Ti. 2GB is pretty limiting in modern games and it's not great performance per £ compared to newer cards - but the one benefit I can think of is that you know your motherboard supports 700-series Geforce cards with its 11-year-old BIOS version.
 
GTX 770 is basically twice as fast as a 750Ti. 2GB is pretty limiting in modern games and it's not great performance per £ compared to newer cards - but the one benefit I can think of is that you know your motherboard supports 700-series Geforce cards with its 11-year-old BIOS version.

You have a point :) ,I'm on the latest bios (flashed yesterday) and is dated December 2008 :D , may well be worth a go then if its that much better, just have to check if i have both a 6pin and an 8pin power connector on my PSU.
 
The main issue with newer GPUs isn't lack of support from them in the system BIOS (they're PCIe devices, so the BIOS should need nothing more than basic PCIe compatibility to recognize them even if they would naturally be limited to the motherboard's PCIe speed), but rather newer GPUs not supporting legacy boot modes and requiring UEFI boot procedures to communicate with the motherboard when the system is turned on. This is a relatively recent addition - my 2015 Fury X worked perfectly in my 2008 X48 board.
 
My GTX 1080 works on PGA 478 PCI-e board. I think not having legacy boot on vBIOS is not a thing (at least not in most GPUs).
 
Last edited:
you'll will be happy i didn't realize that a q9xxx cpu was the same price as a xeon now so i think you went the right route. i think you will notice a difference mainly down to the extra cache memory that cpu has.

as for breaking the push pins on your cooler i have seen them for sale on ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Black-Wh...293745&hash=item23c48fa9c9:g:Wg8AAOSwov5c7eSZ

Quite happy with it so far, been testing games and running a few benchmarks, much improved over what it was, Wreckfest is now playable on medium settings, whereas before it wasn't good, to say the least :)

Thanks for that link, will definitely get those and hopefully bring my freezer pro back to life.
 
Another little update..

traded in my Gtx 750ti and £20 for a Gtx 770
Plus got a 120gb SSD on the way, so happy days, should last me another 5 years now :D Thanks to everyone for their advice and help, much appreciated when you've been out of the PC market for as long as i had.
 
Heck I have a 775 build with a ASUS P5Q-EM (771 Xeon E5450 'bought on Aliexpress with Mod pre-done') and mine runs fine except the 750Ti which I'm going to replace with the 1050Ti 4GB
 
Back
Top