Post your latest upgrade

[Nick R]

I actually did this one back in september, but I forgot to post the pics. The new file server. The old Phenom II X4 went to my brother along with a XFX Radeon HD 7770, my old 8GB of Corsair DDR3-1333 and a 500GB WD Blue HDD.

I replaced that RAM with the Mushkin Redline DDR3-1866 (I'm now a huge fan of Mushkin stuff) And yesterday, I added a Radeon HD 5450 to the last PCIe slot in 1x mode which is plenty of bandwith for a 5450 with the use it will be getting. That is, the 7850 will be driving my new main monitor which I will post pics of in a few days, and the 5450 will be driving my current LG 23" monitor as a secondary monitor not for gaming or anything.

And then back in september, I did this. The new file server.
Gigabyte AMD E-350 based mobo with the ACH45 chipset. Not particularly high tech. SATA II, no PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet. nothing fancy. A simple AMD E-350 APU, 4GB of Crucial DDR3-1333. From top to bottom, Hitachi 750GB 2.5" HDD, Samsung 500GB 3.5" HDD, WD 2TB 3.5" HDD, Hitachi 320GB 3.5" HDD. No ODD, and an Antec Neo Eco 400c. Running Windows 7 using homegroup. Works perfectly and pulls a heck of a lot less power at idle than the Phenom II X4.

Case is a Bitfenix Prodigy.

 

[Colt45ws]

Yeah, I have a set of Mushkin Redline in my computer and I like it.

 

[Nick R]

Dell S2740L 27" IPS LED monitor. Great monitor. Game on that monitor is Planetside 2. On left monitor is MPC-HC playing whatever. Teamspeak as well. This is just an example of how I'll be using this set up for the most time. The 23" LG IPS on the left is powered by a Radeon 5450

 

[Colt45ws]

Nice! I want to upgrade my old NEC 24" unit. Probably with a Dell U2412M. Much bigger than a 24" and Ill run out of room on my desk. I need to invest in additional storage first, I think. Since my PC is basically the NAS, my 3TB RAID 5 is quickly running out of room.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Some new audio gear for my second office... Onkyo mini-receiver and speakers + 12" Velodyne sub.

 

[OVERKILL]

Similar setup to mine Nick.

I'm rockin' an LG 27" IPS (the one that has "no border") and my other screen is a 16:10 Philips at 1920x1200. The LG is noticeably brighter.

I'm running a 3x head setup with the 3rd head being my TV across the room. The LG and Philips are on my 7970, with the TV on the 7770.

 

[Nick R]

I actually removed the 5450 and am running the 2nd monitor off of the Intel HD3000 in the CPU. It can handle madVR 1080p playback much better than the 5450 can. The integrated card is more powerful than the dedicated card, strangely.

 

[Colt45ws]

Thats odd. I have a Geforce 210 in a Pentium 4 machine and it works fine for 1080p, though barely. An HD5450 should have more juice than that? Though, Im using MPC-HC and not madVR which I have not heard of until now..

 

[Nick R]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
Thats odd. I have a Geforce 210 in a Pentium 4 machine and it works fine for 1080p, though barely. An HD5450 should have more juice than that? Though, Im using MPC-HC and not madVR which I have not heard of until now..



madVR is a renderer for mpc-hc. It's extremely GPU intensive but is among the highest quality renderers available, and is pretty much the best for upconverting lower resolution video.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228

 

[Colt45ws]

Yeah, I set it up after you mentioned it. It looks fantastic.
It was putting about 50% load on the GT 520 in my computer with 1080p video downscaled to 720p on my TV.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Does it take a fairly powerful GPU to properly play 1920x1080p video at 60 fps? My HTPC that has ATI Radeon 4350 card (with E5300 CPU) will not play it smoothly. It'll play 30 fps fine though. It'll also play 720p at 60 fps no problem.

My other PC has an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT (with E8200 CPU) and it won't play 1080p at 60 fps smoothly either.

Granted, these are fairly old and low-end cards. I was wondering what it would take to play it. Would Radeon HD 7750 play it?

FYI, Intel HD 4000 Graphics on my laptop won't play it smoothly either.

 

[wander2039]

Not really a upgrade more of a replacement. Got a Apple TV 3 for the living room. Going to pull the Linux Mint 11 box (HP AMD 64 x2 4400) and retire it. Setup a iTunes server on the mac mini. Everything worked flawlessly even airplay with our iPhones. This house is going all mac.

 

[Nick R]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Does it take a fairly powerful GPU to properly play 1920x1080p video at 60 fps? My HTPC that has ATI Radeon 4350 card (with E5300 CPU) will not play it smoothly. It'll play 30 fps fine though. It'll also play 720p at 60 fps no problem.

My other PC has an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT (with E8200 CPU) and it won't play 1080p at 60 fps smoothly either.

Granted, these are fairly old and low-end cards. I was wondering what it would take to play it. Would Radeon HD 7750 play it?

FYI, Intel HD 4000 Graphics on my laptop won't play it smoothly either.



Part of it depends on what you are using to play it back. In my case, I use MPC-HC. On my desktop I use the madVR renderer, which is very GPU intensive- but because of that also uses the GPU. On my laptop, where the GPU is less powerful, I skip madVR and use MPC-HC with the Haali renderer, which is still GPU accelerated, but far less GPU intensive.

Give MPC-HC with either the EVR (Enhanced Video Renderer) or Haali splitter. This is a good guide on how to properly set it up. Including the option for madVR
https://coalgirls.wakku.to/faq/playback/setup-guide-for-mpc-hc-madvr

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Nick R
Part of it depends on what you are using to play it back.

I'm playing it with XBMC. I'm not exactly sure which renderer XBMC uses, but I think it's DXVA2.

 

[UG_Passat]

i7-3770K with coolermaster 212 Evo heatsink/fan

the CPU on sale at microcenter for $230 (in store only)

replaced i3-2120

mobo: intel DZ77SL-50K

OC'd to 4.5 GHz

 

[Colt45ws]

Adaptec 6805 to replace my aging Highpoint RocketRAID 3510. I brought this primarily as I need a second SAS port so I can setup another array. My 3TB RAID 5 is quickly running out of space since its basically my NAS.
When I get to it, I will start with 2x 3TB WD RED drives in RAID 1 with future expansion to 3 then 4 drive RAID 5 with an ending capacity of 9TB.

 

[Touring5]

I had the mobo die in my desktop PC. It was a Gigabyte board with Core2 Due CPU. I put in a new Asus board with an i5 (sandy bridge) CPU and 8 Gigs of RAM. I re-used the Force GT SSD for my OS drive and added a 1 TB WD blue HDD. The new mobo required a new PSU, so I went with a budget corsair 650 Watt unit. Reused my Case and video stuff from before since I don't play games and really don't need upscale video performance. I also had to replace my DVD burner since the older Samsung drive didn't work properly in AHCI mode. Biggest surprise was how cheap DDR3 memory is and the new burner was only about $17 from the 'egg. I got the WD drive from Amazon for $69 as I'm not too crazy about how newegg packages OEM bare drives (a little bubble wrap and a box of peanuts"). The drives I've gotten from Amazon have been double boxed with great protection.

The only time I stress the system is when I occasionally re-encode DVD video using DVD Rebuilder. I figure this setup should be enough power to last me for a couple of years.

 

[wander2039]

Put in a order through newegg for G.SKILL 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Memory to upgrade the base 4GB. May be more that I need but with everything this machines does now wasn't going to scrimp. The thunderbolt to dvi adapter should be here tomorrow so I can hook up the HP w2007 along side the 32 inch LG. In another month a SSD will be on the way.

 

[Colt45ws]

Adaptec installed. Its hiding at the bottom.
Pretty cool watching the lights on it at boot up. It has 10 or so red leds on the bottom in a row. When it gets its screen and is booting its BIOS, it does a KITT style back and forth lighting of the LEDs for about 15-20 seconds.

 

[TDOHGL01]

Just upgraded my case from a Thermaltake Lanbox to a Xigmatek Elysium case which is a Huge Difference in size, now I can fit a lot more HDD's and ODD's and better Motherboard, with a better graphics card too. My Current setup is with a

Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHZ
DG45ID Micro ATX Motherboard
2GB of PNY Ram 2 1GB sticks
HIS IceQ Turbo 4+ 4870
Maxtor 500GB HDD
Lite On Blu-ray Player with DVD/CD Burner
Corsair 620 Watt Full ATX PSU

Now can't wait to get my taxes back so I can upgrade again it is pretty near due at about 4yrs or so.