Quad-core Q6600 still runs great

[ToyotaNSaturn]

How many people upgrade their computers every couple/few years? The answer depends greatly of course.

My wife's HP PC, Intel quad-core Q6600 CPU is now mine. It was my 'lab' server. But today made it my daily driver. 8GB RAM, Corsair SSD disk, Win2012 server with Office (Win 8 is the same). Added a $45 video card (AMD HD54xx series) to it that made all the difference in the world.

OpenOffice loads in under 2 seconds. MS Office 2010, 1 second.

Kill-A-Watt measures under 100W all the time. I'm amazed at the performance from a 5yo PC with only a couple upgrades, video card and SSD drive. This thing screams.

I was ready to buy a new AMD A10 CPU, M/B and 8GB of PC-1866 RAM for under $300 (NewEgg special this week) but couldn't see a single reason why was this 5yo PC runs VERY fast.

5 years old!!

I almost replaced this unit with a MacMini, glad I didn't. I'm happy keeping the $$ in my pocket and enjoying the excellent performance.

Do you all just upgrade parts in your PC's to keep them going or do you replace the PC every so often?

 

[Quattro Pete]

My main home PC is a 5-year-old Dell with Intel Core2Duo E8200 CPU and 3 GB RAM. It's still working fine for me. Upgrading to a quad-core would be too expensive at this point. I'll keep using it for another 2-3 years, at which point I'll just buy a new one.

 

[gathermewool]

I'm a Newegg newsletter subscriber, and frequently check dealnews.com for the latest and greatest deals on the latest and greatest hardware. The temptation is definitely there, but I simply don't need to upgrade. MY i7 920 is plenty fast and the HD5850 will still play the newest games on fairly high settings.

That's not to say that I wouldn't like for my late-round Civilization V decisions to process a little faster, but the lag doesn't come close to justifying paying so much! I do hope that I can hold out as long as you, though!

With that said, my HDD is definitely a bottle neck. The specs aren't horrible, but it's a slow, budget drive that really does bother me, with low read/write speeds. I've been contemplating an SSD just to speed up gaming load times, or maybe even partition it with the OS and games, with all of my bulkier stuff on the larger, slower drive....

 

[daves87rs]

Just upgraded my quad care Gateway, it it seems to be doing okay. At 5 years old, I think it will need another upgrade or two to get it where I want it to be....

 

[tinmanSC]

I got my Q6600 in 2007, still running strong!

 

[dogwood1300]

Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
How many people upgrade their computers every couple/few years? The answer depends greatly of course.

My wife's HP PC, Intel quad-core Q6600 CPU is now mine. It was my 'lab' server. But today made it my daily driver. 8GB RAM, Corsair SSD disk, Win2012 server with Office (Win 8 is the same). Added a $45 video card (AMD HD54xx series) to it that made all the difference in the world.

OpenOffice loads in under 2 seconds. MS Office 2010, 1 second.

Kill-A-Watt measures under 100W all the time. I'm amazed at the performance from a 5yo PC with only a couple upgrades, video card and SSD drive. This thing screams.

I was ready to buy a new AMD A10 CPU, M/B and 8GB of PC-1866 RAM for under $300 (NewEgg special this week) but couldn't see a single reason why was this 5yo PC runs VERY fast.

5 years old!!

I almost replaced this unit with a MacMini, glad I didn't. I'm happy keeping the $$ in my pocket and enjoying the excellent performance.

Do you all just upgrade parts in your PC's to keep them going or do you replace the PC every so often?


The SSD should help the load time and 8GB makes sure that there's always room ready

Don't know, maybe you'll have to wait and see how many got loaded into, say, your
browser. These days, it's easy for a browser to occupy 1G memory and slowed down.

 

[dogwood1300]

Originally Posted By: gathermewool
I'm a Newegg newsletter subscriber, and frequently check dealnews.com for the latest and greatest deals on the latest and greatest hardware. The temptation is definitely there, but I simply don't need to upgrade. MY i7 920 is plenty fast and the HD5850 will still play the newest games on fairly high settings.

That's not to say that I wouldn't like for my late-round Civilization V decisions to process a little faster, but the lag doesn't come close to justifying paying so much! I do hope that I can hold out as long as you, though!

With that said, my HDD is definitely a bottle neck. The specs aren't horrible, but it's a slow, budget drive that really does bother me, with low read/write speeds. I've been contemplating an SSD just to speed up gaming load times, or maybe even partition it with the OS and games, with all of my bulkier stuff on the larger, slower drive....


Is it possible to put a SSD on for the OS and the most used apps, and a 1~2 TB mechanical HDD for data? I wonder how that will perform

 

[rjundi]

My wife suffered with a IBM T30 till a 1.5 year ago. It really did what she wanted running Chrome and Firefox with 1GB RAM.

I work remotely 100% on a four year old T500. 8GB of RAM for $40 and a $200 SSD drive made it fly for my job as IT Project Manager/Lead Web Application Developer. It boots in around 15 seconds with Windows 7.

 

[Brons2]

I still have a desktop with a Pentium Dual Core E2220 overclocked to 2.75, works fine with a 500GB Samsung drive and 4GB of RAM. ATI HD4850 doesn't support DX11 but will run DX10 games pretty well...

 

[SLCraig]

I used to ugprade a lot more often. I think I am like every 2-3 years which is infrequent for me, but I am becoming less and less interested in the latest stuff, and just want something that works at a satisfactory level.
I do have an i7 with an SSD and a bunch of memory and other storage space, but most of the setup is around 2 years old, and it runs fan-freakin'-tastic.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Originally Posted By: dogwood1300


Is it possible to put a SSD on for the OS and the most used apps, and a 1~2 TB mechanical HDD for data? I wonder how that will perform


That's the most popular and cost-conscious method in use these days. Setup the user on the SSD, but create folders on the spinning drive for Music & Videos, then point Windows to use those as the default save locations for them.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Originally Posted By: rjundi
My wife suffered with a IBM T30 till a 1.5 year ago. It really did what she wanted running Chrome and Firefox with 1GB RAM.

I work remotely 100% on a four year old T500. 8GB of RAM for $40 and a $200 SSD drive made it fly for my job as IT Project Manager/Lead Web Application Developer. It boots in around 15 seconds with Windows 7.


Excellent! Some places are stuck on 3year PC life cycles. For business, refurb'ing the unit, like you have done, will easily see 5-7years on units before they break down. The cost savings are obvious, but many places refuse to look at IT from a different point of view.

 

[Nick R]

Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Originally Posted By: dogwood1300


Is it possible to put a SSD on for the OS and the most used apps, and a 1~2 TB mechanical HDD for data? I wonder how that will perform


That's the most popular and cost-conscious method in use these days. Setup the user on the SSD, but create folders on the spinning drive for Music & Videos, then point Windows to use those as the default save locations for them.


Yep that's what I do on my desktop. I have a 256gb ssd as the boot and app drive and a 640gb and 1tb for storage and games. And then of course the file server for the house.