Cowboy1968
May 5th, 2012, 05:27
I have recently taken some steps to upgrade certain pars ot the computer that most people don't think of. (unless you are a gamer)
First off, I don't use a store bought system. I build my own. That sames money and makes upgrades easier.
I will simply say these updates are built around an ATX motherboard, made by ASUS. I carried these modifications out on two computers in my home and they worked like WOW factor.
Basicly both systems started off with a Core 2 quad processor running at 2.8 ghz. yes sounds slow but remember there are four processor cores here sharing the work. RAM is still the old DDR2 type. but each stick of RAM are 2 gig sticks.
We are running high end graphics cards and fairly reasonable sound card. My advice is if you have a computer that has built in audio and video chips on the motherboard, go to the store or online and order a good sound card and a good graphics card. These aren't that expensive. Once you get them to your home, shut down and crack open the case and install them. Once that is done reboot your computer and go into BIOS and disable the on board stuff. Right there for les then $200 dollars you have doubled your machines capacity. On board processors like a ac97 sound chip and on board GPU slows down work load to memory and the processor and it takes up system RAM. The expansion cards have their own memory and they use it first before shifting onto system RAM. Though this is outside of what I was getting at here.
Now back to the point of this post. I had a budget and two computers that were needing to be upgraded to run faster. Instead of buying new motherboards and processors, I did some real thinking here. I ran my diagnostic programs and found out that my real problem was heat in the system. Heat will slow a computer down.
1. The cases the hardware was in weren't that efficient at moving heat from the computer. So the first thing to look at is the case that the computer components are in. My wife and I did this the wrong way. Learn from our mistake. Buy a case that will work with your motherboard. You want to get a case that has a butt load of big fans or one that can swap fans out for bigger fans. Most budget cases only come with 80mm fans. You want to invest in a case that takes 120mm, 140mm 200mm or even 240mm fan units. The idea is here to get a lot of air moving. You want that case to have a lot of open vents. you want your front and rear fans to be intake fans and you want a case that can exhaust heat from the top. My specific set up, I use two 120mm fans in the front for intake, and another 120mm fan in back for intake for a piece of equipment I will talk about in a minute. I use a side panel fan in both computers as well. I use them as intake. Then we exhaust the heat from the top by pulling it out with 120mm fans. As I said you want to get airflow moving. Also get a case with a bottom mount Power Supply Unit. We use overkill in the power supply, each is a 850 watt unit. Both of the cases we selected meet this requirement and didn't break the bank. Each case was around $70.00.
here are the cases we selected.......there were others I would love to had but I was doing this on a $300 budget.
mine: http://www.buyxg.com/store/item.aspx?id=4077&catid=5
Wife's: http://www.buyxg.com/store/item.aspx?id=4427&catid=5 (she likes all the blue lights...lol)
After you get your case, now lets look at something you can do on the inside to help the heat issue that can arise.
2: You can get a water cooled system on a budget. First you have a decision to make. You can go with large heatsinks and cooling fans on the processor or you can do what we did, we went with a water cooler that was in our budget. We bought units that mount inside the case. Personally I would go with a water cooler over a big fan. It dropped my cpu temps dramatically even under load. The heat on the processor seldom breaks 30 degrees Celsius. While under a regular heatsink and fan that came OEM with the processor heats were around 40 degrees, and with that big fan with heat pipes it was 36 degrees. I think the coolers we went with was the best choice for a budget and performance compromise. And as i said, ours all mount internally.
This is what we mounted: http://3btech.net/cohyseh60hip.html
As I said this is a good choice for a budget at $65.00 a piece
3: we did a thing that isn't necessary but any saving in heat and moving of more air is a plus we bought memory heatsinks with fans. they were around $10.00 each.
http://3btech.net/evstwimecowi.html
These modifications have actually increased the computers' performance by about 20 percent on both machines when running benchmark tests. Eliminate heat, as much of it as you can and you gain performance. I should point out a good measure of the airflow I am talking about can be measured by the fact that my hard drives are also not breaking 30 degrees Celsius in temp. They are both under that when they use to run close to 50 degrees in a standard case using 80mm fans.
That is how I increased performance on a budget.And these systems are not overclocked.
First off, I don't use a store bought system. I build my own. That sames money and makes upgrades easier.
I will simply say these updates are built around an ATX motherboard, made by ASUS. I carried these modifications out on two computers in my home and they worked like WOW factor.
Basicly both systems started off with a Core 2 quad processor running at 2.8 ghz. yes sounds slow but remember there are four processor cores here sharing the work. RAM is still the old DDR2 type. but each stick of RAM are 2 gig sticks.
We are running high end graphics cards and fairly reasonable sound card. My advice is if you have a computer that has built in audio and video chips on the motherboard, go to the store or online and order a good sound card and a good graphics card. These aren't that expensive. Once you get them to your home, shut down and crack open the case and install them. Once that is done reboot your computer and go into BIOS and disable the on board stuff. Right there for les then $200 dollars you have doubled your machines capacity. On board processors like a ac97 sound chip and on board GPU slows down work load to memory and the processor and it takes up system RAM. The expansion cards have their own memory and they use it first before shifting onto system RAM. Though this is outside of what I was getting at here.
Now back to the point of this post. I had a budget and two computers that were needing to be upgraded to run faster. Instead of buying new motherboards and processors, I did some real thinking here. I ran my diagnostic programs and found out that my real problem was heat in the system. Heat will slow a computer down.
1. The cases the hardware was in weren't that efficient at moving heat from the computer. So the first thing to look at is the case that the computer components are in. My wife and I did this the wrong way. Learn from our mistake. Buy a case that will work with your motherboard. You want to get a case that has a butt load of big fans or one that can swap fans out for bigger fans. Most budget cases only come with 80mm fans. You want to invest in a case that takes 120mm, 140mm 200mm or even 240mm fan units. The idea is here to get a lot of air moving. You want that case to have a lot of open vents. you want your front and rear fans to be intake fans and you want a case that can exhaust heat from the top. My specific set up, I use two 120mm fans in the front for intake, and another 120mm fan in back for intake for a piece of equipment I will talk about in a minute. I use a side panel fan in both computers as well. I use them as intake. Then we exhaust the heat from the top by pulling it out with 120mm fans. As I said you want to get airflow moving. Also get a case with a bottom mount Power Supply Unit. We use overkill in the power supply, each is a 850 watt unit. Both of the cases we selected meet this requirement and didn't break the bank. Each case was around $70.00.
here are the cases we selected.......there were others I would love to had but I was doing this on a $300 budget.
mine: http://www.buyxg.com/store/item.aspx?id=4077&catid=5
Wife's: http://www.buyxg.com/store/item.aspx?id=4427&catid=5 (she likes all the blue lights...lol)
After you get your case, now lets look at something you can do on the inside to help the heat issue that can arise.
2: You can get a water cooled system on a budget. First you have a decision to make. You can go with large heatsinks and cooling fans on the processor or you can do what we did, we went with a water cooler that was in our budget. We bought units that mount inside the case. Personally I would go with a water cooler over a big fan. It dropped my cpu temps dramatically even under load. The heat on the processor seldom breaks 30 degrees Celsius. While under a regular heatsink and fan that came OEM with the processor heats were around 40 degrees, and with that big fan with heat pipes it was 36 degrees. I think the coolers we went with was the best choice for a budget and performance compromise. And as i said, ours all mount internally.
This is what we mounted: http://3btech.net/cohyseh60hip.html
As I said this is a good choice for a budget at $65.00 a piece
3: we did a thing that isn't necessary but any saving in heat and moving of more air is a plus we bought memory heatsinks with fans. they were around $10.00 each.
http://3btech.net/evstwimecowi.html
These modifications have actually increased the computers' performance by about 20 percent on both machines when running benchmark tests. Eliminate heat, as much of it as you can and you gain performance. I should point out a good measure of the airflow I am talking about can be measured by the fact that my hard drives are also not breaking 30 degrees Celsius in temp. They are both under that when they use to run close to 50 degrees in a standard case using 80mm fans.
That is how I increased performance on a budget.And these systems are not overclocked.