Installing RAM

Final Fantasy Online Forums > Community Discussion > The Dork Squad

11.21.2011 12:00am

Thread Creator

Zo
another blue ribbon

So my PC's been running slow of late, which is annoying me, so I'm thinking of ways to counter that. The easiest (and cheapest) would be to upgrade from 2 to 4gb of RAM. My question is, what do I need to know in order to install new RAM?

Second question: I built my PC in 2007 and, while it has performed admirably, it's fast approaching its 5th anniversary. Is it worth upgrading or building/buying a new one entirely?

My specs:
Motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 PCI-E Onboard Audio ATX
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 (1.86Ghz) Socket 775 FSB1066 4MB
PSU: Antec TruePower Trio 550W PSU - With 3x 12v Rails and 120mm Fan
RAM: Corsair 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 675MHz/PC2-5400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4
Graphics: GeForce GT 240

It's served me well to be honest, and I don't really need any power - I just need to know what significant upgrades I can make to stay slightly ahead of the curve. Can anyone help?

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11.21.2011 2:10am

Arckanghel
Pirate.

I see three routes here.

1. How long has it been since you reformatted and reinstalled your OS and all that? Might provide a good improvement in and of itself.

2. The RAM upgrade would likely help you out. That's going to be relatively cheap. You should either go with keeping your current RAM and adding a 2 x 2GB kit which will run you about $40-50. You could also ditch your current sticks and add (2) 2 x 2GB kits to give your self a total of 8GB (The maximum for your system). However, if you're not running a 64 bit OS, anything above 4GB is useless. The unfortunate reality is that due to the age of RAM used in your system, it costs roughly twice what current RAM costs.

3. You might want to consider a new system owing to costs. You could get the 8GB of RAM for half the price if you were using a newer standard. You are as fast as you can go with that board on a processor for a Socket 775. Your graphics card is still a relatively viable piece of equipment. You could swap out the whole motherboard, processor and RAM for somewhere between $200-$300. If you got a newer board it would leave you open to upgrade the graphics in a year or two with an inexpensive card.

I wouldn't put more than $75 into the system as you could have something that is probably twice the power for $200-$300. Even then I might feel like I was tossing money into a system that had hit its peak.

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11.21.2011 7:07am

Southern Comfort
silently judging all of you

A system swap isn't a bad idea, but I think there's a better one. You have, in your hands, an overclocking monster of a processor. And that is exactly what I would do.

If you have ready access to Vista x64 or Win7 x64, go ahead and buy 8gb (4 x 2gb) of DDR2-800. If not, just get 4gb (2 x 2gb), since you'll even be throwing a tiny bit of that away in x32. Get good stuff, rated five on Newegg, but don't throw your money away on stupidly expensive stuff. Also, pick up a good tower heatsink. Install all of this.

Download CPU-Z, HWMonitor, and Prime95 and install them. Fire up CPU-Z and write down your current Vcore voltage.

Now, reboot and go into the BIOS. Go to Advanced > JumperFree Configuration > set AI Tuning to Manual, go to Voltage Control and set your Vcore Voltage from Auto to whatever you wrote down*, go to FBS & Memory Control and set FSB - Memory Clock Mode to Unlinked.

Then, over the course of the next few hours, slowly inch your FSB up by 50 mHz, exiting the BIOS and booting into Windows each time, firing up HWMonitor and Prime 95, and running a quick loop through Prime95 while watching your core temp in HWMonitor. If you get to a point where you can't boot Windows, go back into you BIOS, go back to Voltage Control, and bump your Vcore voltage by the smallest increment possible, and try again*.

Don't get your Vcore over 1.5v*. Don't get your processor under Prime95 load over 60 degrees. If you hit either of those limits, revert back to your next-oldest settings. Congratulations, you're overclocked. You should have been able to reach about 1700mhz on your FSB, putting you somewhere around 3.0 - 3.4 gHz processor frequency. Fire up Prime95 one last time, put it on "torture test", and let it run overnight. If your computer crashes overnight, go back down one more set of settings, and try again. When you can run Prime95 all night with no crashes and never going over 70 degrees processor temperature, you're done.

You can get a lot more agressive than this on that processor, but this should be a safe set of settings.

*may not be necessary, give it a spin on Auto first.

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11.21.2011 1:56pm

Thread Creator (Edited on 11.21.2011 at 2:03pm)

Zo
another blue ribbon

I think the "swapping out" option is looking the most attractive at the moment. I'm reasonably OK with upgrading but overclocking makes me nervous, and if I'm going to be buying kit I'd rather just gut her and install some newer stuff so I've got more options in the future. Here's what I'm thinking:

Motherboard: Asus P8H61-M PRO Intel H61 Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio mATX Motherboard
Memory: Corsair 4GB DDR3 1333MHz Memory Module CL9(9-9-9-24) 1.5V Unbuffered Non-ECC ;(the motherboard only has two slots I think. Would it be better to get 2x2gb sticks, and replace them both in a future upgrade, or 1x4gb stick and leave the other slot empty?)
Processor: Intel Core i5 2400 3.1GHz Socket LGA 1155 6MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor

Keeping the old PSU, graphics card and HDDs, that comes to around £250. The processor is a little on the expensive side though, and I'm not convinced I need the power. Thoughts?

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11.21.2011 8:07pm

Southern Comfort
silently judging all of you

If you're going to do a gut and rebuild, you might want to scrape together the cash for Win7 x64, and go ahead and buy 2 x 4gb modules. Either rate, if I'm not mistaken, that processor requires a dual-channel setup, so you'll need to populate both slots.

If you didn't live on the wrong side of the Atlantic, I'd make an offer for the old system core. Alas...

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11.23.2011 12:10am

Thread Creator (Edited on 11.23.2011 at 12:15am)

Zo
another blue ribbon

Yeah, thinking about it, I do want to do a full upgrade. New everything, from the ground up. But since I don't have enough cash for that right at this second, I've decided to buy two more sticks of the exact kind of RAM I've got in there at the moment, install those (bringing me up to a respectable 4gb), and reinstall my OS, which should speed things up fairly dramatically at the minimum cost (£23 as opposed to £250). But thanks for you advice anyway guys, it's not wasted - I'll definitely be referring back to this once I've got the cash for a full upgrade. :D

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