Thetownend.com

(With apologies if this should have gone in one of the stickied threads)

I'm looking at upgrading my ancient steam-driven AMD Athlon 64 as it's starting to really creak on my my two main tasks: development, including large codebase compilation (that's large as in 2Gb+ of code) and video encoding. I don't do gaming, so no requirements there and I run Linux so not interested in what Vista/Windows 7 needs even to startup.

So I'm looking at an Intel Q6700 Quad (I don't think I'll get much extra benefit in the code compilation from having 4 rather than 2 cores, but I'm hoping it will make a difference in the video encoding). I reckon I can get a Q6700 CPU, 4Gb (2x2Gb) memory, ASUS P5Q Pro mboard and CPU heatsink/fan for around £350.

So I have two questions one general, one specific:
1) Specific: will my 480W PSU be OK with this or will I need to factor in a new PSU as well?
2) General: thoughts? I'm aiming for a decent bang-for-buck return by going for the older 6700 as opposed to the newer Yorkfield chips which seem to come out around 200 quid for similar clock speeds - sensible taking advantage of prior generation discounts or just penny-pinching? Anyone have any better ideas for the mboard than the Asus for around the same/lower price?

Budget is important here as £350 is really more than I want to blow on an upgrade right now - the missus has got ideas about doing a far more expensive upgrade on the kitchen and we won't even get a quad core kitchen out of it so I'm penny pinching to try and squeeze this in really. So an acceptable answer would be "You'd be better off either waiting until prices come down/you've got more to spend or dropping the Quad core in favour of this [insert CPU here] perfectly acceptable dual core alternative"

I'm not really up on the latest CPUs so I'll leave that to Si Pie or jj, but you'll probably want to go for at least a 600w PSU if you're going quad core.

Here's my take on it:

From all the reviews I've read, the Q6600 beats the newer quad cores for multitasking. It is only a few percent slower with video encoding. In other words it's not worth you spending extra money on the 'better' quad cores.

Which brings me to another point. If you want to have a go at overclocking (it's very easy and there are some good guides on the net, if not I can help you out) the Q6600 can beat some of the newer quad cores anyway. I notice you've looked at the Q6700 - it's essentially the same but with higher clock speed and a bigger multiplier. So I would side with the Q6700, especially as it appears cheaper in some cases.

The motherboard is decent so if you have your heart set on that I'd go for it, if not the similarly priced Biostar TPower I45 is a better overclocker according to what I've read. Depends if you're fussed about overclocking.

If you've not got a a power hungry graphics card and loads of stuff in your pc (e.g. soundcard, loads of fans, lots of hard drives etc.) I reckon you can more than get away without upgrading the PSU, even with overclocks. However, a cheaper PSU may be unstable with the overclocks but as the combination I've come up with comes in under budget, you could always wait another month before getting a better power supply.

If you want to overclock then an aftermarket cooler is essential. I've suggested one because it's simple, cheap and effective. I think jjedmunds knows some better options for quad core so maybe ask him about that. All depends on whether you want to overclock. The CPU I've chosen does not come with a cooler though as it's OEM, so the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 has been added to the basket anyway.

See attached pic for my suggestion. It's from http://www.overclockers.co.uk

Your PSU will cope fine with the new system as long as its of a good make and has little vdroop of the vcore (admittedly that has a lot to do with the motherboard) for a quad core Q6700 it will have to have a An 8-pin +12v EPS Power Connector, basically an 8 pin connector to power the chip , you can buy adapters but they are never quite as reliable as a hard wired one, but it will surfice, they are about £3 or £4 from Maplins if your PSU does not have one already.

Personally I would go for a mid range 650w-700w PSU like this one http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124927 which is £45.

The system power draws a lot from a high spec graphics card so if you are using an oldish one then really 500w is ample if the old PSU is in good condition.

The Q6700 is a good chip with average bang for buck.

Asus make very good reliable motherboards and I would suggest you buy one and there is a myriad of motherboards out there with wonderful chip configurations!

Get a chip of P35 P45 X38 or X48 if you can.

Fir my home PC I use a P5Q3 Deluxe Wifi but thats £155 which is a bit out of the price bracket. I would recommend Asus as a good solid mobo and have had few problem with them compaired to the cheaper end of the market such as ASRock (avoid).

The price of Yorkfield processors has stayed about the same in the last year so I dont expect a price drop soon, but the i7 should start to drop prices soon but you will still be looking at nearer £500 for the same parts so thats a no-no.

memory is much of a muchness as lon as its a good speed rating, dont bother with less than 800mhz PC6400 but you will also gain very little by going 1066mhz PC8500 (making sure the mobo can take that anyway).

For £350 you can easily get the system you need and that will run circles round the Athlon system you have already.

Have you considered going AM3 Phenom II? I have not tried these yet but have headr good things about them, although I personally like the Intel chip and chipset.

Nah, I disagree with all that.

Get one of these motherboard/processor combinations. Far more fun and a lot more effective.

[url width=576 height=510]http://www.officemuseum.com/1911_Howieson_Calculating_Machine_w_Underwood_No._5.jpg[/url]

That reminds me of the ZX81 I gave you about 15 years ago now for your upcoming computer museum!......do you stil have it by any chance or did you use it as a doorstop? :)

Bet you thought that was state of the art when that was invented Talk Talk.

The first computer I worked on back in '84 was a Honeywell DPS 88/82 tandem at House of Fraser .....it had to be programmed by a keyboard of a similar size (if not style) to that one and was the size of a detached house and still less power than a modern day home PC.

Hah! Yes, I do remember John. I don't know what happened to it now. I think it went down with the rest of my old business stuff  ???

1976...IBM mainframe. It was programmed with punched cards, one colour for Fortran code and another colour for JCL (Job Control Language = operating system):

[url width=505 height=766]http://www.diycalculator.com/imgs/paper-05.gif[/url]

You put your 'stack' together on one of these:

[url width=443 height=455]http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/images/4506VV4002.jpg[/url]

...and then bundled it up with elastic bands. A van would come round and pick it up to take it to the data centre. About three hours later it would come back with half a tree's worth of fanfold continuous printout.

In my next job in 1978 I was blessed with a Teletype connected to a 6800 processor that lived in a rack full of electronic cards:

[url width=768 height=1024]http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/museum/varian/teletype.jpg[/url]

Programming was done in 6800 assembler and saved on punched tape:

[url width=373 height=382]http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/TheCompMusRep/TCMR-V14-P15.jpg[/url]

I got my first work PC in 1981 when the original IBM PC (Model 5150) came out. Twin 360k 5.25" floppies, 512kb of RAM, no hard disk and a green screen monitor.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/IBM_PC_5150.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC)

So there we are Si. Not quite state of the Ark but not far off  :D

I learnt to program COBOL on a 5150 using DOS 1.2 operating system on one disk and programs written on the other disk, happy days :)

You are Ada Lovelace and I claim my £5.

I think my first proper exposure to programming was on an RM 480z with 5 1/4 floppy, courtesy of Cirencester College. Nothing too remarkable, except the PC had already progressed to 386 by then so we were a decade or so out of date!

Cheers guys exactly the kind of advice I was looking for - think I overestimated prices slightly so can probably do what I need and take a chance on the PSU but still leave some headroom for new PSU if needed

No problem Paul, I'm glad you took my advice. I've been looking up a few for you on eBay. This one's only £30:

[url width=400 height=300]http://i.ebayimg.com/16/!BRdBPUgB2k~$(KGrHgoOKkEEjlLm(0GPBJ-GhLzBK!~~_1.JPG[/url]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Early-20th-cent-calculating-machine_W0QQitemZ360155460262QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Collectables_Militaria_LE?hash=item360155460262&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1690|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50#ebayphotohosting (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Early-20th-cent-calculating-machine_W0QQitemZ360155460262QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Collectables_Militaria_LE?hash=item360155460262&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1690|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50#ebayphotohosting)

This one is newer and faster and only 99p:

[url width=400 height=279]http://i5.ebayimg.com/03/i/001/46/23/5063_1.JPG[/url]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VINTAGE-MULDIVO-CALCULATING-MACHINE-hand-operated-RARE_W0QQitemZ220412906552QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Collectables_Scientific_MJ?hash=item220412906552&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1690|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50#ebayphotohosting (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VINTAGE-MULDIVO-CALCULATING-MACHINE-hand-operated-RARE_W0QQitemZ220412906552QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Collectables_Scientific_MJ?hash=item220412906552&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1690|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50#ebayphotohosting)