Well, WATMM...it's time to build a new PC

Okay, first items have been ordered!

Samsung 128gb SSD

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=invoice&A=details&Q=&sku=845680&is=REG

AMD Radeon HD 7850

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125451

Not bad for under $300!

That may be the end of my upgrading pending performance results, benchmarks, Futuremark, etc.

When I inevitably struggle to get my Dell to cooperate with the SSD when installing Windows 7 64-bit, you can safely bet that I'll use this thread to discuss!

Thanks, fellas - especially Fiz, Eugene, and Goffer! xo

oh yeah, i forgot to mention it. another 2 or 4gigs should be fine, 2 is a little low. this is the upgrade that you won't be able to take to the next mobo though as i'm pretty sure the ones you use are DDR2, but it's very cheap nonetheless. you should check exactly what you have though, 2*1gb or 1*2gb sticks or something different and whether you have free slots.

wow, i just checked newegg and it seems that older ddr2 ram is three times more expensive than new ddr3, that's a bummer.

there's little point installing a 64bit OS on a system with less than 4GB of RAM

I'll have to check on the RAM.

I'm so pumped for this...!

Good call on the SSD, those WD Raptors are aweful. Use to use them here at work and I would have an RMA every couple months. They are also loud and performance still not even close to even low end SSDs.

Jeslous of the GPU, I'm still using my 5870 from 2 years back... she's still doing alright but lately I keep investing any spare cash into camera gear or bourbon.

  On 12/10/2012 at 8:22 PM, The Overlook said:

I'm so pumped for this...!

feels good man!

I'm pumped for building my new machine up, and i'm no-where near done...I'll probably have it half built by march

Okay, sirs. I'm sorry to report that I had a measily 3 gigs of ram, 2 x 1gb and 2x 512mb - lol.

Now, the question is: Do I bother upgrading to 8 gigs of ram for this old beast or should I just go bare minimum results and get 2 more 1gb sticks of DDR2?

$50 from Amazon Prime for 2x2gb of Crucial DDR2.

That'd be $100 to get 8gb of RAM. Worth it?

If the RAM is reasonably priced and works with your system, maxing that shit out is always worth it, IMO

  On 12/10/2012 at 9:49 PM, The Overlook said:

Okay, sirs. I'm sorry to report that I had a measily 3 gigs of ram, 2 x 1gb and 2x 512mb - lol.

 

Now, the question is: Do I bother upgrading to 8 gigs of ram for this old beast or should I just go bare minimum results and get 2 more 1gb sticks of DDR2?

 

$50 from Amazon Prime for 2x2gb of Crucial DDR2.

 

That'd be $100 to get 8gb of RAM. Worth it?

yes. you will notice a considerable difference from 3gb to 8gb (or 10 gb)

Hey good luck! I'm glad we were able to help.

Open your task manager and check your current RAM usuage, if you are using a lot of page filing then more RAM would definitely help you out.

actually i don't think so at all, i rarely hit 70% of ram usage with my 4gb with tons of pdfs and tabs and office documents and all kinds of apps, though windows 7 will know how to utilize more with its prefetch thingies and stuff like that. ddr2 also seems kinda expensive..

just go into task manager and look how much is utilized with your regular usage. keep in mind that you'll have 2gb on your gfx card for textures so games won't bother you much with ram requirements.

Thanks, that helps a lot, Eugene.

I will actually not be using this particular machine for anything but gaming or listening to music.

My MacBook Pro is my daily workhorse.

I'm guessing I'll do just fine with 4gb of RAM in Windows 7 64-bit.

Another reason for just going with 2gb of DDR2 is that it won't be useful to me if I upgrade the rest of my machine within the next year.

I think this SSD and HD 7850 will be useful for a couple years, even if I build a new rig to put them in.

Okay, I bought 2x2gb of DDR2 for $50 so I'll have 6gb total.

That's a good compromise. I just wasn't comfortable spending $100 on RAM for this stupid Dell.

Okay, BIOS updated on the Dell to allow for SSD to boot properly.

GPU, RAM, and SSD on the UPS truck and out for delivery.

So distracted at work...

Anybody have experience installing Windows 7 or 8 from a USB drive? I have the 64-bit Windows 7 ISO and a thumb drive ready to go.

  On 12/12/2012 at 6:24 PM, The Overlook said:

Okay, BIOS updated on the Dell to allow for SSD to boot properly.

 

GPU, RAM, and SSD on the UPS truck and out for delivery.

 

So distracted at work...

 

Anybody have experience installing Windows 7 or 8 from a USB drive? I have the 64-bit Windows 7 ISO and a thumb drive ready to go.

yeah i do it all the time now, saves a lot of time installing (from USB it's way faster than from a DVD)

you'll need this to put the ISO image onto a flash drive. i think you need a 4GB drive though

Perfect. I do indeed have one. Needs to be formatted NTFS as well, correct?

i use this: http://www.freewarefiles.com/Universal-USB-Installer_program_74589.html

i used it for installing windows 7/8 and various linuxes and it worked flawlessly. basically it's 3 steps: choose the drive letter for your flashdisk, choose windows 7 and then choose the image file. then you'll only need to go into bios and select usb as startup device.

So many great suggestions, boys!

What's a girl to do???

follow your heart <3

wtf is this shit?

The Overlook changed his/her profile pic

edit: i think it might actually need to be FAT32, to be honest. but the Windows tool I linked to formats it anyway, so you're cool.

Dunno about the one that eugene posted, but I'll have to remember it when I build my machine up and try it out.

Thanks, you guys.

I went with the tool posted by Eugene - "Universal USB Installer" - and it worked flawlessly after a few minimal BIOS tweaks.

Now rockin' 6 gigs of RAM with Win7 / 64-Bit Ultimate and the Radeon 7850.

I benchmarked with 3dmark 11 and scored a 4800, but the CPU performance was of course shockingly piss. I did great on the GPU stuff though.

Since firing it all up with the new SSD, I've installed Dishonored, Bioshock, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and Skyrim.

Gonna start with Bioshock since I've been desperate to play it since it was first released. I played it for about three days on a 360 and hated it because I simply can't tolerate FPS on a console!

Have fun with the shitty porting of Bioshock, I remember the mouse was nearly impossible for me to use as I am a low sensitivity player. Hopefully someone came up with a working hack/tweak to make it useable by now.

Really? I have it set to like level 2 sensitivity and it's quite good, but that's an interesting point. I did notice it was super fucking sensitive, but I'm a semi-high sensitivity gamer.

Nonetheless, holy shit dude, this game is so much more insanely beautiful looking on a PC.