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| Re: To buy or not to buy, that is the question [message #301566 is a reply to message #301565] |
Sun, 22 December 2019 18:32   |
Kermit
Messages: 24124
Registered: June 2003
Location: Yorkshire
Karma: 43
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(22) Giacomo Agostini |
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Took me about 2 hours start to finish including getting the air duster and cotton buds out to give everything a good clean but excluding Windows activation/driver installs but
Case removed
Graphics card removed exposing main motherboard
My ITX power supply, smaller than a standard ATX PSU
Old motherboard, cpu and memory lifted out. I've stuck these on ebay separately to recover perhaps 1/2 the cost of the upgrade
Empty case after a good clean
Fitting the Samsung M2 SSD drive in the boards M2 slot.....it has integrated heatsink to keep it cool
CPU and memory in place
CPU Cooler fitted
This is something I wasn't aware off. New motherboards have RGB connectors for controlling LEDS either in the case (I don't have these) but the included AMD CPU cooler has LED lighting and plugging this cable in allows me to set either in BIOS or Windows Utility how I want the LED, it can colour cycle, pulse, random etc different colours. I've just opted for a steady Blue LED effect as mostly my case is closed and not really bothered with LED stuff but its kinda off a quite cool new thing if your into lighting up your PC with LEDs
Motherboard in place
Connecting up the cables, the worst part particularly the small wires for power switch, reset, power led & HD Led
On the plus side, as I now only have a single 2.5" SSD drive, I could remove a small cage below the DVD drive that held the two drives as there's still a small space for a single 2.5" SSD and that gives a bit t of extra room in the small case
First boot. I've temporarily hooked up my old 250GB SSD drive which is now replaced by the M2 SSD in order to boot to Windows, get drivers installed then I used Macrium reflect to image the 2.5" SSD to the M2 SSD, shutdown and removed this drive as it now boots on M2 drive
First boot...took a few minutes then I did have to use the Gigabtye drivers CD to install the network card driver as without that Windows 10 couldn't get on the internet to get the other drivers
Last pic before putting the case back on with my preferred static blue LED effect on the cooler
the new M2 SSD performance. In the real world use, it doesn't actually feel any quicker in use than the old 2.5" Sata SSD but makes for impressive figures to screenshot
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| Re: To buy or not to buy, that is the question [message #301576 is a reply to message #301574] |
Mon, 23 December 2019 08:40 |
Kermit
Messages: 24124
Registered: June 2003
Location: Yorkshire
Karma: 43
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(22) Giacomo Agostini |
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A conclusion - I wasted my money with the upgrade but it was a scratch I had to itch and wanted to treat myself 
Dispite the gains in benchmarks (SSD & CPU), the PC feels no quicker than before with my 3-5 year old Intel i7 CPU & same amount of memory (16Gb) which is now faster DDR4 vs previous DDR3. Already having 2 x SSDs (one for programs/windows & larger one for data/files) and a good amount of memory + not really playing games meant I can't really tell the difference. I only have a few games installed on the PC but only ever play a game thats now 10 years old eg not too demanding and was already set to run full 1920x1080 resolution that I'd already pegged the FPS (Frame per second) at a constant 120fps which is the highest really needed so now that game plays just as before and still pegged at a constant 120fps (steady fps is better than having fps vary between 50fps and 180fps depending on whats happening on screen in terms of graphics demand.
I did load up F1 2017 which is a bit more demanding and offers more options to turn up the graphics from MEDIUM to ULTRA HIGH then ran the games own benchmark around monaco and it was pushing 45-55fps. CHanged from UTLRA to HIGH (one level more than before) and it does 100+ FPS but I honestly have to look very hard to tell the difference on buildings/track and cars and only my son might ever play that game but even thats a rareity now as he has the newer F1 2019 on his Xbox.
Doing other stuff like browsing, booting windows, editing pics, its as before and even get an impression, its a bit slower to open and start some things like installing a small program/utility but that might just be in my head.
So in conclusion, it wasn't really worth the £374 but I'll get about £200-240 back when I sell the old parts and it was more of a treat for myself than something that was needed. Best analogy I can think off given this is a bike forum is while i know there's now a lot faster Fireblades (and other makes of sportbikes) pushing 200bhp, my CBR929 I've now had about 10 years (second time around after owning a different 929 in 2001-2003) is like the original Intel i7 CPU, 16GB DDR3 and SATA based SSD's, it does the job well enough and I'd be hard pressed to ride much faster with a newer bike on the road. COnversly if I considered myself a PC gamer always playing the latest releases, then the upgrade would be more along for the lines of changing current 2001 Fireblade to a 2005-2008 Fireblade and taking it out on a trackday in that I'd no doubt get round the track quicker but as I don't do that (or play new games), its a mute point 
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