Hardware & Technical 8gb DDR2 upgrade in an old desktop

Mo Ronik

Mo Ronik
I've ordered two 4gb memory sticks so I can bump the memory up to 8gb in this old machine. I'm a little concerned since the spec sheet on the board says it supports 4gb max but... it came with a 32bit installation of Vista. I've since cleared that all out and have a fresh 64bit W10 install. I want to be sure it will handle 8gb before I spend the pennies on the other things I need before I can venture into the black. Old stuff I know but until the wife and I make the move overseas this is all I can budget for right now. And, if this desktop can be upgraded to a reasonable gaming system then I'll ship it DHL to our place in Queensland when we take off. So, cross your fingers, toes, eyes and anything else that can be crossed that this will work.

Costs to fly in the black:

Memory upgrade - $26.99 (free shipping) on the way
CPU upgrade - $48.95 plus $6 shipping but, I sent an email to the shipper. I bought an old Dell SFF XP system from him last year so I could run my Autocad 2000 on and he offered a discount on future purchases. Maybe get a few bucks off, dunno yet. The cpu is a Intel Q9650 Core 2 Quad and several old pc to new gaming pc videos say it is great. Socket 775 motherboard.
GPU upgrade - $149.99 plus $4.99 shipping This is a GeForce GTX 1050 GV-N1050WF2OC-2GD. Should get me by just fine barring any other bottlenecks. Says 1080p @60 FPS and that will be acceptable for now.
500 watt EVGA PS upgrade - $32.95 dunno about shipping just yet. I was wrong about the PS in the case. It is 275 watts and probably not enough to power the new stuff so a replacement is in order.

I'm at $275 more or less for an acceptable gaming PC (I hope) depending on the memory upgrade. I do have dual monitors now (HP 2009m 20" and HP w1907 19") on an old ATI Radeon graphics card but.. I dunno, very low memory on that card so probably not going to be a pleasant experience. That GeForce has 3 separate HDMI outputs along with a DVI and Display Port so future dreams will be triple 27" monitors but those will have to wait till we get to Australia. I'll just use the keyboard and mouse initially for controls until I can find a super deal on some fancy stuff. I think I'm gonna run an Ethernet cable from the router to the PC instead of using WiFi. Every little bit of extra oompf I can get will be a bonus.
 

Evanitis

Evanitis
You'll experience no hiccups with the system you described in 1080p and 60 fps and maxed settings. GF1050 is a powerhorse, and ED isn't particualarly demanding on the processor, so Q9650 should be more than enough. Maybe you'll need to tone down terrain generation a bit from the maximum upon planetary landings.

I'm yet to see a motherboard that couldn't handle all the DDR2 it had slots for. Can't really be sure of it, as you didn't share what model it is, so I can't look it up. At worse, I hear ED has no problems running on 4g ram.
 

Gramps

Gramps
Unfortunatly if the boards documentation states 4GB of DDR2 as the max then that's what it is, the operating system is not relevant other than a 4GB cap on Windows 32bit systems. Either the system will refuse to boot up or the extra Ram will be ignored. :(
 

Morbad

Morbad
Gramps said:
Unfortunatly if the boards documentation states 4GB of DDR2 as the max then that's what it is
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Not always. Many platforms have one official limit, simply because higher densities weren't validated, or didn't exist at the time specs were written. There is often no intrinsic incompatibility.

Still, it's definitely wise to look into the situation further before spending money on an upgrade that may not work.
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Morbad said:
Not always. Many platforms have one official limit, simply because higher densities weren't validated, or didn't exist at the time specs were written. There is often no intrinsic incompatibility.

Still, it's definitely wise to look into the situation further before spending money on an upgrade that may not work.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I would be curious to know the result of the OP
 

Zieman

Zieman
Gramps said:
Unfortunatly if the boards documentation states 4GB of DDR2 as the max then that's what it is, the operating system is not relevant other than a 4GB cap on Windows 32bit systems. Either the system will refuse to boot up or the extra Ram will be ignored. :(
Click to expand...

Morbad said:
Not always. Many platforms have one official limit, simply because higher densities weren't validated, or didn't exist at the time specs were written. There is often no intrinsic incompatibility.

Still, it's definitely wise to look into the situation further before spending money on an upgrade that may not work.
Click to expand...
Check the board manufacturer's site for BIOS updates for that board, maybe there's mention of increased RAM support.
 

Mo Ronik

Mo Ronik
Thanks for the replies. I've been looking at bios updates just in case. This board is from a HP a6300f Pavilion desktop and is made by Foxconn with Phoenix bios. Right now worst case is I'm out the money for the memory if it does not work and somehow they won't take it back but there is a return policy so we'll see. Another option is to just replace the motherboard. Standard ATX case so getting a mb to fit shouldn't be an issue but if I have to go that route I'll probably wait till we get moved and just build a gaming system over there and skip this attempt. I might can find a barebones desktop at the used computer store I frequent on the cheap. The tech knows me and is always giving me deals on stuff. Still haven't visited the local pawn shops for other gaming treasures. This last house remodel is trying it's best to kill me and today I fought some ground bees and lost while mowing the back yard.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Mo Ronik said:
Thanks for the replies. I've been looking at bios updates just in case. This board is from a HP a6300f Pavilion desktop and is made by Foxconn with Phoenix bios. Right now worst case is I'm out the money for the memory if it does not work and somehow they won't take it back but there is a return policy so we'll see. Another option is to just replace the motherboard. Standard ATX case so getting a mb to fit shouldn't be an issue but if I have to go that route I'll probably wait till we get moved and just build a gaming system over there and skip this attempt. I might can find a barebones desktop at the used computer store I frequent on the cheap. The tech knows me and is always giving me deals on stuff. Still haven't visited the local pawn shops for other gaming treasures. This last house remodel is trying it's best to kill me and today I fought some ground bees and lost while mowing the back yard.
Click to expand...

If the memory has the same organization the higher density DIMMs will probably work, but I still can't promise it.

The chipset on your board in an nForce 630i, which has only a single memory channel and is fairly dated/low-end even for an LGA-775 platform. ED will certainly run on such a system, but there may be some CPU or memory related performance issues...though you're only using a GTX 1050 so unless you are targeting pretty low quality settings you may still be GPU limited.
 

Mo Ronik

Mo Ronik
Caramel Clown said:
I think that GPU in this case will definitely overwhelm CPU and/or memory. Question is what will bottleneck first.
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It's a 2gb card and from what I've been reading, most are saying that you want no more than half the video memory as you have main memory so I believe I'm good there. I think if my motherboard will actually recognize the 8gb memory then it only having a single memory channel will be the bottleneck. I am looking for an alternative motherboard to consider should this one not make the cut. Leaning towards the Asus P5K board. Cheap enough and it does support 8gb of memory and socket 775 so that Q9650, if I get a good deal on it, will fit nicely. At that point the old HP case just becomes a box to hold all the parts since it really won't be an HP anymore. Yayyy, I get to box bash!!! Well maybe...
 

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
Mo Ronik said:
It's a 2gb card and from what I've been reading, most are saying that you want no more than half the video memory as you have main memory so I believe I'm good there. I think if my motherboard will actually recognize the 8gb memory then it only having a single memory channel will be the bottleneck. I am looking for an alternative motherboard to consider should this one not make the cut. Leaning towards the Asus P5K board. Cheap enough and it does support 8gb of memory and socket 775 so that Q9650, if I get a good deal on it, will fit nicely. At that point the old HP case just becomes a box to hold all the parts since it really won't be an HP anymore. Yayyy, I get to box bash!!! Well maybe...
Click to expand...
I might be wrong on this one of course. However I was thinking more about the speed, and not just amount of memory. GPU memory is really fast, and your DDR2 is...well, not fast :) Also single channel.
 

Mo Ronik

Mo Ronik
After careful consideration I've decided to not try and upgrade this desktop. Too many unknowns. So, I just pulled the trigger on another desktop. Really cheap desktop too but it is newer and has an Intel i3 3.30 GHz processor and 8gb of DDR3 memory for the low low price of $67. The 8gb DDR2 order was cancelled so no harm no foul with that. Now all I'll need is a video card that can dish out the mayhem and we're all set. Might still need to upgrade the power supply but that is a cheap do as well. So, hopefully in a week or so I can start leaving bits and pieces of Sidewinders adrift in the void....
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Mo Ronik said:
It's a 2gb card and from what I've been reading, most are saying that you want no more than half the video memory as you have main memory so I believe I'm good there. I think if my motherboard will actually recognize the 8gb memory then it only having a single memory channel will be the bottleneck. I am looking for an alternative motherboard to consider should this one not make the cut. Leaning towards the Asus P5K board. Cheap enough and it does support 8gb of memory and socket 775 so that Q9650, if I get a good deal on it, will fit nicely. At that point the old HP case just becomes a box to hold all the parts since it really won't be an HP anymore. Yayyy, I get to box bash!!! Well maybe...
Click to expand...

A good alternative here
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
Mo Ronik said:
After careful consideration I've decided to not try and upgrade this desktop. Too many unknowns. So, I just pulled the trigger on another desktop. Really cheap desktop too but it is newer and has an Intel i3 3.30 GHz processor and 8gb of DDR3 memory for the low low price of $67. The 8gb DDR2 order was cancelled so no harm no foul with that. Now all I'll need is a video card that can dish out the mayhem and we're all set. Might still need to upgrade the power supply but that is a cheap do as well. So, hopefully in a week or so I can start leaving bits and pieces of Sidewinders adrift in the void....
Click to expand...

I think that is the right choice. I have an old AMD 64 system (4GB DDR2, 1GB GT9600 GPU etc) and the price of an extra 4GB DDR2 stick was more than getting a current stick of much faster ram. At some point an old system just hits diminishing returns in terms of value for money and difficulty sourcing older parts that are not private sale super over-priced parts.

In relation to the GPU you were talking about, the 2GB 1050 card, it really is the very lowest entry level gaming card in relation to current games. It's 2GB is also too low for many games, you need to be starting with a 4GB card imho, so if you can spring for it the 1050Ti version of that card is the one you want (as a minimum for a gaming rig).

The PSU is important, but less about it's W output and more about the quality of manufacture. So pick a good brand first, W output second.

For example i have an i5@3.2 Ghz, 4GB 1050Ti GPU, 128MB SSD (windows boot drive), 2x2TB HDD for games and storage and all that ran easily on my Seasonic GS-450W power supply. I now have a Corsair RM 550W psu, but that was just a replacement due to not having a surge protection/ups system in a house with old electrical fittings! The 450W psu was totally good for my system as it was a quality part. So spend an extra £20 on getting a better brand quality PSU.
 
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