Advice on Reusing Some Old CPUs

[AllWhacked]

I have a lot of non-working computers I've inherited from work, though the best of the bunch are an AMD Athlon II x4 620, Phenom 9500, Intel e2160 and three Athlon x2 3800+ and a pair of Pentium Ds of unknown speed. Pretty much all of them need new motherboards and I already have spare ram for DDR, DDR2 & DDR3 and other spare parts to make a computer so no extra cost there.

I'm currently using the following:

e8400 (OC @ 3.6GHz) for main gaming rig
Q6600 @ stock for office work/web browsing & occasional gaming
e7400 @ stock for HTPC and mid-range gaming (mainly PC racing games and GTA IV) and ripping BD to MKV files.

Anyway, I did enough research to know that the 620 is about on par with my e8400 & Q6600 at stock speed and is probably the best CPU of the bunch to bother upgrading. Now the reason why I'm even bothering to fix these up is that I need to build a spare computer for my mom since her Athlon64 2800+ isn't quite cutting it for her.

Now I have a few choices, I was thinking either:

a) Fixing the 620 and letting her use that
b) Fixing the 620 to replace my HTPC and giving the e7400 to her
c) Trying to sell the 620, the Phenom 9500 and the various other CPUs for spare cash to buy something better and either giving her the better machine or keeping the new machine for myself and letting her have whatever PC it replaced.

By posting here I'm hoping to make sure I'm not getting stuck with tunnel vision and only seeing the option of upgrading the 620 as my only option. And to note, I know I can buy some entry level PC for around $300-$400, but money is a little tight and I figure if I already have the spare parts and all I need is a new motherboard (~$60-$75) that would be my cheapest option. Also if you have any suggestion for motherboards let me know. And I'm not adverse to overlocking so getting a better motherboard to use for my main system is also doable.

 

[lakedude]

"a)" looks good to me.

Main reason being laziness. Giving your Mom a system directly will be a lot less trouble than the other multi-step ideas. With "b" or "c" you will need to mess with transferring data, software and OS licenses etc and the 620 isn't worth all that IMO...

 

[lakedude]

BTW are you factoring in an OS?

 

[AllWhacked]

Yeah, I have a Windows 7 family pack so I got an extra license laying around.

 

[Cerb]

I second A. It would be a nice gaming CPU, if OCed, to replace your E8400, but stock it would make a hell of an upgrade from a single-core Athlon 64. The other options would work, but you'd be just as well off to swap your Q6600 and E8400, OCing the Q6600, if you wanted something better. If it were a Phenom II X4, I'd recommend that for you, but the Athlon II's lack of L3 is just enough for it to be a side-grade, IMO.

If I were ordering right this second, I'd get this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813186206
Note: http://www.foxconnsupport.com/cpusupportlist.aspx?type=mb&socket=Socket AM3&model=A88GMX&cputype=AMD
They do make it hard to find the CPU support list, but it is cool that it's filterable.

P.S. Anybody else see one of those boards and shed a tear for Soyo?

 

[AllWhacked]

Yeah, OCing my Q6600 isn't really an option for me because my current s775 board (eVGA 680i) was the 1st version which basically could not overclock Quad Cores. I also own an MSI 650i board which houses my Q6600, but I could not get it stable at 3GHz so I opted for faster speed vs more cores.

In any case, in terms of motherboards, should I get an AM3+ vs AM3? They seem to cost about the same and I figure the AM3+ may let me upgrade the CPU again.

Edit: Just for my curiosity, what is a conservative estimate on being able to overclock the 620 with a decent motherboard and with a Zalman 9700 Heatsink and compare that to an e8400 @ 3.6GHz. If not much difference I won't bother, but equal or significant in performance gain I might make the jump since I can use it as an opportunity to upgrade to Windows 8 and upgrade my ram from 4GB DDR2 to 8GB DDR3 for fairly cheap.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I personally would hesitate to swap your E8400 @ 3.6 for an AMD X4 620 for gaming purposes. For desktop workloads, I might.

Personally, I vote "option a", build a machine around the 620 for your mom, I think that it would be perfect for her.

You wouldn't get a lot of cash for selling those CPUs, btw.

Microcenter has a Phenom X4 2.8Ghz for $50, in-store, right now. OEM. (No heatsink included.)

 

[nonameo]

You should be able to get a motherboard on the forums here for ANY of those cpus for pretty cheap. A or B sounds good, but I'd go with A for simplicity. I don't think you'll get all that much for going to the 620.

 

[andy2000]

If the three Athlon x2 3800+ are socket 939, you should sell them since they're still worth about $35 each.

 

[Cerb]

Edit: Just for my curiosity, what is a conservative estimate on being able to overclock the 620 with a decent motherboard and with a Zalman 9700 Heatsink and compare that to an e8400 @ 3.6GHz. If not much difference I won't bother, but equal or significant in performance gain I might make the jump since I can use it as an opportunity to upgrade to Windows 8 and upgrade my ram from 4GB DDR2 to 8GB DDR3 for fairly cheap.

With an L3-equipped Phenom II X4, you'd have 8.5MB cache, which in practice, will end up feeling a bit better than your C2Q (shared L3 and IMC v. chattery split L2s and FSB), and the Phenom II X4s that won't stably reach 3.5+GHz on 125W mobos are few and far between. In the case of a PhII X4, I'd say, "go for it."

OTOH, the Athlon II X4 has 2.5MB cache, under half what your C2D has, and while it was a good value way back when, it just doesn't make for as smooth of an experience as more cache. I don't know exactly how fast you'd have to get it to make it worth it to you, but despite what multithreaded benchmarks might look like, I would be surprised if you wouldn't need to get it to 3.2GHz or higher, just to make it feel as snappy and smooth as your E8400. Then, in 1-2-threaded programs, it still wouldn't be as fast until 3.6GHz+, and that could be pushing it without a really nice OC mobo (a $100-150 mobo from 2008-2010 and a $60 mobo from today are not likely to be equal, when it comes to pushing the power regulation's limits).

It could be a nice freak OCing CPU, but there are a lot of ifs involved. Meanwhile, a cheap AMD-chipset mobo (just forget that anybody else ever made chipsets for AMD sockets, OK? ), with everything running at stock, should be a night and day improvement for your mother.

 

[AllWhacked]

Thanks for the answers everyone. I will be going with plan A).