2.5 YO System, Worth trying to sell?

[htskinn]

Ok so thinking about selling my rig, wondering if its really worth it though or I should just part a few things and upgrade here and there. Any input would be great! especially value.
General- Currently stable at 3.2 @ 1.3125V, stress temps hit 50*C. Prefer it @ 3.4, but room temps make it hit over 65*C Stressed.

Cpu-Q6600 Kentsfield G0 SLACR
Cooler-XIGMATEK HDT-S1283
MOBO- MSI P35 Neo2-fr
Ram- 2x1g ddr2-800 crucial ballistix tracer 4-4-4-12
Vid- EVGA Superclocked 9800gtx+
Sound- PCI-E Soundblaster XFI Xtreme
PWR-Corsair enthusiast 650tx
HD-500g Seagate Barracuda
Case-Cooler Master CM690, 4 fans, Front Control.
Standard DVD burner

Probably not worth much... Likely even if I just go with a new build I'll at least be able to keep the case (which i love), the supply, HD, soundcard, drives etc..
Thanks!!!

 

[Zenthar]

It might not be worth much, but you can probably get a few hundred $$$ with parts.

I would suggest you keep the XIGMATEK HDT-S1283, by getting the 10$ "crossbow" for LGA1155 you could reuse it in your next build; it's a great cooler. SoundBlaster would also be worth keeping, probably better than on-board and you already have it. Case would be worth keeping as well unless you want to change it. For the PSU it will depend on your target build, 650W would be ok for single GPU, but not dual.

 

[pacioli]

Upgrade the mobo, ram and processor and sell the parts that can't be used in a new system and . There is a market for older parts.

 

[c3h8]

Resale on used computers is almost a joke. Part out the CPU, Mobo, RAM, and GFX card, keep the rest...or just re-used the computer elsewhere. Keep the case I doubt you'll clear the cost of a new one selling the system, keep the sound card.

I love my X-Fi Card, which one do you have? If it's not the ...Music or the ...Audio (don't actually use the EMU20K1 or EMU20K2 chip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_X-Fi download the hacked software kit and get all the features on your rig, regardless of Windows Version.

---
Bass Management for my 5.1 setup, re-maps stereo audio on the fly, does volume leveling and the 'crystallizer' really cleans up some on my lossless and non-losses music.

 

[buzznut]

I always find the old computers to make great hand me downs. A friend or relative without a PC would certainly be very grateful to have anything.

I agree that you may have better luck selling as parts through ebay or craigslist. Or, you could donate to charity and prolly get a $500 write off. But that's only worthwhile if you have enough to itemize, for most of us the standard deduction is more than enough.

 

[htskinn]

Wow first thanks for the quick replies.

1st Zenthar- I was wondering if there was a clip to modify it. I absolutely love the thing. I know how dumb it sounds but at the price i got it at being able to keep it might help in being a factor in upgrading the cpu.

2 pacioli-I've been kind of leaning that way but I'm not sure if I can afford to drop a lot of dough on a new cpu right now. And if I go budget if it'd really be worth doing so?

C3-To tell you the truth i'm not sure which x-fi i have =(. I do love it though but i don't have those driver on it i know for sure. Thanks a ton for that, when I get home later I'm going to have to look and see. Now i'm anxious hah

4-Buzz-I've been thinking about giving my vid card and ram away. But its looking more like my card, ram, cpu, and mobo away. The problem is i really need to give the power supply away too if i'm going to do that (in order to power the card). But I might as well if i'm going to help someone out with the other things.. Honestly hadn't even thought of the tax thing, but yep standard would go over for me too =(

One last thing, I know there are a ton of CPU Bottleneck threads. The answers alllllways go back and forth. Your opinions? that q6600 @ 3.4 (haven't even messed around with further than that due to room temps. Luckily where I'm currently living i won't have that issue) with 8g of 1066 ram. How far up on a vid card could i go?

 

[house70]

I second buzznut. I have myself given a couple of old PCs to my friends and I have sold them a couple for relatively cheap because they just did not have that kind of money they could afford to buy themselves nice systems. Pleasing some friends=priceless.
The charity donation is also nice, you get a tax write-off and you can get an estimate for what the system is actually worth. There are plenty of organized charities you can donate to.
I myself have found that selling parts via eBay is not worth the effort, you have to ship them packed nicely and that will consume time. If you value your time, you might not get enough in return.

 

[buzznut]

I find most bottleneck discussions to be a little silly. The fact is your CPU at its standard clock would be enough to run most titles. At 3.4, its a beast. No, its not a core i5 or i7 and its not hyper threaded but its still a quad core and for gaming there really aren't any titles that can utilize more than 4 cores.

You could worry about bottlenecking with a dual core for certain. Even triple core are considered the minimum for gaming, but quads are better. Throwing more cores/threads at most software is an exercise in redundancy. Transcoding/decoding and other things I don't know much about are highly threaded applications. I find what I have for simple photo editing to be quite speedy enough, but I am not in multimedia. I'm a hardware guy.

Really though, to answer your question if its gaming your talking about; I believe you aren't going to see any bottlenecking. Having said that, I am sure that software will continue to grow parallel as we already see alot of applications utilizing the parallel nature of video cards. (Cuda, bit coin, folding, physics,etc.) AMD is betting on more cores as seen with their Opterons and upcoming BD for desktop. I guess we'll have to see about the implementation of such.

 

[pacioli]

2 pacioli-I've been kind of leaning that way but I'm not sure if I can afford to drop a lot of dough on a new cpu right now. And if I go budget if it'd really be worth doing so?

It depends on your budget...

Depending on the market you should get $50 to $100 for your mobo, proc and RAM on ebay.

$125 gets you the i3 2100 this is two tiers in performance above your existing processor according to tom's
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-gaming-performance,3007-5.html

$180 takes you 3 tiers past your existing processor with the i5 2300.

$50 gets you 8 Gb of DDR3 1600 Mhz Ram. I've seen some deals where 8 Gb is as low as $35... Going from DDR2 to DDR3 will give a noticeable performance boost

$70 will get you a quality socket 1155 board from Asus.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131724

AMD has been dropping prices like crazy on their processors the 955 BE is $120. You can drop that into a $58 Asus AM3+ motherboard and be ready to upgrade if bulldozer ever comes out. Add $35 to $50 for 8 Gb of DDR3 and you have a very fast and very inexpensive upgrade.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131728

 

[pacioli]

As far as your GPU there is some room for improvement. But at the same time you should be able to play many games still at decent settings.

You could offload it on ebay for $50-$60

You'd have to get a new card in the $150-$200 range to make it worthwhile. A GTX 460, 560 or 560 Ti would fit the bill. I've seen GTX 560 Tis going for $180 after MIR.