[SOLVED] Phenom II X6 as an upgrade option

[noobie_one_kenoobie]

Hello, dark practitioners of computercrafts.

I am here to seek your peerless wisdom regarding the following matter:

I have an old computer that has served me well over the years and it still continues to do so. It functions completely fine for my work in Microsoft Office and for general Internet usage and Youtube. The thing is, I like to play an occasional game on it. Vast majority of things I like to play on it works just fine.
However, there are some more modern (though, certainly not the latest) games I would like to enjoy. I am also away from home for most of the year and use my laptop for my work and Internet access and don't really game except for an odd DOS title here and there to pass the free time.

For a while now, I have been thinking of upgrading my old computer back home so that I could unwind when in my natural habitat. I have been thinking about buying a new computer but it just doesn't make sense for me since it won't be really used much of the time and I am perennially behind the times anyway, meaning that playing something modernish such as Fallout 4 for example at 720p without any stutter is fine by me. And I also don't want to retire my old machine, especially since it works fine otherwise.

Now with my motivations out of the way, I would like your opinion on whether buying a ten year old Phenom II X6 1055T 2,8 Ghz 95w version to replace my venerable Athlon II X2 250 3Ghz is a good move that will yield some palpable performance increase or is it completely unintelligent to even consider it. I am aware that AM3 socket and the associated processors are obsolete.

Phenom II X6 is still holding some value though, at least where I live, and I was able to find the above mentioned example for a price equivalent to around $60. Is this to much to pay?

Here are the rest of my specifications:

MSI 400W Power supply unit
M4N68T LE V2
Athlon II X2 250 3.0 Ghz
8 Gigabytes of RAM DDR3
ASUS R7 250 1GB GDDR5

Thank you for any and all advice you can spare for this brutish heathen who stumbled upon your hallowed digital ground.

 

[SamirD]

Sorry for the delayed reply. Glad to hear you're enjoying the upgrade.

And for the heat issue, there's a little trick I use if noise isn't something you worry about--set the cpu fan to 100% (and others too if you want). This will usually drop temps by at least 10c. Cheapest cooling mod you can do, lol.

And if you don't have settings for the fans, you can manually do this by just removing the pwm pin from the fan header using a small pin to depress the pin 'catch'. This will allow you to slide the pin out and tape it so it doesn't short/contact with anything. The fans will now run 100% all the time. And if you want to switch it back, just untape the pin and slide it back in the connector until it clicks and then the connector works like it did before.

But personally, once I've gone 100% fan, I'll never go back. The performance knowing that it's staying cool is well worth it.

 

[noobie_one_kenoobie]

Hello ,

thank you for that interesting advice. That pin trick for the fan sounds very ingenious. (I just realized that there might be a pun in there somewhere).

I haven't really given this problem much thought lately since everything seems to be running fine, but I just might try that out of sheer curiosity. Perhaps I have even overstated it as a problem, since I do not feel about it as strongly as I did at first.

I have now reclassified it as a 'minor gripe' in my mind (I am not going as far as to call it a feature, not until November at least) and I am OK with it staying under the rug in the best traditions of corporate corner-cutting that I can think of.

Jokes aside, I must sound like a broken record by now, or like some sort of denialist justifying his decisions, but I am really inordinately pleased with this thing. In and of itself, I see no change in normal word processing or youtube and internet surfing but for playing my Fallout 4, which I sincerely hoped for, it is all I wanted. When I have my fill of gaming I might just return my Athlon to the motherboard for low power and low heat Word and Movies computer. Or not, this thing is not loud outside games.

And truth be told, I actually enjoyed having a conversation on this forum, especially with all the people giving logical, sound and sane advice. So that was an element of my enjoyment of this 'computercraft' as well. And you can probably tell from my often verbose replies.

And as soon as I have another problem you can expect a block of text ominously darkening your glowing screens.

So, in conclusion,

Thank you all again and all the best.

 

[SamirD]

Thank you. I think I'm the only one out there promoting it and actively using it.

In computing there is a lot to be said for 'if it isn't broken don't try to fix it', so if things are running fine you're probably fine with just letting it run as is. And yes, in winter time the extra heat will be helpful. I usually turn on my rack servers during the winter for the heat. 😀

Enjoy your upgraded setup and we'll be here if you've got any other questions.