Question Replacing a PC's foundation while keeping the second story

[La couleur du ble]

I would like to replace the foundation of my PC while keeping the second story.

What I mean is that I have an 11-year old "gaming" PC that is suffering from severe coil whine from the motherboard.
It's time to upgrade, but I don't necessarily need to replace everything at once. since I've already upgraded a few items.
The original pre-built 2009 rig was:

CASE: Apevia X-Dreamer 3 Mid-Tower Gaming Case w/ Side-Panel Window & Temperature Display
CPU: Intel(R) CoreT i7-860 2.80 GHz 8M L2 Cache LGA1156 [+84]
VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 5850 PCI-E 16X 1GB Video Card [DirectX 11 Support] [+157] (Major Brand Powered by ATI)
HDD: Single Hard Drive (1TB (1TBx1) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
MOTHERBOARD: [CrossFireX] GigaByte GA-P55A-UD3 Intel P55 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, 2 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 3 PCI [+48]
MEMORY: 8GB (2GBx4) PC1333 DDR3 PC3 10666 Dual Channel Memory [+135] (Corsair or Major Brand)
POWERSUPPLY: 700 Watts Power Supplies (SLI/CrossFire Ready Power Supply)

I have since replaced the video card with a Radeon RX 580 and the hard drive with a Crucial BX500 SATA SSD.
I'm fine replacing parts, but I have never put a PC together from scratch. My preferred option would be to buy a pre-built PC with case + motherboard + CPU, but that is not the typical configuration sold.
One more detail: I'm old school and I would like to retain an optical drive and a couple of older mechanical drives.

I would be grateful for your collected wisdom on how to proceed.

 

[Nemesia]

Hi La couleur du ble.

That system is old like you said and you can keep the RX 580 and the BX500 and maybe the PSU if it's not too old and it's a good brand and model (what is it?).

But the rest will have to be replaced.

What are you gonna use the system for? Gaming and normal desktop usage or are you gonna use the system to game and do some editing etc?

What is your max budget?

I totally recommend you get someone to build your PC for you if you don't want to do it. Could be a friend or family member. You give them some money and you pay the pizza and it will be a lot better than buying a pre-built.

The only thing actually bad at the moment is that the new Ryzen 5000 CPU and the new RTX graphics cards are like not available to buy anywhere except in some pre-built. It's out of stock and people can't even buy them atm if it's not from a pre-built.

It's up to you. If you feel like you could build it yourself and it's not complicated at all or get someone to build it for you it's a plus on the parts. Pre-built tend to put a cheap PSU, RAM and drives in a pre-built to make more profits.

 

[USAFRet]

but I don't necessarily need to replace everything at once.

Unfortunately, you do, mostly.
All except the GPU and SSD. Maybe the case.

The motherboard/RAM/CPU all work as a set. Can't replace one without the others.
The PSU is already many years old.

 

[La couleur du ble]

Hi La couleur du ble.

That system is old like you said and you can keep the RX 580 and the BX500 and maybe the PSU if it's not too old and it's a good brand and model (what is it?).

But the rest will have to be replaced.

What are you gonna use the system for? Gaming and normal desktop usage or are you gonna use the system to game and do some editing etc?

What is your max budget?

I totally recommend you get someone to build your PC for you if you don't want to do it. Could be a friend or family member. You give them some money and you pay the pizza and it will be a lot better than buying a pre-built.

The only thing actually bad at the moment is that the new Ryzen 5000 CPU and the new RTX graphics cards are like not available to buy anywhere except in some pre-built. It's out of stock and people can't even buy them atm if it's not from a pre-built.

It's up to you. If you feel like you could build it yourself and it's not complicated at all or get someone to build it for you it's a plus on the parts. Pre-built tend to put a cheap PSU, RAM and drives in a pre-built to make more profits.

Hi Nemesia,

I now realize I left out a few details.
The system is for general use and some gaming (I seem to be better at acquiring games than finding the time to play them).

I plan on retaining the video card, the SSD, and, perhaps, the optical drive. The rest, as you say, must go. I will get a more modern CPU and 16GB of RAM.

I fully expected that the correct response would be "build your own", but there could have been another option I was overlooking.

Thanks.

 

[USAFRet]

Among other things, what is your budget for this?

*How to Ask for New Build or Upgrade Advice*

How to Ask for New Build or Upgrade Advice First off, respect where respect is due - this is an adaptation of the Animal's *How To Ask For New Build Advice* Sticky. I created this because there's a lot of posts nowadays asking for upgrade advice both on here and on the CPU forums, and I feel...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[cryoburner]

Keeping the RX 580 for now is probably a good idea, since there's currently a shortage of graphics cards and that card should still be pretty decent for 1080p gaming. And the SSD is likely fine as well as an OS drive, though if it happens to be a low capacity unit you might consider adding more SSD storage for installing games to.

You could bring over the HDD from the existing system for secondary storage as well, though if you have any irreplaceable data on it, you should make that's backed up to another drive somewhere, especially if the drive is a decade old. You could reuse your optical drive as well, if it happens to meet your needs. Unless you specifically require Blu-Ray compatibility, optical drives haven't changed much in the last decade. The case could likely be reused as well, if you find it suitable enough.

To change the CPU, you would at the very least need to also replace the motherboard and RAM though, and reinstall Windows. And you may need to get a newer version of Windows to properly support the newer hardware. I also suspect that whatever 11+ year old power supply it has might also be due for replacement, especially since it was a prebuilt, which often tend to cheap out on the PSU.

How much were you considering spending on the upgrades? There are some decent 6-core, 12-thread CPUs for under $200 like the Ryzen 3600 or i5-10400 / 10400F that might be worth considering, and some compatible motherboards can be found for as little as $100 or so. A 16GB (2x8GB) kit of RAM can be had for around $70. If you replace the PSU, there are some decent units under $100, though you should ideally avoid the really cheap units.

 

[La couleur du ble]

Keeping the RX 580 for now is probably a good idea, since there's currently a shortage of graphics cards and that card should still be pretty decent for 1080p gaming. And the SSD is likely fine as well as an OS drive, though if it happens to be a low capacity unit you might consider adding more SSD storage for installing games to.

You could bring over the HDD from the existing system for secondary storage as well, though if you have any irreplaceable data on it, you should make that's backed up to another drive somewhere, especially if the drive is a decade old. You could reuse your optical drive as well, if it happens to meet your needs. Unless you specifically require Blu-Ray compatibility, optical drives haven't changed much in the last decade. The case could likely be reused as well, if you find it suitable enough.

To change the CPU, you would at the very least need to also replace the motherboard and RAM though, and reinstall Windows. And you may need to get a newer version of Windows to properly support the newer hardware. I also suspect that whatever 11+ year old power supply it has might also be due for replacement, especially since it was a prebuilt, which often tend to cheap out on the PSU.

How much were you considering spending on the upgrades? There are some decent 6-core, 12-thread CPUs for under $200 like the Ryzen 3600 or i5-10400 / 10400F that might be worth considering, and some compatible motherboards can be found for as little as $100 or so. A 16GB (2x8GB) kit of RAM can be had for around $70. If you replace the PSU, there are some decent units under $100, though you should ideally avoid the really cheap units.

My data is backed up locally and in the cloud, so I should be fine there.

I agree that I need to replace the motherboard, CPU and RAM. The PSU is a CyberPower PSAZ-CP700, so I'm inclined to replace it too. The case has issues and the fans are flaky, so I also need a new case.

I was not planning on reinstalling Windows. I am running Windows 10 2004, and I was able to clone my old HDD to an SSD without offending Windows. Would swapping the CPU and motherboard cause a software problem, or are we talking about a licensing issue due to too many component changes?

I don't have a set budget yet. My original system cost $1,600 in 2009. So probably under a grand.