Upgrade Suggestions Home Office PC

[GPeaslee]

Semi-enthusiast looking to upgrade to the latest technology. Would like to have noticeable speed increase, less heat (my office gets hot by the end of the day), and least amount of noise possible. Here is my current setup which I put together 4-5 years ago. My main objectives at the time were speed and low noise.

Mobo – ASUS P5B-E (P965 board)
CPU – Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz
CPU Cooler – Scythe Ninja
RAM – G. Skill 2 X 2GB DDR 2 800
VGU – Gigabyte 7600GT fanless (silent)
PSU – Seasonic S12-430RT (430W) (low noise PSU)
Case – Antec P182b (nice quiet case, PSU mounts on the bottom)
HDD – WD Raptor 74 GB (2 drives in Raid 0)
Storage Drive – WD 2500KS 250GB 16MB cache SATA

System Usage – home office network, internet, music, basic photo editing, no overclocking

Improvements Wanted:

1) shorter boot time
2) overall system speed boost (page loading, multitasking, etc.)
3) reduce heat
4) further reduce noise
5) move to Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Some Thoughts

1) Intel i5-2500K (95W) vs. i5-2405S (65W) – is the performance sacrifice worth the reduction in heat with a lower wattage processor?
2) Onboard Graphics – I don’t play any games, but I need to run 2 large 1920 X 1200 monitors. I could save some heat by eliminating my video card. Worth it?
3) SSD – eliminate the Raptors which will help with both noise and heat. Will SSD be as fast or faster than 2 Raptors in Raid 0?
4) RAM – prices are so low now. Any benefit to 8GB vs. 4GB?

I would like to keep the case, PSU, the storage drive, and my optical drives. What parts do you recommend I upgrade to? Thank you for your suggestions.

 

[Outlander_04]

The 2500k is made to overclock . So either the 2500 or the 2405S
Z 68 motherboard , or H67

You should be OK on the integrated graphics if one of your monitors runs on DVI and the other HDMI . The vga wont work at 1080p resolution

The raptor might well be the noisiest part of your system so definitely an SSD , and also a 500 gig WD GREEN hard drive

The only RAM demanding application you use is photo editing . If you have multiple images open at one time then sure use 8 gig , otherwise 4 should be enough

 

[GPeaslee1]

Thanks Outlander_04. I took most of your suggestions and went with:

MOBO - Gigabyte Z68 micro ATX board - on sale with rebate at Micro Center
CPU - i3 2100 - on sale at Fry's. Can always upgrade if needed.
Video - Onboard video. Yes, one monitor is DVI, the other is HDMI
RAM - 8GB Kingston HyperX - again at Fry's with big rebate, so not much more to go with 2 sticks vs. one.
SSD - OCZ Agility SATA III 120 GB

Total cost to upgrade was less than $450. Looking forward to less heat and noise.