[Closed] Computers - are sound cards extinct? And other upgrade Qs

Quality over watts for your PSU. ~500 from a good brand will go far. I like Corsair based on mine being faultless years. HX1000.

Most motherboards have fine quality onboard sound. When you say 'supposedly', it only takes a peep at the back to look for ports. I'm a sound-philistine (opposite of an audiophile) but find onboard sound usually fine and a speaker upgrade is usually a better move than a discrete sound card. The ABit does have onbaord sound according to CNET.

SSD is the best upgrade you can make, IMO.

I love CM cases. Got a slightly modded CM690 and qould be disappointed if it needed replacing.

If it's just for listening to music, onboard will do, unless you are some kind of audiophile, or you need to do some music recording.

i'm the later, i've got a focusrite 2i4. Great wee audio interface. 🙂

Wow, sound cards. Must be extinct apart from if you need some high quality DAC and lots of in/outs for music production. Would probably be outboard on USB for that anyway?

I think I remember buying a creative soundblaster for my Amstrad PC2086 (intel 8086 processor @ 8Mhz) and listening to the Secret of Monkey Island music in awe...good times.

Also is this not a bit of a trigger's broom operation you've got going on here? Better just buying a new machine?

The motherboard you have will take a faster processor, plenty of cheap quad cores on ebay, table below shows some of the options.

http://ark.intel.com/products/family/79667/Legacy-Intel-Core2-Processor#@Desktop

Also your motherboard will take upto 8gb of DDR2 ram, generally plenty with 64 bit Windows 7.
Cheaper option unless you want to spend the money.
But if you do want a change, might be interested in the motherboard if you sell, have a few parts that would go with it....

1) there is no way you need a 750W PSU! Thats dual graphics card or hard drive farm territory.

2) as said your socket 750 board can take a better processor with the same RAM. That said with only 800mhz FSB I'd see if you could get a better board as a faster processor will be severely bottlenecked. And more / faster RAM. In which event you would be as well just plumping for the Skylake as I doubt it would be much more expensive for a basic build.

3) on board sound is fine unless its a 7.1 card or you need a specific output, look at speccing a decent board if you are that concerned.

I think I remember buying a creative soundblaster for my Amstrad PC2086 (intel 8086 processor @ 8Mhz) and listening to the Secret of Monkey Island music in [b]awe[/b]...good times.

Please tell me that was an intentional pun. (-:

Ha. Good spot but no it wasn't, I think the AWE(32?) came later than the 8bit soundblaster I had!

You don't need a soundcard, well, unless you need one. As said, onboard sound (which most mobo's have) is perfectly good for most situations.

You won't need a 700w PSU as also said, unless its a gaming/graphics power house, a decent quality 350-400w will be fine, if anything, newer tech is lower power anyway due to better efficiency.

It's generaly great bigh graphics cards that require big PSU's, nvidia titan for example wants 250watts.

Thinking of my aging machine, standard hard drive uses about 9watts, so you could even plug in a fair few of those before worrying about it.
RAM sticks about 3w each, an i5 consumes about 65watts at full tilt..

[quote=mattyfez ]
Thinking of my aging machine, standard hard drive uses about 9watts, so you could even plug in a fair few of those before worrying about it.

Bear in mind they draw a fair bit more as they spin up, especially fast 3.5 inch drives. Also that consumer motherboards tend to spin them all up at once.

Enterprise stuff tends to spin them up one at a time for this reason (takes ages though).

Bear in mind they draw a fair bit more as they spin up, especially fast 3.5 inch drives

[url= https://www.wdc.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-771434.pdf ]https://www.wdc.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-771434.pdf[/url]

[url= http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/barracuda-fam/barracuda-new/files/barracuda-ds-1900-3-1608us.pdf ]http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/barracuda-fam/barracuda-new/files/barracuda-ds-1900-3-1608us.pdf[/url]

[quote=mattyfez ]Bear in mind they draw a fair bit more as they spin up, especially fast 3.5 inch drives
Consumer spin drives about 9 watts each, max. They idle at around 4-6 watts each, ok WD 6TB black edition tops out at 10 watts, but that's pretty hungry for a consumer spin drive.

Talking baws fella, 9 or 10w is their average use when already running. I actually have a 4TB black, it pulls about 2 amps at startup.

edit: the seagate document you linked actually shows this

Power Management
Startup Power (A) 2.5

Ah, my mistake, didnt clock the (A) 😳

Here is a power supply calculator:

http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

They're quite accurate. I just put in my system, which is a mid-high end gaming build and it says 500W recommended wattage. I have a 700W because it was free, but if I was buying today i'd get a 650W.

I have a Focusrite 2i2 soundcard - if you do anything with audio, aside from just listening casually, a soundcard is a must. (recording, processing, audio production, etc)

If you have studio speakers or a hi-fi setup you'll need a soundcard also, something that can take 1/4, XLR or RCA jacks. External ones are easier to use and look cool.

As above, never skimp on your powersupply - it's the only thing between you and your house being burnt down. Buy a Corsair, EVGA, or anything from this list:

Running a Corsair HX550 psu at the mo, with 2-3 spinny disks and a SSD... Seems to work ok. Wasn't planning on changing graphics, which IIRC is a GTX660Ti...

Will be absolutely fine. The new set up will probably use almost exactly the same power, or no difference worth caring about as whilst better performance, newer stuff is more efficient.