Computer died, Whats changed since the P4, update me plz

[Who]

Well after all the years of rock solid, hard core service from my asus p4p800se board and my p4 3.4ghz cpu, the computer finally died. I haven't kept up with the latest changes but I think I want to go with the Intel line of processors. The I7 is out of my price range, so it looks like its going to be the I3 or the I5. I am not a gamer so built in graphics and sound is fine. I'm looking for reliability & stability for another 5 years plus.

I am leaning toward the rig below on newegg. The ide/pata connector is a good option for my backup drives and WinXP driver support is online. If I do go to Win7 would the rig below work with all the fluff turned on in win7?


Core i5-2500/H67 CSM Corporate PC Kit
Based on ASUS H67 Corporate Stable Model motherboard

1x COOLER MASTER Elite 310 RC-310-BKR2-GP Black with blue front panel Steel Body / ABS plastic front bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 420W Power Supply (Model:RC-310-BKR2-GP)

$59.99

1x ASUS P8H67-M PRO/CSM (REV 3.0) LGA 1155 Intel H67 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard (Model8H67-M PRO/CSM REV3)

$119.99

1x Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I52500 (Model:BX80623I52500)

$209.99

1x G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL (Model:F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL)

$45.99

1x Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (Model:ST31000524AS)

 

[Kai]

To be honest, if you're not a gamer, and just want stability and reliability at a decent price, go AMD. Core i5 is overkill for your needs.

Since the P4, on the intel side there has been:

Core2Duo (E4xxx, E6xxx, E7xxx and E8xxx series)
Core2Quad (Q6xxx, Q8xxx and Q9xxx series)
Core i7, i5 & i3

And on the AMD side there has been:

Athlon64
Athlon64 x2
Phenom x2, Phenom x3, Phenom x4
Phenom II x2, Phenom II x3, Phenom II x4
Athlon x2
Athlon x4
AMD E series
AMD A series (Llano Quad Core + Integrated Graphics)

Look into a Llano setup, they're about to hit the market.

 

[Who]

To be honest, if you're not a gamer, and just want stability and reliability at a decent price, go AMD. Core i5 is overkill for your needs.

Since the P4, on the intel side there has been:

Core2Duo (E4xxx, E6xxx, E7xxx and E8xxx series)
Core2Quad (Q6xxx, Q8xxx and Q9xxx series)
Core i7, i5 & i3

.

Wow I didn't realize I was that far behind. On that note I will stay with the intel board but downgrade from the I5 to the I3. With the money saved I might up the memory to 8gigs. Is 4gigs enough memory for Win7 proffesional? Reason I ask is we went from 2gigs to 3gigs of memory on some of the computers at work and it made a huge difference.

The reviews on the case and power supply don't look promising. Can I reuse my Antec midsize case? Have the Atx / miniatx board layouts changed in the last 5 years. I would buy a new PSU.

 

[Poodles]

Reuse your case. You might even be able to reuse your PSU, but it might be missing the connectors that are used these days. 4 gigs of RAM is fine, especially since you're not gaming.

Main thing to do is to get a budget and work inside of it.

 

[Who]

Reuse your case. You might even be able to reuse your PSU, but it might be missing the connectors that are used these days. 4 gigs of RAM is fine, especially since you're not gaming.

Main thing to do is to get a budget and work inside of it.

Great I will reuse my case and stick with the 4gigs of ram. I not taking a chance on using the old PSU even if it has right connectors. Chances are the poping sound I heard before the mboard died was a aged cap. giving up the ghost, but I'm not going to risk it.

Thinking about using buying this PSU. (Antec BP550 Plus 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply) It has good reviews and I have one like it in another setup and the modulur plugs really reduce the clutter. Is the wattage sufficient for a PCIe video card in the future and two hard drives?

With the suggestions you guys are making I will be under my budget. Thanks all!

 

[Poodles]

550W should be plenty for a non-SLI setup.

Popping sound could be a lot of things, I'm weird and I have to figure out what failed and look at the carnage

 

[Who]

The popping sound. I haven't removed the mboard but I removed and added each peripheral one by one and the board keeps turning off. I changed out the psu and had the same results. I tried different combinations of spare parts, memory, reset the bios, changed the battery and tried two different vid cards and memory sticks and always the same result.

I just looked into the memory at Newegg. It seem that I can get 4gigs of Crucial Ballistix memory : DDR3 PC3-12800 • 8-8-8-24 / 1.65V for $60 vs. 8 gigs of Crucial Ballistix DDR3 PC3-12800 • 10-10-10-28 / 1.5V with a promo code for $75. Does the memory timing really make that much difference if you don't overclock. Seems like a good deal for $15.00 more. The heat spreaders are almost the same and it would save me the hassle of trying to match new memory sticks in the future for dual paging mode. In my experience you can't go wrong with more memory especially if you keep a system as long as I do. I am picking Crucial by the way because of my past no hassle service experience with them.

 

[Murd]

I almost never re-use a PSU. The Capacitor life drops too dramatically after 3-4 years and can be unstable. As a general rule if a motherboard dies, I replace both motherboard and PSU. I've had too many new parts killed by mixing it with an old part. 4 gig is fine for windows 7, I'm running 64 bit, and rarely see over 4.5 gig usage under heavy gaming use. Maybe if you did video/picture editing or programming you might use more. Under normal usage though you won't touch 4 gig. The 550 PSU should be fine for normal use, not ENTHUSIAST usage. I didn't see a vid card in your list so I'm assuming you're going to use the onboard video as well. Since you don't seem to upgrade very often (P4 chip to now) I would err on the side of over doing it with the memory and/or the processor to add a little bit to the longevity of the system, if it's in your budget.

Just saw your comment about fluff turned on in Windows 7, the onboard video may not work well with the Aero desktop ( can be disabled ). Other than that should be no issues.

 

[Who]

Thank you "Murd", Poodles, Kai