Upgrades or New Build?

[ian.miller]

Hey all. I'm debating between trying to upgrade my existing hackintosh or building a new one and trying to salvage some of my existing components.

I built my hackintosh in late 2011 with the following components (based on CustoMac at the time):

Processor - i5 2500K Sandy Bridge
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 V1.3 F12
RAM - 8GB (2X4GB) Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz DDR3
Case - Antec Three Hundred
Power Supply - Antec EarthWatts 650 Watt
System Drive - OCZ 120 GB Agility 3 SATA 6.0 GB/s SSD
Media/Storage Drive - 2 x 1 TB HDD

I'm currently running Yosemite fairly smoothly, but have issues with (i.e. I can't use) sleep/wake, iMessage, and FaceTime. In addition to general computing, I use it for photo and video editing. It does what I need it to, but it's sometimes slower than I'd like. It hasn't had any significant upgrades in the 4.5 years since I built it, and I'm just not knowledgeable enough to know whether I should be looking to upgrade it or just replace it. If I do replace it, I'll probably wait a couple months until I can build something with a Skylake processor (I'm assuming this would be a significant upgrade vs. what's out there now).

So, can someone give me some advice? Should I upgrade my computer (RAM and/or Graphics card), or for the price am I better off just building something with a new mobo and cpu? Is it complicated to overlock, and if not can I get a significant boost that way (I got the K processor for this but don't know enough to do it)? If I build something new can I reuse this RAM or am I looking at replacing that too?

Thanks!

 

[Going Bald]

Hey all. I'm debating between trying to upgrade my existing hackintosh or building a new one and trying to salvage some of my existing components.

I built my hackintosh in late 2011 with the following components (based on CustoMac at the time):

Processor - i5 2500K Sandy Bridge
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 V1.3 F12
RAM - 8GB (2X4GB) Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz DDR3
Case - Antec Three Hundred
Power Supply - Antec EarthWatts 650 Watt
System Drive - OCZ 120 GB Agility 3 SATA 6.0 GB/s SSD
Media/Storage Drive - 2 x 1 TB HDD

I'm currently running Yosemite fairly smoothly, but have issues with (i.e. I can't use) sleep/wake, iMessage, and FaceTime. In addition to general computing, I use it for photo and video editing. It does what I need it to, but it's sometimes slower than I'd like. It hasn't had any significant upgrades in the 4.5 years since I built it, and I'm just not knowledgeable enough to know whether I should be looking to upgrade it or just replace it. If I do replace it, I'll probably wait a couple months until I can build something with a Skylake processor (I'm assuming this would be a significant upgrade vs. what's out there now).

So, can someone give me some advice? Should I upgrade my computer (RAM and/or Graphics card), or for the price am I better off just building something with a new mobo and cpu? Is it complicated to overlock, and if not can I get a significant boost that way (I got the K processor for this but don't know enough to do it)? If I build something new can I reuse this RAM or am I looking at replacing that too?

Thanks!

About the only re-usable parts you have are the SSD and the HDDs.
Chances are the PSU is not Haskell ready and the RAM has a slower clock speed than modern boards use. You could still use it, but why throttle you speed back to slower RAM?

 

[Stork]

About the only re-usable parts you have are the SSD and the HDDs.
Chances are the PSU is not Haskell ready and the RAM has a slower clock speed than modern boards use. You could still use it, but why throttle you speed back to slower RAM?

+1, GB!

I, too, have several Z68 systems. In my case, if I was to do what you propose, only the case is reusable. Haswell has specifications that require newer memory and a PSU that is rated Haswell "ready" or "certified." Good Luck! Let us know what you decide.

 

[ian.miller]

So even the power supply can't be reused? That sucks. I assumed the case, hard drive, and power supply could be reused, and maybe the RAM, but it's looking like a new system will be a bit more costly than I thought. Any thoughts on trying to upgrade what I've got, or would it just be lipstick on a pig and not worth the effort?

 

[ovb1]

Why not get a decent graphics card and extend your RAM to 16GB.

Then clock the i5 upto 4.2 which is pretty easy - upgrade the stock cooler?

For the expense off a new system you're still not seeing a massive improvement in performance over the sandy bridge generation.

Obviously they use less power and run cooler...

I'm not updating my sandybridge yet for the same reason. It's quick enough.

I'm going to wait till skylake has full support.

 

[ian.miller]

Why not get a decent graphics card and extend your RAM to 16GB.

Then clock the i5 upto 4.2 which is pretty easy - upgrade the stock cooler?

For the expense off a new system you're still not seeing a massive improvement in performance over the sandy bridge generation.

Obviously they use less power and run cooler...

I'm not updating my sandybridge yet for the same reason. It's quick enough.

I'm going to wait till skylake has full support.

This would give me a reasonable performance boost then I guess? RAM is easy, but I don't know where to start for a graphics card. I don't know what would be decent bang for the buck. I don't want to spend $200 if it's not going to do anything more for me than a $50 card. Compatibility is important too, since I'm not the most savvy at this stuff. Overlocking can be a whole other conversation after I get the rest of this figured out.

Thanks!

 

[RedRogue]

Oh the irony.

We build our Hacks so we can upgrade them in the future. When the future gets here, there isn't much we can upgrade. So, we build a new Hack with the intentions of upgrading in the future.

Why do we punish ourselves this way.

 

[ian.miller]

Would this card be suitable?

EVGA GeForce GT 740 Superclocked Single Slot 2GB DDR3 Graphics Cards 02G-P4-2742-KR
(http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KJGYS4Y/?tag=tonymacx86c0c-20)

For only $6 less (on sale), I would get better performance from this one wouldn't I?

eVGA NVIDIA GeForce GT 740 2GB SC GDDR5 Edition Video Card 02G-P4-3747-KR
(http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KK8MEU6/?tag=tonymacx86c0c-20)

Am I understanding right that the second card has faster RAM but is otherwise essentially the same?

Any other recommendations that would be more economical and give the same performance for my system?

 

[Going Bald]

Would this card be suitable?

EVGA GeForce GT 740 Superclocked Single Slot 2GB DDR3 Graphics Cards 02G-P4-2742-KR
(http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KJGYS4Y/?tag=tonymacx86c0c-20)

For only $6 less (on sale), I would get better performance from this one wouldn't I?

eVGA NVIDIA GeForce GT 740 2GB SC GDDR5 Edition Video Card 02G-P4-3747-KR
(http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KK8MEU6/?tag=tonymacx86c0c-20)

Am I understanding right that the second card has faster RAM but is otherwise essentially the same?

Any other recommendations that would be more economical and give the same performance for my system?

They are the same card with a factory overclock on one instead of base speed on the other.

 

[ian.miller]

Would this card be suitable?

EVGA GeForce GT 740 Superclocked Single Slot 2GB DDR3 Graphics Cards 02G-P4-2742-KR
(http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KJGYS4Y/?tag=tonymacx86c0c-20)

For only $6 less (on sale), I would get better performance from this one wouldn't I?

eVGA NVIDIA GeForce GT 740 2GB SC GDDR5 Edition Video Card 02G-P4-3747-KR
(http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KK8MEU6/?tag=tonymacx86c0c-20)

Am I understanding right that the second card has faster RAM but is otherwise essentially the same?

Any other recommendations that would be more economical and give the same performance for my system?

Can anybody comment on the cards' suitability/compatibility for this build?