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Most of the family is still running older Socket 754/939 systems and Windows XP. I've been remiss in doing trickle-down hardware upgrades the past couple of years, and decided it was time to pick through the hardware hoard and build some systems. Also figure I might as well bite the bullet and get everyone off of WinXP before we get any closer to the end of XP security updates (which happens in about a year). Upgrades all around for Christmas this year!

Eldest daughter is getting an Athlon II X4 635; son is getting a Phenom II X4 945 (picked up a GTX 650 at Frys today so he also gets a modest bump in GPU performance); wife gets an Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition (most demanding thing she runs is Plants vs. Zombies, so even that is overkill).

I'm short one Windows 7 license for this little upgrade party, so I guess I'll be making a stop at the TigerDirect store in the morning for another copy of Win7 Home Premium OEM...

The good old holiday hardware hand-em-down, plus may be some reinstalls and major "cleaning" of systems.

I have done my SSD upgrade. Now my old SSD will go to my brother's systems too. Missed the 3TB Red drive sale the other day, so the storage shuffle will have to wait.

Always an adventure... noticed that the CPU temp and fan speed in the system going to the daughter were running a little high. Turns out the rear exhaust fan on the case was reversed, resulting in poor overall airflow.

I'm a firm believer in the trickle-down theory of PC upgrades. I've been caught up since mid-summer.

LGA-1155 Core i5-3570K -> Socket-FM1 A8-3850 -> Socket-939 Opteron 175
LGA-1155 Core i7-2600K -> Socket-AM3 Phenom II X4 955 -> LGA-775 Core2Quad Q9300 -> Socket AM2+ Phenom II X3 720

The temperature sensor on the Socket-AM2+ board has failed so that it spins the CPU fan at full speed, but I'm planning to let it run that way at least until I can replace the i7-2600K with Haswell.

JAE, do you think you will need to upgrade? I know Haswell is a tock in the tick tock cpu architecture. But i wonder how much performance it will have over IVY/sandy bridge.

Now for my Hardware shuffle it was just a fan upgrade for my HAF922 case. The 200mm side intake fan had a blade break off when i was sticking a screwdriver in through the side of the case "don't ask " Plus i had one of my 120mm Enermax push pull radiator fans start making a horrible noise. So a fan upgrade was needed. The wife took me to microcenter to grab 4 new High quality 120mm fans.

2 fans to replace the side panel 200mm fan and 2 fans for the push pull setup on my 120mm radiator.

I ended up grabbing 4 120mm Cougar Vortex 800rpm to1500rpm fans with the Hydrodynamic bearing with a MTBF 300,000 hr lifespan!!!! Something tells me they wont last 30 years:) I mounted the side panel pair with the rubber mounts that you pull through the fan. As for the radiator they are screwed on. All fans are hooked to my 5 fan controller. The 5th fan is one of my original enemax fans i hooked that up on the bottom of the case in front of the PSU as another intake.
They are Silent when running at 40-50% which is the speed they run at when my fan controller is on auto.....at 100% they do make a slight bit of noise but it is just a whoosh wind noise. My temps have fallen a couple degrees...thats a + Plus they look great and perform great they were a little pricey at 17$ each but i would rec these fans all day long ..the build quality is great. If you want to see them here is the link. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... =cf-v12hpb

You are lucky your family accepts trickle down hardware. I'm still running a WinXP netbook while wife is using a core i3 ultraportable.

I need to upgrade my PC now that you mention it...another 4 gigs of RAM would be nice, and maybe a 128 gig SSD...and maybe an SSD for the tiny laptop I bought too.

kitsura wrote:

You are lucky your family accepts trickle down hardware. I'm still running a WinXP netbook while wife is using a core i3 ultraportable.

The trickle-down is only for (most of) the desktop hardware. Their mobile stuff (daughter's laptop, wife's netbook) was new, and my son typically has the best GPU in the house (which then eventually gets tricked down to someone else), since he's the only one of us who currently plays FPS games. My current laptop was bought used at the 2012 TR BBQ swap-fest.

kitsura wrote:

You are lucky your family accepts trickle down hardware. I'm still running a WinXP netbook while wife is using a core i3 ultraportable.

Then you can be the one that accept trickle down hardware. Who says it has to start with you?

For me the fun is not just about the newer fancier hardware (may be more eyecandies and fps), it is also about being able to mess around inside the chassis or to reconfigure some software, or applying some newly-learned tricks (like imagex recently).

Well... got 2 out of 3 systems built and tested. Just not enough time to get the wife's done too, she'll have to get a rain check (might be able to get that one done on Wed or Thu).

In the process of doing all this, discovered that the old optical mouse that I normally use for my "smoke test" on front panel USB ports appears to be dead. The LED on it still lights up, but the mouse does not function. Oh well, time to rummage through the junk piles for another one, or go buy a $8 generic optical mouse.

Buying an $8 crappy mouse wouldn't be keeping with the spirit of the trickle-down upgrade. The new mouse should be a nice one (e.g.: $30 Logitech G400) that you'll use frequently on another computer. Bump an old mouse down to testing duty.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Buying an $8 crappy mouse wouldn't be keeping with the spirit of the trickle-down upgrade. The new mouse should be a nice one (e.g.: $30 Logitech G400) that you'll use frequently on another computer. Bump an old mouse down to testing duty.

All the candidate mice for trickling down are cordless. Can't just plug them in to see if the USB port is getting power.

What a great topic!

Due to a rare set of circumstances, I will trickle down to myself this time!

Once my new i7 system is up and running, I plan to take a few weeks' break, mostly to recover from the huge outlay of cash for that new system (and to save up for some new monitors)... But eventually, I will move my Q6600 system into an old case (or maybe a new case) for use as either an HTPC/media server or maybe (more likely) just a generalized file or folding server in the living room or a spare bedroom.

In fact, the server idea is intriguing to me, so I may just finally make an honest go of Linux or maybe Microsoft Server or Home Server. This Q6600 is the first trickle-down system in a long long time that is not earmarked for a friend AND is still actually functional, so I am excited by the possibilities.

Sometime in mid to late 2013, I plan to build a dual slot server system or (if prices are motivatingly low enough), maybe an AMD 24 or 32 core server. I might use virtualization on that one to support 24/7 folding and to use it as a network backup repository for all my other devices. At that point, the Q6600 system could become an HTPC or maybe could just be retired/gifted.

Maybe when wife upgrades her notebook with a tablet or equivalent I can trickle down to replace my netbook.

BIF wrote:

But eventually, I will move my Q6600 system into an old case (or maybe a new case) for use as either an HTPC/media server or maybe (more likely) just a generalized file or folding server in the living room or a spare bedroom.

In fact, the server idea is intriguing to me, so I may just finally make an honest go of Linux or maybe Microsoft Server or Home Server. This Q6600 is the first trickle-down system in a long long time that is not earmarked for a friend AND is still actually functional, so I am excited by the possibilities.

My server in the basement is my okd Q6600 after I upgraded to an i7-920. It runs Debian Linux and is a webserver and MythTV backend as well as all kinds of other server type things.

Flying Fox wrote:

The good old holiday hardware hand-em-down, plus may be some reinstalls and major "cleaning" of systems.

I have done my SSD upgrade. Now my old SSD will go to my brother's systems too. Missed the 3TB Red drive sale the other day, so the storage shuffle will have to wait.

Forgot to update: I have successfully migrate my brother's OS drive to my old SSD. I also used EaseUS Partition Master free edition to expand my data partition to take up the whole mechanical drive after the migration was complete. Rebooting was super fast and D3 level loading is a bit more responsive, closer to my own system. BTW, Windows 7 detected my SSD and prevent it from defragging, but the scheduled task still triggers and the volume on the mechanical drive still gets defragged.

Also bought a 2TB Red to add to the WHS setup. And I just pulled the trigger on the 3TB Red to add to my own storage too.

I still owe everyone a write up on my adventure with imagex.

kitsura wrote:

You are lucky your family accepts trickle down hardware. I'm still running a WinXP netbook while wife is using a core i3 ultraportable.

Haha. ULV Core 2 Duo here and my wife has a convertible tablet with ivy bridge core i5, 12 GB of RAM, Win 8 Pro, 128 GB SSD, 500 GB HDD and a docking system.

kitsura wrote:

Maybe when wife upgrades her notebook with a tablet or equivalent I can trickle down to replace my netbook.

Or maybe you could put on the pants and decide that you get the new notebook.

My wife's laptop is a ThinkPad I got for free from a client that told us to secure-wipe the drives and dispose of them. I had to replace the keyboard and use a new hard drive (I went with a 128GB Crucial M4 SSD), but it's been great. Of course, I did a few more tweaks as they were cheap and fun (Core 2 P8700 CPU, internal wireless-N card, RAM upgrade) but it will last her for some time.

The rest of the hardware in the house is really too new for trickle-down to happen. Usually, our hardware trickles down to my friends or parents, or I just swap a part or two at a time. Our desktops are both Sandy Bridge, so's my laptop; the slowest CPU in the house is the Turion II N40L in the server (1.5GHz dual-core), and the upcoming HTPC project gets an i3 Ivy.

kitsura wrote:

You are lucky your family accepts trickle down hardware. I'm still running a WinXP netbook while wife is using a core i3 ultraportable.

Then just make the replacements more often...