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p645n
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ASUS P6X58D Premium Question -- Accident Leaves Me UnPlugged For 3 Years

Mon Aug 29, 2016 3:41 pm

An accident forced me unable to use the internet for the past 3 Years -- Oh My, How Things Have Changed! I’ve a covey of questions concerning components that have sat during my hiatus. I purchased a Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard, an Intel i7 920 series 2 & some shifty RAM (shifty as it repeatedly crashed a friends machine when installed in it).
RAM -- I want to run 4 x 4MB or 2x 8MB sticks of DDR3 in the P6X58D. Will the board support that? As the 920 was an Overclockers delight what would one recommend? And bang for the buck is always good.
SSD’s -- I’m thinking of a 256 Gb Samsung 850 or 950 Pro. Will the P6X58D support a PCIe configuration, a SATA or must I get a??? Note: Spending a few bucks more for a good SSD is OK as I plan to use it in a future machine…I’ve several 2TB drives for storage. 
Thanks in advance to all.
Last edited by Flying Fox on Mon Aug 29, 2016 6:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ASUS P6X58D Premium Question -- Accident Leaves Me UnPlugged For 3 Years

Mon Aug 29, 2016 3:47 pm

The good news is, CPU tech hasn't advanced much in the past few years. Aside from having previous-gen memory tech, you're still in pretty good shape on the CPU/motherboard front. And at least DDR3 isn't old enough that it has gone out of production, so prices are still reasonable. Go for some name brand DDR3, you should be fine.

And definitely a SSD.
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TheRazorsEdge
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Re: ASUS P6X58D Premium Question -- Accident Leaves Me UnPlugged For 3 Years

Mon Aug 29, 2016 3:56 pm

The board specs call for a maximum of 24 GB RAM, which is 4 GB per slot. The 4x 4 GB option is safer---although 2x 8 GB might work, I would not recommend it at all.

However, that system supports triple-channel memory so you will not be using it to its potential with an incorrect number of DIMMs; they should be installed in sets of three. You could go with: 3x 4 GB for 12 GB total, 6x 4 GB for 24 GB total, or 3x 2 GB and 3x 4 GB for a total of 18 GB.

That CPU is somewhat old, but there have been only incremental improvements in the last few years so it should be adequate if overclocked. If it will run in the 3.0-3.5 GHz range, you will probably be good for a little while.

Switching to a solid state drive will probably give you the most noticeable performance bump; in addition, the drive can carry over when you decide to upgrade in the future. The same will not be true of the RAM, as both AMD and Intel are retiring DDR3 support.
 
demani
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Re: ASUS P6X58D Premium Question -- Accident Leaves Me UnPlugged For 3 Years

Mon Aug 29, 2016 4:47 pm

TheRazorsEdge wrote:
The board specs call for a maximum of 24 GB RAM, which is 4 GB per slot. The 4x 4 GB option is safer---although 2x 8 GB might work, I would not recommend it at all.

However, that system supports triple-channel memory so you will not be using it to its potential with an incorrect number of DIMMs; they should be installed in sets of three. You could go with: 3x 4 GB for 12 GB total, 6x 4 GB for 24 GB total, or 3x 2 GB and 3x 4 GB for a total of 18 GB.

That CPU is somewhat old, but there have been only incremental improvements in the last few years so it should be adequate if overclocked. If it will run in the 3.0-3.5 GHz range, you will probably be good for a little while.

Switching to a solid state drive will probably give you the most noticeable performance bump; in addition, the drive can carry over when you decide to upgrade in the future. The same will not be true of the RAM, as both AMD and Intel are retiring DDR3 support.

I've done some testing on production (ie media production, compression, video processing etc) and more RAM almost always trumps triple vs. dual channel. There are a few edge cases, but generally, having an extra slot's worth of real ram is better than the speed advantage of the smaller amount of RAM.
But yes to SSD 100x over- nothing else will be such an obvious upgrade.
 
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Re: ASUS P6X58D Premium Question -- Accident Leaves Me UnPlugged For 3 Years

Mon Aug 29, 2016 8:20 pm

Before you spend too much money, I would verify the base system is stable. Sounds like you have bad memory, so no way for you to actually verify you have a good system. Try using only one DIMM and maybe you can find one good stick to check out your PC first.

Not sure how much you spent, but the following will be more powerful: (had OC-ed Q6600 before, not a lot more powerful, but not wasting money on old tech either... DDR4 can be used in other systems,..)
(from ca.pcpartpicker.com, CA dollars)

$148 - Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor
$76 - ASRock H110M-ITX Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard
$70 - Team Elite Plus 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (8GB is OK, 16GB maybe overkill, for running a heavy game and heavy browsing at same time; but 32GB is too much unless you know you need it)

$114 - Samsung SSD 850 EVO 2.5" SATA III 250GB
or
$90 - Samsung 750 EVO 2.5" SATA III 250GB - newer, cheaper and slightly slower than 850

-- Samsung 850 EVO is top tier versus any other SSD. The 950 Pro is too powerful, like getting 64GB RAM,.. you will never see any difference in your usage case vs the 850 EVO. (From reading between lines)

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