Tell me how to upgrade my toaster

[Thulack]

Originally Posted by Videri [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Innnteresting. Really, a laptop?? Wouldn't a desktop in a similar price range be preferable?

i got this for 200 bucks during christmas and it came with a 120gb SSD instead of the 500gb SATA drive(was from Woot.com not Ebay). http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI...887&rmvSB=true

Only complaint is the display isnt the greatest but for 200 bucks the thing is built like a tank(its military grade. you can drop this thing and it would hold up) and it can play even some modern games semi well. My son used it to play plants vs zombies garden warfare while on vacation and it easily handled EQ.i hooked it up to a monitor while playing as the display is rather small. Not saying you couldnt spent 100 dollars more and get something around that with a decent display but for me this was a very good investment for me for 200 dollars. Another 2gb of ram(if PC allows should help) but its also going towards something that sooner later is going to bite the dust.

[Baler]

Make sure you check your mobo to see if it can accept another stick of ram.
I highly encourage you to do some research before buying to make sure you'll be able to use it and at its fullest capabilities.

[Videri]

Originally Posted by Baler [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Make sure you check your mobo to see if it can accept another stick of ram.
I highly encourage you to do some research before buying to make sure you'll be able to use it and at its fullest capabilities.

It can't. All 4 slots are full of puny half-gig ram twigs. I'll get some help figuring out what kind of ram to use and I'll go to 4GB or more.

[Daywolf]

Originally Posted by Videri [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It can't. All 4 slots are full of puny half-gig ram twigs. I'll get some help figuring out what kind of ram to use and I'll go to 4GB or more.

Meh yeah pull 'em when you can, if you decide to upgrade. You might be able to leave a pair in there though, but not always a good idea if the new ram is a different brand. If you want to play newer games I'd go 8gb in total. 4gb is good though. Best to get the right type of ram of course.

[Thulack]

Originally Posted by Daywolf [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Meh yeah pull 'em when you can, if you decide to upgrade. You might be able to leave a pair in there though, but not always a good idea if the new ram is a different brand. If you want to play newer games I'd go 8gb in total. 4gb is good though. Best to get the right type of ram of course.

Honestly if he is running a single processor CPU thats gotta be a old ass mobo that might not even support more then 4gb of ram. Plus if he doesnt have 64 bit windows he would have to upgrade that as well.

[Daywolf]

Originally Posted by Thulack [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Honestly if he is running a single processor CPU thats gotta be a old ass mobo that might not even support more then 4gb of ram. Plus if he doesnt have 64 bit windows he would have to upgrade that as well.

It's a 2 core chip. Now Vista, they did that, shipped systems witg 32bit OS on multi-core chips, so fail that was. But most were shipped right by the time win7 came around, though still some with poor memory specs. But in any case, the book that came with the system will say what the 'right type of ram' is for that system. Hah 2gb on 4 slots sounds like an HP.

Oh and if were the freak chance it's 32bit win7, just get at least the free win10 upgrade.

[CmaN]

You can post your board make and model and someone here or myself can help you out.

[Videri]

Update: turns out the power unit and motherboard are burned out. Doc says it'll cost $280 to have him replace them. I spent $300 on this used toaster about 2 years ago.

Looks like I'm in the market for a new one. Probably max $500. I'll look for something with a 100+GB SSD and 8 GB of ram. I'd appreciate any suggestions of other criteria to look for, places to look, or particular models.

[Doctor Jeff]

Originally Posted by Videri [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Update: turns out the power unit and motherboard are burned out. Doc says it'll cost $280 to have him replace them. I spent $300 on this used toaster about 2 years ago.

Looks like I'm in the market for a new one. Probably max $500. I'll look for something with a 100+GB SSD and 8 GB of ram. I'd appreciate any suggestions of other criteria to look for, places to look, or particular models.

This might not be quite what you're looking for, but the friends that I send this guide to have had great success in building budget gaming PCs.

You can mix and match to get what you want, but it serves as a good basis to fall back on.

It seems to be updated frequently, but I could be wrong. In any case, even the $300 PC listed should run EQ flawlessly and quickly, assuming you opt for an SSD.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PCMasterRace/wiki/builds

[Loke]

I only browsed this thread quickly, so sorry if someone else already beat me to some of this info.

First, in reference to microcenter suggestions - if you have one near you it is definitely worth buying some components there. Their processor prices are ridiculous, however, I've been told that their strategy is often to sell processors cheap, and even sometimes at a loss for sales, but bank on the fact that most people buying a new processor are also going to snag at least a mobo and probably some memory, and potentially other components as well. So if you build your own, hit them up for the processor for sure, but shop around on other pieces.

Also if you're building your own, definitely wait for the new Pascal and Polaris video cards. Everything I've heard about the nvidia pascal cards indicates they're going to be affordable and a big step forward from the 9 series (which is crazy since the 9 series was pretty dope, at least in terms of power consuption to performance). I've also heard the new AMD polaris cards might rival the nvidia cards, but I have no idea how much that is based in reality vs just being wishful thinking from everyone who hates seeing a couple companies dominate the market. Polaris is using a smaller architecture (14nm vs 16nm), and potentially GDDR5X in their non-flagship models, so definitely worth a look.

As for laptop vs desktop, unless you plan to be on the the move a lot I can't really see a good argument for a laptop. Slowly upgrading my desktop over time has saved me a ton of money, and throwing the stuff I replace into a second PC means it is still useful. There is some upgrading you can do for a laptop, but eventually youre going to have to replace the whole thing. If you do go laptop I would definitely suggest future proofing a bit by ensuring it has usb-c and a good processor. Usb-c will hopefully let you use an external graphics card soon (razor already released a docking station), so the processor will end up being what forces an upgrade.

I've been doing some research on parts since I'm thinking about finally upgrading my i5 2500k with a broadwell-e, so if you decide to build your own, feel free to post a budget and I can probably offer some suggestions.

Edit: read some more of the thread and thought I'd add a couple suggestions...

If you do build your own and considering your price range, look for some old Haswell deals. Slickdeals.net has had quite a few deals on 4690 and 4790 + mobo combos ever since the skylake processors were released. Those are i7 processors, which you probably dont need, so look for deals on the haswell i5s (i5 4xxx) too. I'm pretty sure I saw some 4690 + mobo + memory deals in the $200-300 range though. Could definitely add a PSU, small SSD, and reuse HDD and case from your old PC to bring the total in under $500.