Worthwhile upgrade?

I'm thinking about buying a computer to do home recording with. It is set up for that purpose by Sonica Labs: Antec P180 Tower, Intel Core Duo 2.3 GHz (liquid cooled), 965 motherboard, 2 megs RAM, two big hard drives, Windows XP Home, two years old. The seller wants $499. It also comes with Kotakt 2, a good if slightly old sampling program. Three questions - 1) whether this seems like a decent deal, 2) whether the CPU is getting a little long in the tooth and outdated, 3) whether it would be difficult, expensive and/or worthwhile to upgrade the CPU to something faster, and what that upgrade should be. I think I'd want to add a couple megs of RAM regardless. Thanks in advance for your input. - Sam

 

First I would find out what is the exact maker/model# of that motherboard as 965 is just the generic Intel chipset. From there you could find out how much of a CPU you can stuff into it. From what I've seen, maybe a Core 2 Duo extreme which also has an extreme price. Something more reasonable would be 3GHz or so @ around $150.

I would assume that you have a decent mobo as watercooling is never needed on a crap board. I would also assume this CPU is being overclocked for extra speed, how far is he taking it? If close to 2.8GHz or more it's a wash with replacing the CPU, I really wouldn't.t spend the money on upgrading the CPU at all.. What other boards are in there for sound if any. How expensive is that Kotakt software. All things to take into consideration.

One last thing, 1GB extra memory would be fine as as much as 3/4 of the next GB could be lost due to hardware restrictions. If you don't know watercooling then I'd be wary of that too if it starts getting leaks etc., and it's also a big expense to install a custom loop.

 

Thanks so much! I'm researching the motherboard right now. - Sam

 

The motherboard is: Intel DG965RY. Does that help?

 

You found the key indicator Intel DG965RY which are OEM and very limited mobos:

RAM (DDR2):

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/dg965ry/sb/CS-026602.htm

The mobo:

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/dsktpboards/dg965ry

The CPUs (LGA775):

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/dg965ry/sb/CS-026603.htm
(of interest here there are NO 2.3GHz CPUs listed!)

With that in mind and the complete omission of the critical factor of the CPU details for $499 it is seeming like someone trying to "pull the wool over your eyes". Liquid cooling on "sub-standard" parts equates to performance of "reasonable-quality" parts!

I wouldn't go near it as it would be good money after bad! You could by a "new system build" for that much on stock cooling that will easily "run circles around".

 

Thanks Bold Eagle! You folks have saved me a major disappointment!

 

Ya, Bold Eagle really summed it up well and caught what I didn't catch at first.:cool Now, figure out what you want to spend and start a new thread if you wish and we'll take a look. Good luck.