Question / Help Hardware Questions, specifically my hard drive and processor

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cloudcarry

New Member
I am a league of legends player and I want to stream league (not very cpu instensive, afaik), but the problem is that I have a 2 core processor. I am planning on upgrading to a 6 core amd (the 8 core costs about 100$ more). Is there anything else I should upgrade for streaming?

Basically, is the 6 core amd processor going to be good enough for livestreaming, playing league and running music and twitch chat? (I am sure that it is, I guess I just figured why not ask).
I already replaced my stock ram and am planning on getting another kingston ddr3 memory stick 4gb, for a total of 8. (I know this is fine because of research I have done).

Also my hard drive is already 7 years old (from a friend that did my build for free and just used one of his hard drives), but the rest of my computer is closer to 4 years old. This is probably the part where I need the most advice. I am aware of potentially cloning my old drive (should I just get the new one) or the possibility to just have both hard drives, even if I don't know how to do it myself, right now.

But again, will my hard drive (320gb western digital) of about 7 years old, be good enough to stream? I am of the understanding it has very little impact on streaming, but if I have a better primary disk data transfer rate, I may be able to squeeze a bit more fps out of my games or make it less likely I will lose all of my information (and the OS) to a hard drive failure.

An ssd is kind of out of the question, as money is an issue, but I would be open to upgrading to 1 tb if that's necessary.
Also, I understand that you can sell your old computer components to recuperate some of the costs, so value is really the deciding factor here.
Sorry if this is extraneous, but in case you were wondering heres the links for the items in question:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDeal ... bo.1470222
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 2W00YU4026
(I'm fairly certain the speed of my old harddrive may not be the same as this new one, but I don't know for sure)

edit: also why are 1 tb hard drives practically the same price as smaller ones?
the 750 GB (select these by clicking on the right) drive is normally 99.99 and still more expensive than the 1tb drive (which is 69.99) on sale for 84.99

Please help me understand why this is and help me make a decision on a hard drive. Thank you.
 
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pacholol

Member
Re: Hardware Questions, specifically my hard drive and proce

Have you considered that you have to change your Motherboard ?
 
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cloudcarry

New Member
Re: Hardware Questions, specifically my hard drive and proce

what do you mean i have to change my motherboard? I think the one I have is good enough, although I have no way to know for sure.
 
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pacholol

Member
Re: Hardware Questions, specifically my hard drive and proce

cloudcarry said:
what do you mean i have to change my motherboard? I think the one I have is good enough, although I have no way to know for sure.
Click to expand...
Check out if the sockets fit with the procesor you want to buy. The one you want to buy its AM3+ socket
 
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cloudcarry

New Member
Re: Hardware Questions, specifically my hard drive and proce

ok thank you for your input. I will check that out. Also do you have an opinion on the old hard drive? I'm thinking it may be better to just get the 1tb since it's a really good deal. (for some reason the one with less size is more expensive).

Also, should I potentially just go ahead and upgrade my motherboard? I think if I put this upgrade off I can afford to change out the major components, I just don't want to upgrade the entire unit and get a new case and all that.

edit: here is my motherboard, but it doesn't say am3+ only am3.. so does that mean i may as well swap out the hard drive, motherboard, and processor?
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M4A77TD/

"AMD® Socket AM3 multi-core processors with unique L3 cache and delivers better overclocking capabilities with less power consumption"

shit, while we're at it, my video card is ati radeon hd 5500 series. is that good enough or would it just be better to upgrade all of that, and IF that is the case, at that point I may as well get a whole new case and components?
 
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pacholol

Member
Re: Hardware Questions, specifically my hard drive and proce

cloudcarry said:
ok thank you for your input. I will check that out. Also do you have an opinion on the old hard drive? I'm thinking it may be better to just get the 1tb since it's a really good deal. (for some reason the one with less size is more expensive).

Also, should I potentially just go ahead and upgrade my motherboard? I think if I put this upgrade off I can afford to change out the major components, I just don't want to upgrade the entire unit and get a new case and all that.
Click to expand...

Well by mistake I got a 500 gb 5400 rpm hard drive (WD Blue). The only part where you can notice something it's on loading the game, since I had some issues with my pc I tougth that changing the HDD would fix it but I was wrong, but since I made some research I found that people recommend 7200rpm for gaming, so looking a hard drive to be that speed should be good. I may be wrong but I think that prices go depending on the hard disk rpm's and cache size, howevere there is more stuff wich I dont know.
Anyway an SSD it's the fastest rigth now and you load the games very fast thats all I can tell you.

I dont know how much money you have to spend on the upgrade but here are my parts (I can stream 720p 60fps) - Core i5 3570K, Gtx 660 TI Asus , Seagate 7200rpm HDD 1TB (cheapest one out there) 8gb Kingston.
However Intel and Nvidia are more expensive than Amd and Ati so check wich parts correspond (or are equal) to mines and that can be like an refference for you.

IF you are wondering the people (or most of the streamers) are doing 720p 30fps , when you join a stream and there is a xanbot try to type !quality to see that.

I think it has to fit, since it's am3 - http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/list ... 4A77TD&p=1
(I'm more used with intel to be honest)
 
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cloudcarry

New Member
Re: Hardware Questions, specifically my hard drive and proce

so does am3 socket work on am3+? I'm assuming that if it wouldn't I would either need to find a processor that is am3 socket or replace the motherboard as well?

again, thanks for your input.
 
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pacholol

Member
Re: Hardware Questions, specifically my hard drive and proce

cloudcarry said:
so does am3 socket work on am3+? I'm assuming that if it wouldn't I would either need to find a processor that is am3 socket or replace the motherboard as well?

again, thanks for your input.
Click to expand...

I'm just not used to this amd sry I can tell you if it was intel but its phenom fx and stuff wich i dont know it for sure, if any other user here pls ^
 
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cloudcarry

New Member
Re: Hardware Questions, specifically my hard drive and proce

update: For anyone perusing these forums that would benefit from my particular case.

So I've decided that I am going to go with a new motherboard, as my old one doesn't support the new processors that are out, and I can't get anything above a quad core if I stuck with my current motherboard. After talking to my friend and doing a lot of digging on my own, I found a decently priced alternative to the most popular motherboard (I really don't believe in spending 200$ on a motherboard).

I had recently upgraded my 2, 2gig memory sticks for a 4 gig kingston hyperx ddr3 something or other, so I figured I would hold off on buying another 4 gig stick until later as to have access to black friday deals on amazon.com now.

Here are my components that I'm buying:

1 tb hard drive from western digital
http://www.amazon.com/WD-Blue-Desktop-H ... 0088PUEPK/

amd fx-6300 6-core processor black edition
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009O7YORK/

GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-S2P(rev 5.0) AM3+ AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-SB710-Ch ... 0054OWT0G/

Kingston HyperX 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory Model KHX1600C9D3/4G (same as my other one, but I'm not buying this yet)

http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Technolo ... 004JO3L0Y/


So, to save money on my build, I'm timing this on black friday sales offered by amazon this week and using my old case.

If the components don't work in this case, then buying a new case/fans/powersupply and other things would be a minimal cost because I'm saving 50$ + by buying these components now. My graphics card is also good enough, and at some point if I wanted to upgrade that, I would be able to do that without much difficulty. I have also decided to keep my old harddrive, because my friend said that it wouldn't hurt anything and seems like the least labor intensive and feasible solution.

It should be noted that anytime you are going to mount a processor to a motherboard, you need to use thermal compound. I didn't know this, myself, but I do now and hopefully anyone that reads this will think ahead to do so. I am also going to get a can of duster to clean out my case when this all goes down (I'm probably just going to order that with everything else), as my friend will be helping me put the thing together. Remember, if you don't know how to do something, always do your research.
 
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