PCA Forums

My desktop PC that I use still has XP using a P5KE motherboard with a Q6600 CPU. I have a brand new Asus P5KE motherboard: http://support.asus.com/Download.aspx?S ... 5K-E&os=17

that has been in my closet since 2008. I'd like to build a new desktop system with maybe a faster CPU instead of the Q6600. Would it be worth using this as a new build with Win7?

I also have been looking at this one on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-P8Z77-V-PRO- ... X7Y6HSF9DP

With the P5KE since it's an older board, I would probably have to get a USB3 card since it still has USB2. Just throwing some ideas out there since XP is dead and I have to upgrade it, but at the same time I'm trying to be practical and not spend a bunch of money on a completely new system. The hard drives that I have in my XP system go back to December 2007 when I built it. They both still work and never had an issue with either one. I use a Seagate as a boot drive, and a 500 gig partitioned into 3 drives.

Forgot to mention: I also looked at this mobo: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/asus-p8p67
as I built one of these for my brother.

I would probably move up to the LGA 1155 so I could run a quad core and have the USB3, SATA3, etc. onboard. That would future proof you pretty well, even though lots of things don't use quad cores. If you don't want to spend a lot of $$ there are a lot of 1155 refurb boxes out there with Win 7, and you could just aff your current drives as data drives. To install win7 you'll have to wipe at least one partition/drive, because there is no upgrade path from XP. There are a lot of decent mobos around that are not too expensive.

I have my old office machine, which is XP, and bought a copy of Win7 to being it up to speed. Since it is not a gaming (well light gaming ) rig, I've been looking at some the the quad core refurbs as well. It's and old dual core Dell AMD rig.

If money is tight, why bother? You don't HAVE to get off XP. Just use a browser other than IE and safe practices.

The only compelling reason to move to Win7 is if this is a gaming PC. There are a fair nunber of games that don't support XP.

If this is primarily a workstation, that Q6600 was a great quad core CPU. You can always slap Win7 on it.

BTW there IS an awkward upgrade path from XP to Win7. Upgrade to Vista first (even with an invalid license Vista will still install and boot for a few days - long enough to then upgrade it to Win7. I've done this a few times. However, I'd recommend a clean install. It's amazing how fast a PC runs with a fresh OS install.

USB 3.0 cards work fine. I have one on my main workstation which is a first gen Core i7.

It's light gaming now for me. I only play TF2 a Steam game as of right now. I did play Diablo III for a while, but that is off my rig.

If you were to use that Asus PK5 mobo, what CPU would you install? If I do build a new rig, it will be with win7 fresh install as I have 1 license left that I can use. I would also plan to use a 120 gig SSD as a boot drive and a 1 TB second drive that would hold everything else.

Well that mobo is Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad era. Frankly, that Q6600 was one of the best all-around processors from that era. Yeah they made some premium faster ones (Q9500 for instance) but it wasn't THAT much faster then the Q6600 to warrant the cost at the time. I have no idea where you would find one now.

I see no reason to replace your current mobo & processor unless you are willing to jump up to a current generation Core i5 processor, otherwise there's not much point.

While that Q6600 is starting to get long in the tooth, it is still a great CPU and it's a true Quad core CPU.

Yeah, I'm with FP. That's still a decent setup. Use the money on a good heatsink, SSD, & video card first.