The Piecemeal Upgrade part 1

One cannot help be impressed with the gaming power of a new socket AM3 system from AMD, or the sheer computational power of an Intel i7 and even i5 system.  Comparing them to an OEM system build from just a couple of years ago can be embarrassing.   Running software designed today, may not even be possible on an older system, and if it does run, could experience all sorts of performance problems: Stuttering video on HD playback, freezing, crashing or overheating of your system.  All of which will do more for generating frustration than productivity.  What options do you have other than buying the latest OEM PC from Dell, HP or other large company with a credit plan?

A budget minded consumer may just purchase a second generation hardware system from a smaller company for much less than retail cost.  This is a viable alternative, but leaves you with a system that could already be End of Life, if not fast approaching it.  While second generation systems do save you money initially, as the system matures and needs upgrading, parts for the system end up costing more than current generation system as manufacturers no longer produce parts for it and demand exceeds supply.  A perfect for instance, is socket 775 from Intel.  Currently DDR2 prices are very low.  This is due to a glut manufacturing process, and people moving to DDR3 for the AMD socket AM3 and Intel’s i5/i7 series PCs.  (Supply exceeds, demand).

However the previous generation DDR, is relatively expensive.  Although 256 MB and 512 MB sticks are relatively cheap, motherboards have a limited number of memory slots, so upgrading to 2 or 4 Gigabytes of RAM (the accepted minimums for a productivity machine currently), would require 1 or 2 GB sticks.  The higher demand and lack of supply, drives the prices up.  SDRAM and RAMBUS in the 512 MB and larger category is even more expensive, costing as much or more than an entire PC that would use these memory standards.  Price/performance is a term you will read constantly on tech boards around the web, and is paramount to a piece-meal upgrade.

Piecemeal is defined as gradually, or more appropriately, ‘one piece at a time.’  This is a very accurate description of how to transform an older OEM rig into a modern day powerhouse, capable of ripping through spreadsheets, High Definition video streaming, the latest video game from Crytek or converting a CD/DVD collection to a digital format.  You can not jump into a piecemeal upgrade just by buying better components to your existing machine without looking to the newer stuff and seeing where it fits into the larger scheme of things however.  These blog posts will cover the steps of performing a series of upgrades to your PC, identifying which pieces are recyclable, and which pieces have a decent value to sell on eBay to help fund the upgrade process.

• pt2 Identifying and categorizing your current inventory. pt 2.1 Peripherals and pt 2.2 Components.
• Steps to take in upgrade process. Platforms to build as a stepping stone to modern chipsets.
• Data protection. Data redundancy, online storage and temporary backups.
• The case.  Adventure into modding.
• Tweaking, overclocking and benchmarking. (A descent into madness and addiction)

These steps will be discussed and explained in the coming weeks. This post will be updated with hyper-links when available.