Upgrading vs "Buy a new Computer!"

[Dirk Broer]

When you are working with a system that's getting too old/slow/inefficient to get you enough BOINC credits or do (other) meaningful work with it you are left with two choices: Upgrading or "Buy a new Computer!". Lets first choose the latter approach, and see what the prices are for a decent system.
As I live in Europe Newegg is out of the question, and so is a host of other US and Australian companies as I do not like to pay more for postage and packing than for the system itself.

Fortunately for me there is a company like Alternate (BTW: our local Dutch branch has BOINCStats Willy working there somewhere) to look for prices. A quick look there shows me that a new Bulldozer-based system will cost me around 800 Euro's. This in a µATX Sharkoon MS140 casing with a PSU of 450 Watt, being fitted with a FX-8150 CPU, 8Gb of DDR3-1333 Memory, 120Gb SSD, 2Tb HDD and a 2Gb GT 640 video card on a MSI 760GM-P23 (FX) motherboard.

Strange, I have always thought that BUlldozer support only came with the AMD-900 series of chipsets (plus the AMD 890GX), but this is actually good news because it allows for the use of µATX casings for the Bulldozer. The 900 series is only to be seen on full ATX boards. It also means lots of people can upgrade their system to Bulldozer/Piledriver (make sure to read up from which BIOS up on the site of your mobo manufacturer).

Now we know what a new configuration costs, let's re-consider upgrading.
As an example I give you my Siemens-Fujitsu Scaleo P2,
fitted with an ECS AMD690VM-FMH motherboard, for now fitted with 4 Gb DDR2 and a GT 315 video card (was originally a GT 8400) and a AMD Athlon X2 5000 CPU.
Upgrading it to take as much memory as the Alternate sytem has costs me at least 100 Euro's. A new 2Gb GT 640 costs around 80 Euro's. A new 450 Watt PSU (the 350 Watt PSU that comes with the Siemens-Fujitsu is hopelessy short on cables/connectors) can be found for prices ranging from a mere 23 (MS-N450-VAL) to an astounding 168 Euro's (be quiet! Straight Power E8 450W). A 120Gb SSD costs at least 70 Euro's, a 2Tb HDD 85 Euro's. If I do not upgrade CPU and motherboard, the components so far cost me 335 Euro's plus what I want to spend on a PSU. So let's say I could be ready for 400 Euro's, but I would still be having the old AM2 mobo with it's limitations plus a mere dual-core CPU. That's hardly an increased BOINC performance, apart from the video card (But no more complaints from The Lattice Project about too little memory, or stalled projects because FreeHAL has eaten all RAM and refuses to release it). One could argue that the new disks are not needed and that I could better buy the best CPU that will fit in the mobo, but here the age of the AM2 socket gives trouble.
What if a AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE will be fitted (costs as much as the 2Tb HDD), but the system fails to start up?

An extra FX-8150 would cost me some 165 Euro, a µATX MSI 760GM-P23 (FX) -really the cheapest solution- can be found for as little as 40 Euro's. Fitting it with 8Gb DDR3 costs as little as a few cents more than 30 Euro. So when I replace the innards as well I lose 205 Euro more on components, but I earn 70 of them back in memory requirements, so it is an extra 135 euro for an 8-core system as compared to a dual-core. Total upgrade thus 535 Euro's, giving some room for extra's as compared to the 800 Euro system.
Of course this form of upgrading is actually building a new computer, the only thing left is the casing of the old one. But it shows it still pays off to self-build your system.