Hi TechPeople,

I have an overclocked system housed in a Vapochill XE case. It has an Abit IC7-MAX3 motherboard, 3.2GHz Pentium 4 (currently at 3.6), 2GBs Geil Platinum RAM, 36GB Raptor and 2x120GB HDs, Radeon 9600Pro.

I mainly do 3D animation (3DsMax), along with video editing and compositing. I've had the system for three years and I like it a lot, but I'm tempted to get a newer system with dual or quad processors. I've read though, that my existing system is considered pretty good still and, while more cores would be good for rendering, clock speed is still an issue with many processes in 3Dsmax (like particle updating for example - grrr!).

Obviously a newer system will cost a lot, so I wondered what you guys would advise here. Is it worth upgrading if I can't afford top clock speeds?

Also, if I were to sell the existing P4 system, can anyone suggest a good place to advertise? (ps. I'm based in London, UK)
Would it be better to sell as individual items or all together?

Any advice appreciated,

Zack.

You have a nice setup. I would not upgrade unless there is a great deal of use and wear on this one... But I would add a second hard drive to backup all your data periodically. You will not see a great deal of improvement yet... wait until they get software perfected for the dual or quad processors.
You can get a 500 GB Seagate hard drive with a 16 MB buffer and five year warranty for $140 at www.tigerdirect.com, www.zipzoomfly.com, www.directron.com and others.

There are serval places- craigslists (http://london.craigslist.org/) or you could place it on ebay as well and put it for buy now at the price you want for it, by the way I have a core 2 duo e6300 (1.86ghz) system and its lighting fast, dont let the 1.86 ghz fool you, with 2 ghz of ram and a 250 gb harddrive plus a nvidia pci-e card and its amazing, and its even running Windows vista home premium.

Wow man..you currently using the "refrigeration" part of that case. Suprised your not Ocing to like 5.0. Are you planning on selling the case, or just the parts?

Thanks for the replies.

I'm still tempted to sell it and upgrade. I would be looking to sell the entire system, I just meant it might be easier/more profitable to sell in bits.

As for the clock speed, The guys I bought the system off had it going at 4GHz but during one very hot summer I turned it down as I was overnight rendering (CPUs at 100%!). They've now disappeared and I have no clue how to turn the speed up without getting error messages saying the processor is unworkable. As you say though Twite, it can go faster (though maybe not stable enough for 3D work) - I'm good with software not hardware!

I guess I will put it on eBay and see what people will offer me - I think this will be the deciding factor.

Any offers here, let me know. (ps. the system runs XP pro, has a Sony DVD single layer combo drive, and comes with akasa fans and control unit).

Thanks,

Z.

welcome to TechSpot zigzag

I would sell your Vapochill case by itself and sell your other parts (the ones you don't want to re-use) together in a bundle deal (or separately). reason being; that vapochill case is probably worth more than everything inside it.

people currently looking for a older system like a P4 are most likely on a tight budget, chances are they can't afford [or simply aren't interested in] phase change cooling. on the flipside, people who are looking for a phase change system (example: vapochill) probably want it for their own [newer] processor, and likely have no interest in the P4 system you would be selling with it.

the point is, people would likely be interested in 1 or the other, and not your entire system as a whole. if you sold it as one complete system as-is, you would probably get much less than it's actually worth.

whatever you choose to do, good luck :wave:

How much you looking to get for that case. I may be interested. Pm me if necessary

BTW..I have paypal..

I might be interested in the 2 Gigs of RAM, what PC type are they? You can send me a PM if you like.

Thank you