Upgrading my machine?

biffa · 17 May 2020

Hi folks,

My machine is an Acer aspire e700 desktop. Bit of a relic by today's standards I admit.

Acer Aspire e700 Specifications - Desktop PCs - Home PCs - PC World Australia

Spec can be seen in the attached link.

I'm thinking of using it as a home media server however the original supplied PSU has only 4 data connectors - two for optical and two for hard drives.

I'm wondering if I can upgrade the PSU to a 700watt unit with more data connectors for extra hard drives, the motherboard has 6 data connectors so that isnt an issue.

The PSU I have seen is the one below:

EVGA BR 700 Watt 80+ Bronze PSU/Power Supply LN90864 - 100-BR-0700-K3 | SCAN UK

I've used the outer vision PSU calculator and based the cpu, graphics card (Nvidia 8400gs) x4 2tb wd20ears (wd 2tb 5.4k) drives, a few added usb devices etc it's showing as below 500w so figuring the 700w unit posted above will do fine for quite some time.

It wil be running 24/7 and will do video converting using handbrake or similar so CPU will be getting used heavily for a fair few hours a day.

Is there any issues with what I propose ?

Thanks in advance
Rob

iko22 · 18 May 2020

Hello biffa
Your main concern should be size (form factor) of the PSU. The one you have chosen is an ATX sized PSU. I think you have an ATX sized computer case, so the PSU should fit in the case alright.
Yes, you can upgrade the PSU to a higher specification. I've done this myself on my computers. Replacing the generic PSU is easy. You may want to take photos of the wiring layout, before you remove any cables. There maybe a couple of cable ties to cut, before the old PSU can be removed. It is up to you, if you want to replace the cable ties when you finished.
700W is a bit large, as it probably is twice the capacity of the one you are thinking of replacing. If you go for bronze certified PSU, then a 500W, 55W or 600W should be fine - HDD don't require that much additional power.

biffa · 18 May 2020

Thanks iko,

My tower size isn't a full size ATX, more like a midi ATX or something. I haven't actually found anywhere that states the proper size weirdly.

I thought I would need something bigger than 500w as when I used the calculators for psu's it showed around 450watts would be needed

Could I ask though, what is the bronze certified all about?

Thanks
Rob

biffa · 18 May 2020

Update, gone and bought a cooler master 500w PSU.

I'm just wondering about installing an SSD though..

If I installed Windows 7 on the SSD, would this increase boot times, also having 8tb hard drives, if I setup 32gb of SSD caching would this be for just one of the hard drives or would this be for all hard drives, and would this increase the transfer speed for example sending saying 500gb from one drive to another, would SSD cache increase the speed the 500gb file is sent?

Thanks

iko22 · 18 May 2020

I hope that you are happy with your choice of power supply.

A SSD should decrease boot times. The SSD cache is just for the SSD. You would need a chipset that supports SSD caching.

Some newer HDDs have a SSD cache built in to the drive. These disk drives are known as Solid State Hybrid HDs (SSHD). They are the same as a HDD, but with a solid state cache, enabling faster I/O's.

SIW2 · 18 May 2020

If I installed Windows 7 on the SSD, would this increase boot times

Yes. Even with sata2 connectors you should notice the difference. There would be an even bigger difference with sata3 , but I doubt you have that on a 775 motherboard. It is possible to get a pci to sata3 expansion card.

What is worth the cost on old hardware is something only you can decide. Nothing to lose by buying an ssd or a psu because they can be transferred to a different/newer hardware. Whether you want to buy exansion cards etc for the old hardware is a different question.

A lot of people upgraded from their old socket 775 machines to ivybridge ( socket 1155) over the past year or two. That is because huge numbers of used ivybridge business machines came on the market, and were bought up by resellers - either sold as complete machines - or the parts were pulled and sold separately. Ivybridge motherboards were going for £30-£40, quad core cpus also £30 or so. 2x4gb ram could be had for about £15-£20.

townsbg · 18 May 2020

You should upgrade your memory. According to the specs you can have 4 gb. You didn't specify how much you have. You might also looking into upgrading your cpu. There isn't too much more intensive a task for a computer than video editing except heavy gaming.

strollin · 19 May 2020

When purchasing a new PSU, concentrate on it's output power rather than the number of power connectors it has. As long as the PSU has enough wattage to handle the extra drives, you can use power splitters to provide power for them.

biffa · 26 May 2020

Thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated.

A couple of days ago I fitted a few bits....
Original 250w PSU swapped for the 500w mwe white unit

Original ram swapped and now have 8gb ram installed

Fitted a new bios battery but broke the small black plastic retainer that the battery sits in. The new battery is in and makes connection but still get the CMOS default loaded press F1 to continue message at first boot and have to update Windows 7 clock myself. ( Had to do this for the last year or so due to the old battery being dead). It boots up and runs fine once I have setup windows clock, but is it likely to be an issue? Being an old board I aren't too fussed about having to update the clock manually, just put it down to old age lol

While I had the machine in bits, I removed the original heatsink and fan, cleaned everything, re-applied new arctic silver cpu paste and fitted new hard drives.
Now runs a little cooler too.

Megahertz07 · 26 May 2020

If you're loosing clock, the coin battery isn't giving contact. Try to fix it with hot glue.