Upgrade and compatibility help

J

jdlivingston

New Member
Hello and thank you for reading my post. Id like to upgrade my mother board and memory and have been out of the loop for some time now and would like some opinions on what would be the best suited hardware for me.

Heres my current setup used primarily as a workhorse for gaming, media streaming, home entertainment center, and work. Id like to start with a motherboard and RAM and then move onto the HDD when i have more money to spend. Current budget is about $500 but the wife would be ecstatic if i kept it under 300 and replaced as few parts as possible.

My other question is if this current motherboard is bottlenecking my graphics card and processor...i think if i just upgraded the mobo and did some minimal overclocking i could really get a great system out of minimal replacements.


Operating System
Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 2600 @ 3.40GHz
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology

RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 644MHz (9-9-9-24)

Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. P8H67-M LE (LGA1155)

Graphics
SyncMaster (1440x900@60Hz)
SAMSUNG (1366x768@60Hz)
3072MB ATI AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (Sapphire/PCPartner)

Storage
465GB Western Digital WDC WD5000AAKX-003CA0 ATA Device (SATA)
1863GB Seagate GoFlex Desk USB Device (USB (SATA))
931GB Western Digital WD My Passport 0810 USB Device (USB (SATA))

Optical Drives
ATAPI DVD A DH24ABS ATA Device

Audio
AMD High Definition Audio Device
 
ninjabubbles3 said:
What specific GPU do you have?

Honestly, your system looks fine. Are you experiencing any issues
Click to expand...

its the Sapphire R9 280 (just bought)

im getting some lag particularly on boot, but when i bought this board i was aware it was a lower end board and would need something more capable in the future...and the future has come lol
 
Your motherboard shouldn't be slowing you down directly and 8GB of RAM is still plenty.

You done a virus and malware scan? When you say lag on boot, what do you mean? Slow to start up? Slow for Windows to get loaded up and ready?
 
What are you hoping to gain?

An SSD would give you the most general performance jump.

If it's performing like crap currently it may be a configuration issue or malware. Your screens aren't really running at a high resolution either. Gains from a Haswell i7 or similar wouldn't give you enough jump for the cost of the investment.
 
Darren said:
Your motherboard shouldn't be slowing you down directly and 8GB of RAM is still plenty.

You done a virus and malware scan? When you say lag on boot, what do you mean? Slow to start up? Slow for Windows to get loaded up and ready?
Click to expand...

ive done extensive testing for every kind of ware out there and while i found one in a rather obscure music file the rest were programs ive coded for work (plain and simple false positives)

what i mean by starting slow is 3 out of every five boot sequences it boots to the point where it starts loading programs and desktop environment and takes FOREVER to finish...sometimes it starts before then during the driver phase (in between the board boot logo and windows boot logo a black screen will appear (after verbose boot where it shows HDD's keyboard, and mouse connections) and after about three to five minutes itll get to the windows "Starting windows" or whatever screen..
it really seems like its bottlenecked during that point and ive disabled everything im comfortable with not having run at start.
 
I would say either you have a failing hard drive or most likely a mbr rootkit infection. Have you ran TDSSkiller? Or other rootkit programs?
 
beers said:
What are you hoping to gain?

An SSD would give you the most general performance jump.

If it's performing like crap currently it may be a configuration issue or malware. Your screens aren't really running at a high resolution either. Gains from a Haswell i7 or similar wouldn't give you enough jump for the cost of the investment.
Click to expand...

i've actually considered an SSD lately as what i'm hoping to achieve is faster load times for programs, files, and folders AND file transfer speeds. Id love to be able to upgrade my CPU but unfortunately thats not seeming like a cost effective option like you said...the reason i havent is because of the low disc sizes..right now ive only got 1.2 TB of free space out of 4.5...to me thats running low and although i have more Externals i dont really want to use more, id rather get a good ol fashioned raid setup going
 
johnb35 said:
I would say either you have a failing hard drive or most likely a mbr rootkit infection. Have you ran TDSSkiller? Or other rootkit programs?
Click to expand...

i have less then a week ago and run bitdefender total security 2015 which is top notch (not that i totally rely on it i also have my 3rd and fourth externals with all my work stuff encrypted and only accessed through a sandbox environment and when im not working they arent plugged in)
 
I usually have members run the following programs and post the logs for me to look at to determine if its a malware issue or hardware issue.

1.

Please download AdwCleaner by Xplode onto your Desktop.



•Please close all open programs and internet browsers.
•Double click on adwcleaner.exe to run the tool.
•Click on Scan.
•After the scan you will need to click on clean for it to delete the adware.
•Your computer will be rebooted automatically. A text file will open after the restart.
•Please post the content of that logfile in your reply.
•You can find the logfile at C:\AdwCleaner[Sn].txt as well - n is the order number.

2.

Please download Junkware Removal Tool to your desktop.

•Shutdown your antivirus to avoid any conflicts.
•Very important that you run the tool in this manner:
Right-mouse click JRT.exe and select Run as administrator
Do NOT just double-click it.
•The tool will open and start scanning your system.
•Please be patient as this can take a while to complete.
•On completion, a log (JRT.txt) is saved to your desktop and will automatically open.
•Post the contents of JRT.txt in your next message.

3.

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and save it to your desktop.
  • Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
  • At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
    • Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
    • and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
  • then click Finish.
  • If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. Please keep updating until it says you have the latest version.
  • Once the program has loaded, select Perform quick scan, then click Scan.
  • When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
  • Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
  • A log will be saved automatically which you can access by clicking on the Logs tab within Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

If for some reason Malwarebytes will not install or run please download and run Rkill.scr, Rkill.exe, or Rkill.com. If you are still having issues running rkill then try downloading these renamed versions of the same program.

EXPLORER.EXE
IEXPLORE.EXE
USERINIT.EXE
WINLOGON.EXE

But DO NOT reboot the system and then try installing or running Malwarebytes. If Rkill (which is a black box) appears and then disappears right away or you get a message saying rkill is infected, keep trying to run rkill until it over powers the infection and temporarily kills it. Once a log appears on the screen, you can try running malwarebytes or downloading other programs.

Please post the log that Malwarebytes displays on your screen.

4.

Download OTL to your Desktop


•Double click on the icon to run it. Make sure all other windows are closed and to let it run uninterrupted.
•Click on Minimal Output at the top
•Click the Quick Scan button. Do not change any settings unless otherwise told to do so. The scan wont take long.
◦When the scan completes, it will open two notepad windows. OTL.Txt and Extras.Txt. These are saved in the same location as OTL. Just post the OTL.txt file in your reply.

then post the logs from the following 4 programs.

1. Adwcleaner
2. Junkware removal tool
3. Malwarebytes
4. OTL
 
johnb35 said:
I usually have members run the following programs and post the logs for me to look at to determine if its a malware issue or hardware issue.

1.

Please download AdwCleaner by Xplode onto your Desktop.



•Please close all open programs and internet browsers.
•Double click on adwcleaner.exe to run the tool.
•Click on Scan.
•After the scan you will need to click on clean for it to delete the adware.
•Your computer will be rebooted automatically. A text file will open after the restart.
•Please post the content of that logfile in your reply.
•You can find the logfile at C:\AdwCleaner[Sn].txt as well - n is the order number.

2.

Please download Junkware Removal Tool to your desktop.

•Shutdown your antivirus to avoid any conflicts.
•Very important that you run the tool in this manner:
Right-mouse click JRT.exe and select Run as administrator
Do NOT just double-click it.
•The tool will open and start scanning your system.
•Please be patient as this can take a while to complete.
•On completion, a log (JRT.txt) is saved to your desktop and will automatically open.
•Post the contents of JRT.txt in your next message.

3.

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and save it to your desktop.
  • Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
  • At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
    • Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
    • and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
  • then click Finish.
  • If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. Please keep updating until it says you have the latest version.
  • Once the program has loaded, select Perform quick scan, then click Scan.
  • When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
  • Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
  • A log will be saved automatically which you can access by clicking on the Logs tab within Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

If for some reason Malwarebytes will not install or run please download and run Rkill.scr, Rkill.exe, or Rkill.com. If you are still having issues running rkill then try downloading these renamed versions of the same program.

EXPLORER.EXE
IEXPLORE.EXE
USERINIT.EXE
WINLOGON.EXE

But DO NOT reboot the system and then try installing or running Malwarebytes. If Rkill (which is a black box) appears and then disappears right away or you get a message saying rkill is infected, keep trying to run rkill until it over powers the infection and temporarily kills it. Once a log appears on the screen, you can try running malwarebytes or downloading other programs.

Please post the log that Malwarebytes displays on your screen.

4.

Download OTL to your Desktop


•Double click on the icon to run it. Make sure all other windows are closed and to let it run uninterrupted.
•Click on Minimal Output at the top
•Click the Quick Scan button. Do not change any settings unless otherwise told to do so. The scan wont take long.
◦When the scan completes, it will open two notepad windows. OTL.Txt and Extras.Txt. These are saved in the same location as OTL. Just post the OTL.txt file in your reply.

then post the logs from the following 4 programs.

1. Adwcleaner
2. Junkware removal tool
3. Malwarebytes
4. OTL
Click to expand...

i didnt post because i was worried about a virus or malware...i posted to get opinions on hardware upgrades...
 
jdlivingston said:
i didnt post because i was worried about a virus or malware...i posted to get opinions on hardware upgrades...
Click to expand...

We realize that, but the issue is, you may not even really need new hardware based on the problems you're explaining, and he's trying to actually save you the time and effort of wasting money on new hardware, when it could very easily be caused by some embedded or hidden virus/malware on the machine.

Imagine, you go out and purchase $200 or so of new hardware, get it all installed, and the problems still there. John's trying to make sure it isn't something easier to fix, that doesn't cost money before you go out and spend money on things that won't fix your problem.

johnb35 said:
I usually have members run the following programs and post the logs for me to look at to determine if its a malware issue or hardware issue.
Click to expand...
 
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