Broken PC, just using it for UT2004

[ILoveTheNorth]

+1 on a fresh installation too.. Will need to see if I can find my original installation disks.

I have no idea of how old my system actually is, but it was pretty high end when I built it. The GTX 280 was the newest thing I guess, so it must date back to 2008.

With a system that old, can I expect my motherboard to die too? Whats the survival rate of these things?

Things die all the time. In my opinion, the most likely component to die is the hard drive, with the CPU being the least likely (that is, if you don't over clock it etc)

I'd wager a guess and say mobos are somewhere in the middle when it comes to life expectancy.

[KvWThomas]

Thanks for the help.. I'll probably opt for that 250 SSD!

[Aberiu]

P5K-E? I had 2 of these, one used to be mine, now it's in my father's pc. It's about 7 years old, still works very reliably. I updated it's bios recently, upgraded it with a used q6700 (got it for $30 btw), and did exactly what people advise you - replaced system HDD with an SSD (some cheap kingston). One problem I had was that the motherboard couldn't detect it in AHCI mode, but worked in IDE. This PC now runs Dragon Age Inquisition relatively smoothly with radeon 7770. Obviously never had any trouble running UT2004, even before the upgrades.
Just sharing my experience.

[KvWThomas]

P5K-E? I had 2 of these, one used to be mine, now it's in my father's pc. It's about 7 years old, still works very reliably. I updated it's bios recently, upgraded it with a used q6700 (got it for $30 btw), and did exactly what people advise you - replaced system HDD with an SSD (some cheap kingston). One problem I had was that the motherboard couldn't detect it in AHCI mode, but worked in IDE. This PC now runs Dragon Age Inquisition relatively smoothly with radeon 7770. Obviously never had any trouble running UT2004, even before the upgrades.
Just sharing my experience.

That problem was related to the type/brand of SSD? From what I'm reading you need to choose AHCI / IDE before installing? Any tips on this if I buy the Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD?

[bOnO]

The AHCI/IDE choice is to do in the Bios, before Windows loads. You have to press a key to enter the Bios and modify the setting, it's very easy to do.

[Aberiu]

Yeah, you choose it in bios before installing your OS. AHCI is considered slightly faster from what I know.
Speaking of Samsung 850 EVO 250GB btw, I own this exact disc too, though on another computer :) It's pretty fast.

That problem was related to the type/brand of SSD?

Didn't have a chance to try it with another SSD yet, so - no idea.

[Skaldy]

If a hard drive seems corrupted, always check the system memory first. The hard drives might be fine, but data can be corrupted on read or write by unreliable RAM. On a different PC that is working perfectly, download a OpenSUSE LiveDVD iso file and write it to a DVD. On the suspect PC, boot off that DVD and run the memory test for a few hours. Run the other hardware tests too.

When you are sure that the system memory is totally reliable, then you can start to blame the hard disk.

[bOnO]

Not daft! You also have Memtest86+ to test your RAM, which you can start from a USB key or a CD.