Oldschool: MSI GX660 Rookie Upgrade Misadventures

Hi,

Long time lurker, I am new to the forum. Glad to be here. Thank you for all the wealth of shared info here.
I want to give some reading material back, and share my experience with MSI laptops, which I've been using for something close to 9 years now.

I've had two of them.

Currently using a GT72 6QD with the Skylake 6700HQ, and Nvidia 970M and I'm extremely happy with the system, apart from some shoddy build quality issues (lost the blue color on the keyboard backlight, broke the left screen hinge, and some minor others)

Prior to that used I an GX660 (non-R) which I still have (Nehalem i5-460, 4GB Ram, ATI Radeon 5870), It has been in storage since 2014. It has served me extremely well for DAW work (Nuendo, Pro Tools) and gaming in the spare time. The only problem I had with the laptop in the period from 2011 to 2014 is that the battery got completely shot. It is truly a well built machine, with chintzy "party like its 2000" looks So I've decided to dust it off and see, whether it can be used in 2019, and make some upgrades, and I would like to document this in this thread

Basic maintenance first - clean out the cooling system, re-paste CPU, GPU, and see if I can still use it.
So I took it apart for the first time ever - I was too big of a chicken to disassemble a laptop, especially when I had work stuff on it, and ongoing projects, but in this case, the GX660 is retired, so it gave me a little more comfort in doing that

After cleaning out all the crap from the heat sinks and fan, I've repasted the CPU and GPU with Arctic MX4, and ran some tests - I usually do video compression routines for maxing out a CPU - Compressing a ProRes video to h264 and vice versa - this usually loads all available CPU threads to 98 %. Results were nice - MSI Afterburner showed 74 degrees Celsius max during 1 hour on CPU, and this is on stock clocks, and stock fan curve, with no Cooler Boost. Pretty nice. Idle temps were nice too - 44 degrees when using "Gaming Mode" profile (2.7 GHz clock)

So far so good, but when I stopped using this machine back in the day, I remembered that my Windows installation got so rotten, that the computer took like 2-3 minutes to boot and start windows 7, and during startup windows was completely non-responsive, and the HDD just kept grinding on and on - It was so annoying.

So yeah, in era of NVME SSDs, you kinda get spoiled with boot speeds. I had the brilliant idea to update to Win10 by thinking that it could somehow be a more efficient OS, and I'm going to be able to weasel my way through rest of maintenance tasks. Yeah, LOL.
After spending half of day of installing it and getting updates (instead of trying to de-fragment all partitions which I should have been doing in the first place) I successfully completed the upgrade, and got hit with even worse loading times, and generally lower system performance.

So I decided to go ahead and install an SSD after seeing how my GT72 handles Win10. There's really no going back to slow HDDs, after you've been on SSDs for the past years. I really couldn't be arsed with defrag and potentially losing an entire day of doing it, and not getting any performance boost. Well I'm glad I did!

With today's excellent prices, I snagged up an WD Blue 500GB SATA SSD. I tried reading forums about potential pitfalls, how the SSDs are not recognized, how I need modded BIOS in my system, but a lot of info was outdated on the topic, and in general it got too much like trying to cure herpes by reading Internet, so I just decided to go ahead and cowboy my way through it.

I guess I got lucky. My machine has Stock MSI non-RAID bios, version 10L. I put the unpartitioned SSD in Icybox SATA to USB3 adapter caddy and the GX660 instantly recognized the drive in OS and mounted it as unallocated storage blob. Then I proceeded to clone my HDD's partitions to the SSD using Macrium Reflect free edition. I cloned it straight to USB - I couldn't install the drive, in the second 2.5" Bay, because I don't have that stupid bracket with screw holes to support it in the bay.

The drive cloning finished in under two hours. Then I took the laptop apart again, and swapped the old HDD for the SSD.

I didn't even manage to enter the bios setup to change the boot order when I already found myself at the Windows desktop - the system booted up so fast - it was like night and day difference!

So I can pretty much say that this drive is Plug and Play, just in case if any of you are planning a similar upgrade. Model is Western Digital Blue SSD WDS500G2B0A

Pretty happy with how it all went so far. Turned out to be a best case scenario.
The key takeaways are:

1. MSI used to make really good machines back in the day. Of course all my Macbook Pro toting colleagues would laugh me out of the office due to looks, but hey - at least I didn't have a single warranty issue.
2. SSDs are a real shot in the arm for veteran machines like this one.

So, time for next steps. I got bit by this tinkering bug, so I'm gonna keep modding this machine, until I turn it into an usable one in 2019:

1. RAM upgrade (8 Gigs Max? 4 gigs is way too low these days)
2. CPU Upgrade (920 or 940xm). Gotta love those sockets in laptops. Also the clock speed on these can be pretty high, just a teeny bit lower on turbo, than my current 6700HQ. Really shows how Intel has been making us pay through the nose all these years.
+ I really would like to do something about that single cooling fan in the system. It is bit too loud for my taste - is it possible to change it to AAVID like in my GT72 or something similar? Has anyone done this?

I will follow up with the next upgrades.
Happy New Year everyone!

 

Always good to see an older machine resurrected! I'm in the process of adding an SSD to a friend's desktop gaming PC that is taking about 10 minutes for the hard drive to quiet down after boot.

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As gx660 has 3 RAM sockets, you can go up to 12GB (3 x 4GB) or probably 16GB (2 x 8GB).
It's LVDS so you can go as high as 980m gtx. As the old stock 5870m (or 460m gtx I don't remember) is really lame now... Or a second hand 780m gtx for cheap would do the job nicely.
920xm was definitely a beast back in the days. Used to have it rock stable at 3.4Ghz on all 4 cores on my old MSI GX660. It's worth less than 50$ on ali or ebay. So definitely worth the shot
But with 980m and 920XM, you need the biggest PSU (aka 180W model). You can go higher but if I remember correctly there's a BIOS/EC trick that triggers throttle if more than 180W is drained from PSU.
Keep us posted! And post some pics. I loved that lappy with all the orange led bars

 

Welcome and nice to see previous GX660 owners! This model is the one that made me an MSI fan, previously being an Asus fan. My ex GX660R is still alive, just no longer with me I had upgraded mine in LCD (bought a nice LG one with much better colors and quality), the CPU I had was a 920XM, RAM to 16GB and dual SATA SSDs in raid 0.

Keep in mind the following: While that model was still capable of using a wide assortment of GPUs including recent ones, the heatsink and general cooling capacity was not made for such GPUs. Unless you also mod the heatsink/change and adapt it with another one, I would suggest not to upgrade the GPU to the higher end GPUs like 980m, and instead use, at best, something like the 970m. The last upgrade I remember for said GX660 was an HD7970m.

And! if you do use the 920xm, remember to use/buy a higher capacity power supply! The included 120w is not enough for an unlocked 920xm with an HD5870m, and if overclocked it will shut down! At the very least get a 150w PSU, but if you do plan on getting a higher end GPU, try for a 180w PSU.

MSI laptops are great, but naturally some models had infamous issues. The GT72 had the hinge issue, which my previous GT70 also was a victim of. But of all the models I have had from MSI, all of them are alive and well, and working great.

 

I've never had any hinge issue with GT60/70 chassis. Honestly they are quite solid compared to the old msi GT/GX chassis (gx740 / gx640)...
They need a bit of silicon spray once in awhile (or to be greased) but that's about it.

 

Hi!

Here's an update.

I swapped out the original i5-460m CPU to an i7-920xm. Arctic Silver MX4 thermal paste. Still on Stock BIOS, latest version, non-R. Still on stock 120W PSU
Pretty much a plug&play upgrade again, no issues.

Again I ran video compression routines to test performance and thermals.

I got 155 fps encoding speed from H264 to Prores an 55fps vice versa - pretty impressive for laptop of this age.

During encoding, MSI Afterburner reported a stable clock speed of 2.1 GHz across all 8 threads (Gaming mode on)
There is a noticeable increase in temps and fan noise - I hit 81 degrees C on full load compared to 74-75 degrees on the i5-460, but the CPU stays there.
When the CPU is idle in "Gaming mode", the temps hover around 57-60 degrees C - a significant increase over the i5.

The machine feels properly fast now. I'm a bit concerned about Idle temps - the 60 degrees is not stable, when gaming mode is on - it rises up to 70 sometimes - I will probably repaste the CPU with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut.

A GPU upgrade probably won't happen in the near future, unless I can find a good deal on 980MXM - then I can hand down my old 970MXM to the GX660, but these MXM boards are still stupid expensive. I don't really see prices dropping.
Putting in a 1060MXM in my GT72 is probably not worth the hassle, and many things can go wrong.

 

Nice going man. I do recommend changing your thermal paste and checking contact, because I usually ran at 90 Celisus, but I was overclocked to like 3.2ghz all cores. Stock speeds I never had an issue with temperatures. But don't worry, it is indeed a hot CPU in the end.

The last GPU upgrade I wanted to perform to the GX660 was back when the HD7950M launched. It was no longer my machine but I was convincing my friend to do it, but I couldn't hahaha.

Even today they are still very capable machines. Considering they are from 2010, it is damm impressive they are still relevant today and very good performers.

 

Mine has a 920xm clocked at 3.2
95% gamut B156hw01 V4
10Gb 1333mhz ram 2x4gb hynix and 1x2gb toshiba all three of them cas9 showing as dual channel
2x260Gb ssd in raid 0 (440Gb usable)
1x750Gb HDD in the optical bay (yes I bought an adapter and glued the front optical fascia to it, looks gorgeous).

Ordered 2 days ago an EXP GDC BEAST cause I wanna hook it up to the expresscard. Should be amazing to hotswap a 1050 gpu. Mainly I will use it to stream games on my Ps Vita on wan while I am away for work.

Both the CPU and GPU have been pasted with liquid metal thermal grizzly conductonaut.

Yesterday I played Witcher 3 with MSI afterburner overclocking the 5870 at 820x1120
Played medium settings 1280x720
Cpu never went above 70 (average was 62)
Gpu never above 65 (average 58)

I would recommend to repaste all of your chips with liquid metal. Differences are huge.
I have been using this for more than a year in any laptop I have, temps dropped by 20 degrees!

 

1060 mxm in gt72 is pretty much plug & play, except that you need to change an .inf file in the display driver folder...
GT72 can take up to 1070 gtx with its 240W PSU. With that GPU you get a wonderful gaming laptop...

Your old GX660 still packs a punch with 920xm but will definitely be limited to 980m GTX (with 180w PSU mandatory) or R9 M290X... If I were you I'd get a cheap 7970m/8970m/R9 m290x and stick with it.
Stay away for the egpu crap as the expresscard will be limited to 1x PCIe so performances will be ugly...

 

"Stay away for the egpu crap as the expresscard will be limited to 1x PCIe so performances will be ugly..."


A 980m costs in excess of 300 pounds
A egpu coupled with a 7970 costs 30 the former and 70/80 the latter.

Bandwidth has nothing to do with it. Mobile graphics are pretty overpriced anyway.
I used to have a gtx680 with my lenovo 430 via expresscard and it was performing much better than my Clevo p170 with gtx880m.

Why would you spend 3 times more? Portability? These are gaming laptop desktop replacement anyway, you won't carry them no where.

 

For 110€ you can get a 7970m and you'll be close to these performances.
lenovo T430 has a x2 expresscard but old hardware such as gx660 only has x1 so it's definitely not worth it... And you'll be forced to use external screen as well.
Plus all the crappy code 43 error that you may encounter with egpu... Stay with mxm, at least it works with minimal tweaking...
Anyway it's not worth to upgrade that laptop to 980m as the 920xm will bottleneck... 3rd gen GT60/GT70 are much better as they can be upgraded to 1060/1070 gtx and with optimus they keep a good battery life on IGP (~4-5h battery life).

 

Expresscard in the gx660 is the 2.0 for the 1st gen intel. Same thing for the 430, it's a first gen with 2.0 expresscard.
The bandwidth is the same. Just have a look at YT and the expresscard videos there.
With an old 680 I was playing any game 60+. Witcher 3 was steady more than 40 on high settings. I paid 30 pounds for that card on an amazing bargain and 31 pounds for the Beast.
It's a no brainer for a budget gaming rig.

The GX660 is a single fan as well, unlike my p170 which has 2 fans.

When I will receive the Beast I will upload videos of my gameplay and show you that you are dead wrong.

 

Can't wait to see your results mate
For me it's still not worth it as you'll get almost the same results with an mxm gpu. You won't need an external screen to play and you'll save yourself the hassle of installing an egpu, which can be quite messy.

 

Hello guys, I dont know if i need to be presented. Altough been a long time user i never needed to login until now.

I also have an original gx660 with 5870m and 460m with 8gb of ram,and can indeed confirm gtx 980m with moded heatsink from an gt70, Works on this laptop. Thanks to Svet from Msi that helped with modded bios and vbios.

The thing is that I have bought also an 920xm cpu but its been a pain. Its not plug and play for me.
The thing just dont wont to post. Laptop starts, cpu fan spins to turbo mode, but black screen is the only i get.

The original 460m that i have if reinstalled, boots up perfectly, but no luck with the 920xm.

I have swapped rams, change modules, clear cmos and reset the bios manually to defaults. I cant, make it to boot. I have a also bought an 180w Psu.


Please if someone can give me an advice or some pointers it will be much appreciated.

Is theres something im missing? Or perhaps its a dead cpu? Thats my luck.

Im was ready to make a mega post here with details and mods that i did, to help everyone in the same situation, but im stuck with a non working 920xm, As of today what only works is the gtx980 with the original 460m.

Well hope someone can throw a spot of light here, im tented to make a refund, and buy something less extravagant, like an 740qm or even the 840qm i dont know.

Cheers guys

 

Well, mine works wonderfully,
The only problem I encountered was that on battery laptop would turn off just after 10/15 seconds but I quickly fixed that problem by modifying max power on advanced energy options and setting it on the same wattage of the I7 740mq which is 45watts. So set max cpu power at 83% and it has never turned off on battery again.

I think you got a lemon, return it.

Oh, quick edit: I remember there is an option in the unlocked bios I have. Boot system(I believe) with 2 options: Max battery and max performance.
Being the 920xm a 55watt, with default max performance it was turning off straight away.
I selected max battery and I had no problem anymore. Hope this helps.

 

Mmm very interesting, i tweaked several things on bios, but dont remember changing to max battery, will do it Wright now. And keep posted. Thanks for replying. Will come back with any news.

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No problem. If the issue persists you can try to flash the bios with another one.
If you want I can give you mine, I mean you have nothing to lose.

 

Mine was given by svet specificaly, but i must say that I thought in flashing the original bios back. As you say i have nothing to lose. What machine exactly do you have? It could work. Patch it through!

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Well... still black screen after changing max battery under bios. Ok must be dead. Not even a beep or anything i just hungs there. I cant believe my luck. Thanks anyway! I apreciated it!

 

Too bad....It is most likely, that the CPU is dead. As I described in this post earlier, it was plug and play for me on latest available stock bios (non -R)

P.S - I don't even have a battery lol - mine is long dead, and I never bothered changing it.

 

I think the batteries from the GX660 era can easily be rebuilt.I rebuilt the battery for a GT780DX twice if you want to go that route.
The 780 left side hinge broke not long after the warranty expired.I epoxied it together before finding replacement parts on ebay.I really liked the 780DX so I kept upgrading it until the mainboard went belly up.
Be aware of the point in resurrecting an old notebook to stop pouring cash into it.
The oldest notebook I have still running is an MSI GS60 2PL purchased from Gentech in mid 2014.It gets about 6-8 hours of daily use since purchase and keeps on ticking.
I've upgraded the hard drive to OCZ SSD then to Samsung 860EVO SSD and have a Crucial SSD in the M.2 slot.It's a model that needs the mainboard removed to upgrade the M.2 SSD,repaste and upgrade memory.Luckily the M.2 wireless card slot is easy to access and it has a Killer 1550 presently residing in it.

 

Yes, i was kinda dissapointed, but hey! Thats why we love electronics, i will try again with a New cpu and update. Thanks for your feedback!

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You are right. One must always study good in investing money on this oldies, some times it doesnt worth it. But some times it does. Taking in consideration, if one is willing to open it, and mod a few things, not thats its difficult but probably its delicate for those how dont have much hand in working with dremels, and electronics.

Mine was a big investment, i cant lie, it cost me almost 500 dollars in updating to gtx 980m, thats including its pads and cooler plate. But here in my country, gaming laptops with this video card, its very difficult to find used cheap, at least with gtx 970m they are around 1grand, used. And New well over 2 grand. So i like to think that with some elbow grease, i saved money.

What has me kind of angry is that its the second battery i buy for this laptop. It was working fine, till i install the gtx. Now suddenly it wont charge and the blue led blinks.

Perhaps i will do what you say and try to rebuild it.

Thanks also for your feedback.

I will make and update of all this things, for someone Who wants to try it.

Cheers


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If I remember correctly I used a heavy duty box cutter along the seam of the battery to open it up and bought the 8 new cells from an online battery supply house.A hot soldering iron separated the connected old cells and was used to join together the new ones.A 5 minute epoxy was used to seal the adapter back up.
I don't know if this can be done with the newer smart batteries

There should be some videos online of how to do it better than I can explain.

 

Well thats how i was thinking of doing it hehe. Taking in consideration the charger module is not fryed. I have 18650 around, ill do some tests to see what can i do. In my expirence its always the charger module whats wrong, cause these types of batteries, tend to last very long.

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As much as I love upgrading my laptops, this is very true. There is a point where upgrading/tweaking a laptop costs so much more than actually getting a new machine.

Nowadays we can hardly upgrade machines, but then again they also last a long while. Tech is not advancing as fast, or with leaps as big as before so we can enjoy the laptops a bit longer

 

For me,nothing was worse than the battery in an MSI GS60 2PL.

The thing swelled up like a balloon deforming the notebook plastic shell.Once the bottom cover was taken off the bloated battery prevented the cover from being put back on.

Removal of the battery and putting the bottom on showed the case to have a distinct curve to it.I've been using it for 4 years after the battery removal on the original ac power adapter without issue.

Luckily I have had no other issues with that notebook and it's still in daily use.

For gaming I built myself another custom desktop last year.

 

Whoa, were you still under warranty when it happened? Gotta watch on out of warranty batteries though because some users ran into such issues in the past with every brand though.

 

Things don't happen to my gear when still in warranty.
I became aware of the battery problem when the front edge of the case started to deform.
Luckily that was the only issue I've had with the GS60.It's still in daily service nearly 5 years after purchase.There's no battery in it now;it runs off the ac adapter.
I try to open it up every 6-12 months for a cleaning and repasting or when upgrading an SSD or wireless card.Everything else is still original.
My GT780DX lasted many years also with 2 battery rebuilds plus SSD and wireless upgrades.I added a 3rd antenna when an Intel 6300 or Killer 1203 was in it.The only trouble with it was the left side hinge failure.

 

Hi, sorry for hijacking your topic ... I have a GX660R-060US and I've been running this laptop for 9 years when I got it for a gaming trip to another country ... it doesn't get moved so it's well looked after with the exception of the dvd-rw going a bit flaky and noisy but I rarely write disks now as other methods had become a popular replacement ... I am running it in RAID0, encrypted and I have a ton of stuff on here ... literally everything, emulators, VM's, music, recording, amp stacks, recording, lots of mods and stuff, it all adds up but basically with the exception of the odd quirk, I've had no serious problems with this laptop ever or anything that can't be worked around ... I'd been thinking about a new machine but I'm always putting off buying a new one because this one still runs well and does what I want and the dynaudio and routing is quite unique, in fact this is the only laptop I know off that doesn't require a hardware interface to get a a minimal latency of a few milliseconds via the line-in jack ... I'm just going to keep pushing it until it is done but I was wondering if price permitting I could get another 5 or so years out of it with a few upgrades ... A few things I didn't like after I purchased the laptop is it wasn't specifically good for older type games that utilize higher CPU and my game play suffered with less head shots on games like Wolfenstein Enemy Territory (2004) compared to my Pentium 4 Desktops ... The ATI card may also have been an issue here as I always used nVidia prior to getting this laptop which was getting rave reviews and so I went with anyways ... believe me, I tried a million things but still no joy ... I actually would like to upgrade it and I'm not afraid to take it apart and do lots of technical things but for the owners who are in the know and have gone through this process some advice would be helpful in determining if I should as I'm not adverse to taking educated risks ... I actually I updated the Advanced BIOS (from a ROM I got here maybe) and disabled hyper-threading as part of my game troubleshooting ... I replied to a topic here about it in 2014 but still not sure If I actually got the ROM from somebody here but anyways ...

1) I'd like to replace the two HDD (RAID0) with two SSD's (RAID0) as I don't want to be limited to 300Mb/s SATAII speeds on a single channel but nobody has been too clear if they have actually gotten TRIM working in this configuration by modding the advanced ROM or whichever one I have with an Intel RAID ROM (OROM) as detailed here :-

https://www.win-raid.com/t202f28-TRIM-in-RAID-possible-for-all-Intel-chipsets-from-P-ICH-R-up.html

and downloads available here.

https://www.win-raid.com/t7f13-AHCI-amp-RAID-ROM-Modules.html

I need to research this a bit more and I probably could go through the modding steps as listed elsewhere on the site but at first glance they recommend staying in the same branch and I have version 9.x.x.xxxx where as their recommended Series 5/6 ROM is 12.x.x.xxxx

It would be nice if somebody could say, yeah I did this with this and verified it working ... I probably will not upgrade without a reasonable expectation that this would work ...

2) Assuming I had SSD RAID0, I would next like to upgrade the RAM but again nobody has stated if they have actually populated all three slots with 8GB sticks ... I have the i7 740QM so I'm guessing it is possible that if it can detect and use an 8GB stick in one slot that it should work on all slots ... I seen somebody selling one with 24GB but as yet I've found nobody talking about it and well you can't believe an advert you see on the internet for a second hand laptop. This is not essential but if I was doing it I would try and fill it while I'm at it ...

3) Next I would like to upgrade to maybe the i7 940XM, I understand it's a direct replacement and I will not be overclocking, maybe if temps are really good I could try later but for now I just want a better CPU in and I see some people suggested to change a few power setting and stuff ... If you have any comments about this and the pitfalls, they are welcome ...

4) Finally I would like replace the HD5870 with a nVidia card if possible and I would also max it out as a preference and I believe the 980M is probably the strongest performer or the end of the line of options here ... I know I will need to get a 180w PSU at this point but I am really unclear about a few things with this especially with purchasing and what to purchase as I understand there are modded cards or something that come out of other branded computers and I will also possibly have to flash a vBIOS ... I am not accustomed to physically modding a case, heat-sink plate, pipe etc ... So I will need to research this more but to begin with or could you suggest a card from a specific model that's compatible ... One important thing about this upgrade is that it must support HDMI with working audio as I always have my laptop plugged into my television ... again not many people have verified they have HDMI working after upgrading ...

So whats up with this TRIM?


Thanks

 

Right now I am super busy so I can't give much advise, but just to make sure... you are going to do a heavy investing on your machine by changing ram, CPU, GPU, SSDs etc, at this point, wouldn't you feel better by saving up for a newer machine? Just wondering. I bet the i7 CPU is probably like 50dlrs at this point haha.

The GX660R is fantastic, but as the years go by, who knows what's next to fail, be it the motherboard, the screen, the speakers etc. I did upgrade my laptop a long time ago, used it with 16GB of ram, 920xm, SSDs in raid 0, but this was about 7 years ago? There is a massive difference in CPU performance going with an XM CPU because you can overclock your full 4 core speeds. The weakness of first gen mobile i7 (sans the 920xm) was the very low clockspeed in quad core, resulting in lowered game performance in several games. In this regard, it will help.

Anyways, I suggest this:

If you change the GPU, get as high as a 970m. The 980m might be a bit of a headache because it runs hotter, and the GX660R had a very weak cooling system by today's standards. The 980m is in another league in terms of power consumption and dissipation, as its probably a bit over twice the TDP of the ATi GPU. The 970m is still a great performer. You will need a higher PSU as you pointed out. Hell, the 920/940xm CPU alone will make you need that when stressed.

Though if possible, you can also start considering a new machine

 

Cheers for the information ... Yeah the reason why an upgrade it is attractive is that I have been using this laptop like a desktop since I got it so everything is in it's place, everything is compatible so far and setup how I like and it all just fits especially with my music gear and camera and tv where it's all at and connected ... The SSD's and RAM are probably even enough of a boost to extend it's life a few years and the others are options but I'm sure there is people out there with these parts gathering dust so it might steadily happen ... The main things is getting TRIM pass-trough for RAID working as I will be running FDE with TRIM pass-through and I don't want to be spending money on disks if I'm going to be killing them in a year or be back a HDD performance levels ... The extra RAM would also be nice for a dedicated RAMDisk to host temp files locations and possibly a readyboost cache to further increase disk caching over the SSD's ... I'm working at my house too and when I get a few rooms sorted, I will be going all out with a new system like I did with my GX660r ... It's better having years of enjoyment, than upgrading every other year by going for low end systems ... Well, unless you the type of person that doesn't get attached to their computers like me lol