I'm upgrading my Dell XPS 8300. I spent quite a bit of money on it though, so I want to avoid buying a whole new pc. I'm not a very knowledgeable person when it comes to computers, buying the XPS 8300 for 1765 euros should tell you at least that much. I only recently learned the benefits of building your own rig, so I hope someone who knows this stuff can help me out. Anyway I will be transferring the contents of my XPS 8300 to a new tower case. The upgrade I'm looking at is like this: Case - Cooler Master Storm Enforcer Motherboard - Asrock Z77 Extreme4,s1155 Cooling - Noctua NH-D14 - 140mm Power Supply - Cooler Master GX 650WATT Graphics Card - EVGA GeForce GTX 680 FTW+ 4GB w/Backplate SSD - Intel 520 series 120GB The parts that are missing I will be using from my XPS 8300, I will list them as well in case there could be potential compatibility issues. Operating System - Windows Home Premium 64-bit Processor - Intel Core i7-2600 CPU 3.4 GHz (CS: 3401 MHz) Cache: 8MB Memory - 16GB RAM (4x4) 1333 MHz Soundcard - Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Harddisk - ARRAY1 (2 x 1TB 7200 RPM) (Fixed hard disk media) <---this worries me because it sounds like I would need a new hard disk Optical Drive - 6X Blu-Ray ROM combo (Blu-Ray read only, DVD, CD read & write) Display - 21.5in ST2220L European Full HD WLED Widescreen Monitor (VGA, DVI-D and HDMI) The parts I want to replace are: Case - XPS 8300 model Motherboard - Stock Cooling - Stock Power Supply - Stock Graphics Card - AMD Radeon HD 6950 I'm not ruling out the possibility of simply selling my XPS 8300 and using part of the money to invest in a new pc with these parts, but I'm unsure if its current value would be enough to cover for a new OS, Processor, Memory, Soundcard, Harddisk, Optical Drive and possibly a Display. Although I have a Sound Blaster Recon 3D, which is an external sound card so perhaps I wouldn't need a new (internal) sound card because of it and save some money like that. Anyway, I realize this is a lot of information but you have no idea how grateful I would be for some guidance.
You probably won't be able to transfer your OS over. Unless things have changed since I last read about this Windows detects hardware and if there are too many changes it detects it is being used in a new and/or different system and then stops working (not sure if it gives you a warning or anything). I have heard of workarounds but they involve jumping through hoops with microsoft. Also this doesn't make much sense to me. What exact part of this worries you?
Good to know about the OS. Would it be a waste to get Windows Home Premium for a new PC or would you recommend Pro or Ultimate? I heard W8 is a headache, so I'm not bothering with that. About the Harddisk. It says "fixed" harddisk, so it sounds like it would give me trouble when I want to transfer it over. But if that has nothing to do with it, I'd be happy because it'll save me money. Especially because I recently learned I need a new OS.
You should be able to use the OS in a new PC you'll just have to go through Microsofts automated reactivation. Takes 5 minutes and jotting down of a few numbers but better than spending the price of a part on a bit of software you already own.
Fixed means 'not removable'. Fixed and removable disks are treated differently by the OS, in terms of caching and perhaps some other things. A fixed disk is assumed to be always there until the computer shuts down (ignoring server hot swapping for the moment). This means that the OS is more relaxed about flushing the IO queues to disk under load. A removable disk otoh is not expected to be there forever, so whenever disk IO is pending, the OS tries to get that done more quickly.
I use Win 8 - seems great... I have one program that I still have to use on an earlier OS but everything else works fine...
As has been said "fixed" means it's internal as opposed to external. What will give you a headache though is that "ARRAY". That sounds like you have RAID enabled. My Dell XPS 700 used Nvidia RAID. This made switching to Linux problematic. I reckon moving all your parts to a whole new box will mean to have to start over with clean disks. If I were you I'd buy a 2TB HDD and a dock and back everything up before pulling it all apart.
