Thread: Help me upgrade my PC please!

Hi all. My computer is getting to be a little old and rusty. I built it... I don't even know how long ago... about 3 years probably.

Current specs:

Socket 939 Asus A8n motherboard (not sure if its the premium or not)
2x 1gig Ocz ram DDR1 (not sure on the speed, but it was pretty nice at the time)
160gb hd 7200rpm
AMD anthlon 3200+ single core CPU 2.00ghz
EVGA 8800 GTS nvidia graphics card (the only thing i've upgraded (my other one fried))
PowerUp 550 watt power supply
Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit

Now, I'm not partial to anything like AMD vs Intel or Nvidia vs ATI, but I would like to get another EVGA graphics card if you think I need to get a new one (and not an XfX one (thats the card that fried))

I would like to be able to run some of the new games that are coming out (battlefield 3 and such) on playable settings, and run my current ones on high/medium high settings (counterstrike, wow) on my beautiful 22 inch 1650 x 1050 monitor.

I think I'm going to need to upgrade my processor first off, but in order to do that I'd have to get a new motherboard and everything wouldn't I? Or do I?

I have no idea what shit is any good nowadays so any suggestions would be helpful, but please try and keep them as cheap as possible. I don't have a lot of extra money for my PC (as you might be able to tell).

Thanks for the help!

The bad news is, yes, you will need to upgrade your entire platform (CPU/Motherboard/Memory), plus your graphics card if you expect to play the latest and greatest titles with medium-high detail and playable frame rates.

The good news is that we are here to help.

You can likely recycle some of your components, such as your hard drive, power supply, case, and optical drive(s). That 160GB hard drive is small for a mechanical drive in today's standards, and hard drives are cheap. You may want to look into purchasing a WD Black or Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drive with 500GB + of storage. The 550w PSU should be okay as long as you aren't looking to run dual graphics cards.\

So what is your budget? Being up front and honest with you... an entire platform upgrade with new graphics card will likely run you between $500-600 for a mainstream gaming system. Enthusiast level likely be between $1000-1500 (Dual GPU, overclocking, beefy PSU and feature-rich motherboard). Hard core gamer rig will be $1500+. Give us something to work with and we can start piecing what we think the best configuration will be based on how much you can spend.

Remember, as a gamer, you will get the most benefit from your Graphics card, so if you are going to spend the extra cash in any component, you will almost always get more bang for your buck when you invest in the GPU.

Look at some of the other threads here, a lot of people post the their shopping cart so that might help you out.


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Originally Posted by HeavyG

The bad news is, yes, you will need to upgrade your entire platform (CPU/Motherboard/Memory), plus your graphics card if you expect to play the latest and greatest titles with medium-high detail and playable frame rates.

The good news is that we are here to help.

You can likely recycle some of your components, such as your hard drive, power supply, case, and optical drive(s). That 160GB hard drive is small for a mechanical drive in today's standards, and hard drives are cheap. You may want to look into purchasing a WD Black or Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drive with 500GB + of storage. The 550w PSU should be okay as long as you aren't looking to run dual graphics cards.\

So what is your budget? Being up front and honest with you... an entire platform upgrade with new graphics card will likely run you between $500-600 for a mainstream gaming system. Enthusiast level likely be between $1000-1500 (Dual GPU, overclocking, beefy PSU and feature-rich motherboard). Hard core gamer rig will be $1500+. Give us something to work with and we can start piecing what we think the best configuration will be based on how much you can spend.

Remember, as a gamer, you will get the most benefit from your Graphics card, so if you are going to spend the extra cash in any component, you will almost always get more bang for your buck when you invest in the GPU.

I'm thinking more along the lines of the $500 range... I don't care about playing all the games on "ultra" with 300 fps, I just want to be able to play them without having to worry about freezing up and 20fps frame rates.

I'm just looking for some suggestions of which parts are good nowadays. I haven't researched any parts or payed any attention to them since I built this computer so I'm clueless as to which parts are the best moneywise and preformance wise.

Originally Posted by styley

I'm thinking more along the lines of the $500 range... I don't care about playing all the games on "ultra" with 300 fps, I just want to be able to play them without having to worry about freezing up and 20fps frame rates.

I'm just looking for some suggestions of which parts are good nowadays. I haven't researched any parts or payed any attention to them since I built this computer so I'm clueless as to which parts are the best moneywise and preformance wise.

20 fps, damn! Most people wine about 50


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