Budget Indie Gaming Upgrades

Nightmare Rider

Nightmare Rider

Nightmare Rider

Associate
Joined
20 Feb 2013
Posts
4
Hello everybody.

For the past 5 years I've been running on an Nvidea GeForce 9400, which kept me OK for WoW but Team Fortress 2 on Medium was a bit of a pain. I am wanting to make upgrades to my PC to play Team Fortress 2 level on High, or at least play the more high graphical quality indie games such as Magicka and Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams on Medium. Currently unless they are Rock Bottom I get under 20FPS with them (and even on games such as Painkiller: Black Edition, high texture areas slow the FPS WAY down).

I currently have a 3.0ghz Pentium Dual Core processor, 3 Gigs of DDR2 RAM, Running Windows XP and my old 300gb Internal Hard Drive (3.5 inch) is almost full. I am seeking to replace the following components;

Graphics Card (Must Work on a motherbord with PCIE)
Monitor (preferably HD Enabled, around 18-20" Screen size)
Hard Disc Drive (3.5 Inch Internal, between 500GB-1TB in Size)
Power Supply (Between 500-650 Watts)

All within a budget of £200. What would you all recommend in terms of upgrades that would maximize my value for money? Thanks in advance :).
 
snips86x said:
What is wrong with the monitor, PSU & HDD you currently have?
Click to expand...

My Monitor has a lose connection, so unless I keep it PERFECTLY still it will turn off and takes allot of fiddling to get it working again. No idea how long it will last in general.

By PSU, are you referring to my Processor or Graphics Card? I'm not 100% on all tech language right now.

The HDD is just plain too small. I'm having to delete games off it since when booting up, it takes a long time and google chrome freezes up allot. IT takes up to 20 minutes for me to boot up, and that's WITH the hard drive defragged. A bigger HDD would give it allot more breathing room.
 
Nightmare Rider said:
My Monitor has a lose connection, so unless I keep it PERFECTLY still it will turn off and takes allot of fiddling to get it working again. No idea how long it will last in general.

By PSU, are you referring to my Processor or Graphics Card? I'm not 100% on all tech language right now.

The HDD is just plain too small. I'm having to delete games off it since when booting up, it takes a long time and google chrome freezes up allot. IT takes up to 20 minutes for me to boot up, and that's WITH the hard drive defragged. A bigger HDD would give it allot more breathing room.
Click to expand...

PSU is the Power Supply Unit.

Any way you can stretch the budget?

YOUR BASKET
1 x BenQ GL2055 20" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £79.99
1 x MSI HD 7750 2048MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £71.99
1 x **B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM £45
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 430W '80 Plus' Power Supply £39.95
Total : £248.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).



For about £350, you could build a nice little APU system. No need for an additional graphics card, the integrated graphics are very good.

You could also sell some of the parts you have now to recuperate some of the cash!
 
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snips86x said:
PSU is the Power Supply Unit.

Any way you can stretch the budget?
Click to expand...

I think my current PSU will limit more modern graphics cards. So upgrading it will make it easier to get more juice out of a new Graphics Card. And unfortunately I can only go over by a maximum of £20. Working off the generosity of my parents for birthday gifts, which I'd say is a reasonable deal.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus VS197D 18.5" LED Monitor - Black £65.99
1 x XFX Pro 550W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x MSI GeForce GT 630 2048MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £49.99
1 x **B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (S (HD-257-SE) £45.00
Total : £228.56 (includes shipping : £10.50).




Or Radeon 6670

P.S you could save £15 and go with a XFX 450W which will also be more than enough ;) Although any better card than the GT 630/ Radeon 6670 and your performance might be limited by your current CPU
 
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you wont get a decent upgrade on all those components for £200.

you are looking at roughly

40 PSU
50 HDD
70 GPU
80 Monitor

Considering the money you have to spend your only hope is going the minefeild that is 2nd hand, if you had MM access i would say your could do it...for instance i recently gave away a 22Inch monitor, i have 650W PSU you could have cheap and as the forum members on here have many GPUs lieing about that they would sell you cheap.

the problem with using other channels ie Ebay is that you take your chances.
 
Nightmare Rider said:
Hello everybody.

For the past 5 years I've been running on an Nvidea GeForce 9400, which kept me OK for WoW but Team Fortress 2 on Medium was a bit of a pain. I am wanting to make upgrades to my PC to play Team Fortress 2 level on High, or at least play the more high graphical quality indie games such as Magicka and Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams on Medium. Currently unless they are Rock Bottom I get under 20FPS with them (and even on games such as Painkiller: Black Edition, high texture areas slow the FPS WAY down).

I currently have a 3.0ghz Pentium Dual Core processor, 3 Gigs of DDR2 RAM, Running Windows XP and my old 300gb Internal Hard Drive (3.5 inch) is almost full. I am seeking to replace the following components;

Graphics Card (Must Work on a motherbord with PCIE)
Monitor (preferably HD Enabled, around 18-20" Screen size)
Hard Disc Drive (3.5 Inch Internal, between 500GB-1TB in Size)
Power Supply (Between 500-650 Watts)

All within a budget of £200. What would you all recommend in terms of upgrades that would maximize my value for money? Thanks in advance :).
Click to expand...

I would save your cash and get a whole new system to be honest, something like this

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD560KWOHJBOX) £79.99
1 x Asus VS197D 18.5" LED Monitor - Black £65.99
1 x **B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (S (HD-257-SE) £45.00
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £39.95
1 x MSI A55M-E33 AMD A55 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £38.99
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-14900C10 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1866C10DC) £35.99
Total : £318.50 (includes shipping : £10.50).

 
linwelin said:
I would save your cash and get a whole new system to be honest, something like this

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD560KWOHJBOX) £79.99
1 x Asus VS197D 18.5" LED Monitor - Black £65.99
1 x **B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (S (HD-257-SE) £45.00
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £39.95
1 x MSI A55M-E33 AMD A55 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £38.99
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-14900C10 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1866C10DC) £35.99
Total : £318.50 (includes shipping : £10.50).

Click to expand...

That was my exact thinking! Nice spec too! Would top what he's got now my a long shot as cheap PCI-E cards are hard to come by when looking at value for money. Especially if the budget is so low in this case.
 
snips86x said:
That was my exact thinking! Nice spec too! Would top what he's got now my a long shot as cheap PCI-E cards are hard to come by when looking at value for money. Especially if the budget is so low in this case.
Click to expand...

He might be able to sell his old PC/Monitor to make up the extra cash for it, or just wait a while.

I don't think it is a good idea to spend money on a DDR2 system
 
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