I've had my Dell XPS 430 system for around 5 years now, I upgraded it last year with an SSD and 8GB (total) ram and now I am getting to the point where I'm wondering whether its worth upgrading to a new system or just upgrading the graphics card.

I currently dont really play many games on my PC as I have an xbox 360 & one for that, but I thinking of getting back into it as I used to like playing homeworld and I hear they may be re-releasing them with a new game called Shipbreakers. I also used to like the old wing commander games and freelancer (dont know if there is anything like that nowadays).

So ideally I am looking for advice as to whether a new pc or upgraded graphics card would be the way to go. If upgraded graphics card, what are my options (with out having to change anything else on the system) and if new system what should I be looking for ? I only really want to be playing games at 1080p resolutions but with high detail if possible.

Here are my current system specs :

XPS 430 E8400 Core 2 Duo Processor (3.00GHz,1333MHz FSB,6MB cache)
Intel X48 Chipset
8GB RAM
Samsung 830 SSD
Radeon 4850 GPU

Any help appreciated

If you are interested in that gene of games, I think you should definitely read up on Star Citizen (which is also by Chris Roberts and one of the most anticipated space trading and combat simulator mmo) that's due for 2015. Official site here:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/about-the-game

Socket 775 is not really up to scratch for gaming these days if you want good performance. My suggestion to you is build a new PC after Star Citizen is released, then you will get the most for your money and fine picking the best hardware available for your budget.

Marine-RX179 said:

If you are interested in that gene of games, I think you should definitely read up on Star Citizen (which is also by Chris Roberts and one of the most anticipated space trading and combat simulator mmo) that's due for 2015. Official site here:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/about-the-game

Socket 775 is not really up to scratch for gaming these days if you want good performance. My suggestion to you is build a new PC after Star Citizen is released, then you will get the most for your money and fine picking the best hardware available for your budget.

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Thanks for the reply, Star Citizen looks really good, but not sure I can wait till 2015

rjg2 said:

Thanks for the reply, Star Citizen looks really good, but not sure I can wait till 2015

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Well, you'd need a new PC in any case then. My advise to you is to NOT buy a dell prebuilt system again, instead get a pre-built PC such as OcUK themselves. However if you can build your own, you'd be able to save some money/get better or personal prefered parts for the money.

If you can give a budget, then it would make it easier for people to give to suggestions.

Marine-RX179 said:

Well, you'd need a new PC in any case then. My advise to you is to NOT buy a dell prebuilt system again, instead get a pre-built PC such as OcUK themselves. However if you can build your own, you'd be able to save some money/get better or personal prefered parts for the money.

If you can give a budget, then it would make it easier for people to give to suggestions.

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Yeah I wont buy a Dell again, I have built my own in the past but like the fact how tidy (cables etc) they are when they come pre-built, been looking at some of the OcUK systems and they look good.

Got about £800-1000 budget, but dont need to have a top of the range system. Just something that will play games in good detail at 1080p. Been looking at the i5 4670k and Radeon R9 270x, do you think they would be sufficient for what I need ? Also what kind of motherboards are the best these days?

rjg2 said:

Got about £800-1000 budget, but dont need to have a top of the range system. Just something that will play games in good detail at 1080p. Been looking at the i5 4670k and Radeon R9 270x, do you think they would be sufficient for what I need ? Also what kind of motherboards are the best these days?

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Considering you already have SSD, I would imagine you should be able to get a 280x with the build with that kind of budget?

A quick look and already saw OcUK got gaming PC with a Haswell i7 with 280x for £1K:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-362-OE&groupid=43&catid=2475

I'm not telling you to buy that, I'm just showing it is possible to get better parts than that or at a lower cost if you were to build the PC yourself- a less expensive case and minus the build charge you might be close to to able to get a custom 290 or GTX780 instead of the 280x.

true above plus if you get a good case with cable holes it will be really easy to keep it tidy yourself. For instance you could pick one up from as little as £50-£60.

Ok I had a go a putting a system together, does this look ok and am I missing anything ?

Case : Corsair Carbide 200R
PSU : Corsair CX600M
Moboard : MSI Z87-G45 Gaming
CPU : Core i5 4670K Retail
Memory : TeamGroup Xtreem LV "Frost Edition" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C10 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit
GPU : Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Boost OC 2GB GDDR5
HDD : Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM

TOTAL PRICE : £646.48

I've already got the Samsung 830 SSD and blu-ray drive in my current setup that I can easily move over to this one.

Edit : With the i7 4770k and a MSI Radeon r9 280x total price would be £800, would the difference in those 2 components be worth the extra £160 ?