Beginners Hardware Upgrade Advice

whoman1989 · 26 Jul 2012 at 11:51

Hi. New to this forum. Just wondering if anybody can give me any advice on what the best harware to upgrade my PC would be. It's an eMachines 390 with 1GB Ram, integrated graphics, IM845GL motherboard. That's all the information I have really. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[WU-TANG]GZA · 26 Jul 2012 at 11:53

How much money do you haveto spend? Sounds like a complete new system tbh.

Also need to know what you use the PC for?

whoman1989 · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:04

I have a restrained budget. This computer was bought a few years ago by my parents and I have now aquired it. I didn't think there would be much hope for it but I wanted to find out if I could breathe new life into it perhaps for gaming and or video editing. Long shot, I know.

[WU-TANG]GZA · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:08

Gaming or video editing. Sorry mate, don't think it's going to happen.

Best ways of breathing new life into a PC in my experience is reinstall the operating system, adding more RAM is possible. If the machine uses Sata then maybe get an SSD for the OS too, that will make it feel snappy.

But for gaming/video editing ur looking at a whole new PC. £400 bare minimum, even then it's not going to be great

P.S. you're going to have to be more specific than 'restained budget' gimme figures...

Here's an idea:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £94.99
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive - (MZ-7PC128B/WW) £79.99
1 x Intel Pentium G840 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £54.95
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D2V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £41.99
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £32.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard II Windowed Midi Tower Case - Black/Silver £27.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £23.99
1 x LG GH24NS90 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £387.97 (includes shipping : £11.75).

not gonna tear through BF3 or render HD content in seconds but it's pretty good for the money.

whoman1989 · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:21

WOW! Thanks for the comprehensive list. My budget was around £500, but it seems like you're right about doing a new build. I'll look into this and retire the old PC. Thanks again for the great advice.

skylineboy · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:26

That is a solid little build above. It doesn't have loads of storage space but it will be night and day from what you have now in everything!!