Gaming PC on a £500 budget.

[MysticMind]

Hello everyone.

I have had my current PC since 2007, and have upgraded the graphics card, processor and RAM several times. However by this point, the motherboard is just so outdated, as well as the fact I'm still on Windows XP, I may as well build an entirely new PC from scratch.

I am currently saving up for a PC that can handle World of Warcraft and similar quality games on moderately high settings, or at least not be super low just to avoid massive framerate lag. I also make videos for youtube, so a better processor speed will help reduce the strain on my PC while I render.

My budget is currently around £500, and I have found a couple of good gaming PCs with Windows 7 that seem to be around that budget. However I would like to ask here for a good build that may be able to squeeze as much power as I can get for that price range.

I already have a good monitor and peripherals, and if possible, I would like to keep the existing two hard drives I have. One is a 1TB hard drive, and the other is the origional 300GB hard drive that came with the PC. This will save the trouble of transfering files over to the new PC. However, how will this effect upgrading the OS?

Any advice that can be given on what to look for would be very helpful, hope this is enough info for what I'm after!

 

[MissChief]

So it's CPU/Mobo, RAM, PSU, graphics card, cooler and case? Oh and OS too.

Regarding the Hard Disks, I would put Windows onto the 300GB one and you should be able to keep the 1TB as storage.

What about your existing case? Is it suitable?

As much as I'd like to say 'Core i5 + Nvidia' you'll struggle to fit all that with your budget, including an OS too.

 

[MysticMind]

So it's CPU/Mobo, RAM, PSU, graphics card, cooler and case? Oh and OS too.

Regarding the Hard Disks, I would put Windows onto the 300GB one and you should be able to keep the 1TB as storage.

What about your existing case? Is it suitable?

As much as I'd like to say 'Core i5 + Nvidia' you'll struggle to fit all that with your budget, including an OS too.

To be perfectly honest, I bought a new cooling system a while ago when I last upgraded my graphics card and RAM. I know very little about what would make it suitable or not. What information would you need to know about the cooling system to know if I can keep the existing one or not?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v351/Avrius_Nights/2015-02-03 13.19.07_zpsjrlna5uz.jpg This is what my current case looks like. To be honest I may as well get a new one considering how old this is.

So at the very least, I will need new;
Motherboard
Processor
RAM
Graphics Card
OS

Case and cooling system will likely be optional if they are adiquet for suggested use.

Edit, here are my current specs;
Graphics Card: Nvidea GeForce GT 630
Processor: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5700 @ 3.00GHz
RAM: 2.8gb DDR2
OS: Windows XP
Sound Card: NVIDIA High Definition Audio]
Motherboard: Dell 0RY007, Chipset P35/G33/G31, BIOS date 34/02/2009.
I'm not sure how to find out my fan speed, but it was bought in the past 2 years.

I definately need to upgrade away from Windows XP, DDR2 Ram and get a much newer motherboard. Graphics card seems to be fine for the games I want to play, like the Telltale Games and Warlords of Dreanor. It's the CPU speed that's holding things back, but I figure an upgrade of graphics card would help make things allot smoother anyway. The Graphics card specs seem to be spot on exactly what Warlords of Dreanor reccomends. I'd like a quad core CPU, but I'll settle for duel core as long as it's at least 3GHZ or higher.

Obviously I need more than 3 gigs of RAM, preferably between 4-8gigs, as seem to be on most PC bundles around this price. I think my sound card is fine for now, but I'm not sure if it's a seperate item or part of the graphics card.

 

[stulid]

What apart from WOW do you play?


YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280 Gaming 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £79.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £77.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £52.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £52.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £44.99
1 x Xigmatek Mach Midi-Tower Black £22.99
Total : £541.52 (includes shipping : £8.00).




YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280 Gaming 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £77.99
1 x MSI Z97 PC Mate Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £64.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £53.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £52.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £44.99
1 x Xigmatek Mach Midi-Tower Black £22.99
Total : £537.52 (includes shipping : £8.00).





Hope that helps.

New case as your looks a bit "dated" and maybe also cant fit a long powerful GFX card in it.

To be perfectly honest, I bought a new cooling system a while ago when I last upgraded my graphics card and RAM. I know very little about what would make it suitable or not. What information would you need to know about the cooling system to know if I can keep the existing one or not?

What cooler is it?