help me upgrade

Zairs · 2 Jan 2011 at 04:10

here's the set up, what should i look at upgraging first
AMD Phenom X4 9650 Quad-Core processor (2.3GHz, 2MB Cache) Genuine Windows(R) 7 Home Premium 4GB DDR2 memory 640GB hard drive 512MB ATI Radeon HD4350 graphics DVD Rewriter Built-in wireless (802.11b/g)
FOXCONN A7VMX-K motherboard, The BIOS is American Magatrends

looking to spend no more than £100 on this upgrade though there is room for manover. also ideas to get it up to date?

Emphacy · 2 Jan 2011 at 04:24

What do you use your system for exactly? Gaming? Rendering? General?
Looking at your specs though, for a high performance system i'd set my heart straight on the GPU.

Upgrade to a GTX460 or a Radeon HD 5850, they're in the £100 - £150 price range, i'm sure a little extra cash for a needy upgrade won't do no harm.

Zairs · 2 Jan 2011 at 04:24

its for gaming mainly, this is just about to become the second rig as im builing a new one for myself and letting the mrs have it

Emphacy · 2 Jan 2011 at 04:43

well like I said I'd definitely upgrade your GPU on this one!

Heres a fairly cheap GTX 460 from OCUK: See Here!
And Heres a fairly cheap Radeon HD 5850: See Here!

Yea it's a little bit more than your £100 budget, but YOU NEED IT

Zairs · 2 Jan 2011 at 15:21

would it be woth changing the motherboard, looks like i could pick one up qiute cheap?

MumboJumbo · 2 Jan 2011 at 16:22

Is this a prebuilt pc or a homemade one? I would personaly overclock the cpu and upgrade the gpu.

Zairs said:
would it be woth changing the motherboard, looks like i could pick one up qiute cheap?

Nope, not unless you want to overclock and its a decent overclocking motherboard. But in that case I doubt it would be cheap.

jms198 · 2 Jan 2011 at 16:30

A half decent GPU would be my best bet. What screen size and PSU are you using?

With a new motherboard you should be looking at getting a new CPU too.

Zairs · 2 Jan 2011 at 16:43

i'm using a 22" with 1920x1080, the psu i think is a iso-450pp(what it says on the side)
RAM looks like its called ASint(all it says)
is th cpu rubbish too??

MumboJumbo · 2 Jan 2011 at 16:46

There should be a table on the side of the psu stating its spec like this:

If you could tell us what it says that would be a good start. It's likely you'rs would look differnt to this as this is seasonics labling which combines 3 different models of psu.

As regards to the cpu, he means that if you are going to ugrade the mobo it would be pointless if you arn't going to upgrade the cpu. Generaly speaking if you upgrade a mobo it will be to acomidate new cpu's that don't run in your current mobo.

Zairs · 2 Jan 2011 at 16:47

think its a 350w

MumboJumbo · 2 Jan 2011 at 16:55

Open up your pc and look. It's very important. You cannot upgrade your gpu otherwise. You never answered my question before as to if this was a prebuilt pc or one you made your self. If its prebuilt the psu is likely not a very good one and if it is 350w like you say then I would suggest against upgrading the gpu without upgrading the psu too.

Upgrading old pc's is never easy and usualy just best to just start from fresh and build a whole new pc.

Zairs · 2 Jan 2011 at 17:01

its pre built, i am building a new pc, but the mrs will be using this for gaming and i she she'll be a bit put out it it aint running games any where near as well as this.
i have looked and it says 350w max, though i do have an antec truepower 2.0 550w psu lying around