Upgrade advice needed for an older system

[lenzz90]

Hi
I am really out of the loop as far as hardware goes these days and I am looking to give my kid’s computer a slight upgrade so he can run games with decent graphics. It’s a system I through together from bits a pieces I had laying around a few years ago and its running onboard graphics.

The CPU is a Q6600 2.40GHZ
motherboard is an ASUS P5N73-AM.
PSU is a corsair HX520w
2GB OF RAM ( so that needs upgrading to )

I am looking for a half decent graphics card that will run most games with half decent graphics. I would be looking to run things like the lego games and skyrim. it doesn’t have to be new, 2nd hand of ebay is fine, Just want bit of advice on what cards will run in this motherboard and what gives good value for money. Don’t really want to spend any more than 80 quid. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

 

[benjii]

I have a few questions.

I can't find that model mobo. Is that supposed to be a 7 instead of a T?
What's the PSU brand, model and wattage?
How much RAM does it have?

 

[lenzz90]

I have a few questions.

I can't find that model mobo. Is that supposed to be a 7 instead of a T?
What's the PSU brand, model and wattage?
How much RAM does it have?

sorry yes it should be a 7 . i have amended the original post with RAM and PSU

 

[Aretak]

Since you have a pretty decent PSU, I'd look at something like a used HD 7870/R9 270/270X (all the exact same card), or possibly even a 7950 if you can find one on your budget. The CPU is still going to be a limiting factor in many games, but it'd obviously still be a massive upgrade over the onboard graphics.

 

[clidx]

Is that a G0 Q6600? Download the program CPU-Z and it will tell you. If that's the case you should be able to overclock it pretty easily to 3.6-3.8GHz. You will also need a new cooler if it has the stock intel cooler on it though. It will still bottleneck you in a lot of games but it will be perfectly playable.

Adding another 2GB of DDR2 RAM will be pretty expensive though.

Honestly that machine is coming up to a decade old now. Don't expect much out of it. Value wise you would be much better off building a new computer budgeted at £300, reusing the PSU.