Upgrade Advice Needed - Many thanks in Advance.

[Andrew Price]

Good Afternoon Overclockers,

I currently have an old gaming pc that hasn't been used in quite some time, and am wondering if its still salvageable, even as a low end gaming PC, or something that will at least run windows without lagging even when just opening a programme... orr should I just completely start fresh?

The PC has the following specs:

GPU: Radeon Sapphire R9 280X
CPU: AMD FX 8-Core 4.0GHZ Black Edition
Mother Board: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5
HDD: Samsung (some archaic HDD)
RAM: 4GB Corsiar 1600Mhz XMS3

Many Thanks

- Andy

 

[Grimley]

Hello
Cheapest way to salvage that rig is to increase the RAM from 4 to 8GB (matching pairs of 4GB) an add a cheap SATA SSD. That way it should run Windows 10 (Aebit slowly) & play something like Fortnite without too much trouble.

 

[Andrew Price]

Thanks for the reply mate, thats all copied! Would you say that this rig can be salvaged to something stable enough to run a few low end games, or do you think I would be better off doing a re build at something around 500 odd quid ?

 

[Quartz]

A little over your budget:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £179.99
• 1 x MSI B450-A PRO MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £99.95
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan TUF Gaming Alliance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C19 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Blac= £89.99
• 1 x WD Blue 3D NAND 500GB M.2 2280 Solid State Drive (WDS500G2B0B)= £66.95
• 1 x Asus Radeon RX 580 Arez Dual OC 8192MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £169.99

Total: £617.97 (includes shipping: £11.10)​

​

 

[Andrew Price]

Hello again,

Thank you for your advice Quartz thats very nice of you putting together a potential build for me, I will keep this in mind, and might get back to this at a slightly later date, maybe even save up and spend a bit more money on a higher end build!!

 

[Grimley]

Thanks for the reply mate, thats all copied! Would you say that this rig can be salvaged to something stable enough to run a few low end games, or do you think I would be better off doing a re build at something around 500 odd quid ?

A few online web browser based games I would say. An R9 280x was a good card back in the day, I installed one in my Nephews PC & he played most of them up until last year, when he complained about his PC being slow when he played Overwatch. I upgraded the PC anyway as it was his 18th Birthday, but Overwatch is a resource hog on any PC.

£500 is not quite enough for an upgrade these days unless you are prepared to make 'compromises' such as reusing certain components, sometimes that can have a detrimental effect on the upgraded PC.

 

[Quartz]

maybe even save up and spend a bit more money on a higher end build!!

If you save extra money, replace your current PSU and then spend more on the GPU.

 

[Andrew Price]

Thank you for all the advice gents, given the advice I will probably look at doing a new build later on in the year, unfortunately just bought a new laptop as I travel a lot for work so it was a necessity really.

I wouldnt say I'm a power user by any stretch, mind you the one game I used to love back in the day was Microsoft FSX which is quite power hungry! Those were the days! Haha