Upgrade my rig, for as little as possible

[deannos]

My gaming rig is using very old hardware, and i wondered if it's worth partly upgrading. Would it be worth upgrading to DDR3 and MB, as i couldn't afford to go with the very latest ram etc. I currently have the following -

Old elite gaming case
EVGA 500B PSU
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
Q6600 PSU
Abit IP35 pro xe motherboard
8gb ddr2 ram
HD 7870 XT graphics

Thinking i would just need to change the mb, ram and cpu for now, any ideas.

 

[Quartz]

Are you overclocking? Your best bang for the buck is likely to be just a new GPU. Just get yourself a GTX 1060 or RX 580. You might also look into finding a secondhand QX9650 or Q9550 CPU. The IP35 Pro CPU compatibility list is here.

 

[pastymuncher]

Changing to a DDR3 motherboard for that cpu will give you zero benefit at all. To get any decent gains you will have to replace everything and that will cost a big chunk of cash. You should see a performance boost by replacing the gpu but that Q6600 is going to hold it back especially if running at stock so if it isn't overclocked get it overclocked. If you have a decent cooler you should achieve 3.4-3.6Ghz. To be honest I wouldn't be spending any money on a pc that old and think it would be a better idea to plod along with it while saving up for a AMD Ryzen R5, B350 motherboard and some fast DDR4 memory.

 

[Quartz]

To be honest I wouldn't be spending any money on a pc that old and think it would be a better idea to plod along with it while saving up for a AMD Ryzen R5, B350 motherboard and some fast DDR4 memory.

Indeed, but a new GPU now will be transferable to a new PC later on. And really, that spec PC is more than enough for most office-type non-gaming uses.

 

[EViLHomer48]

I have the same CPU but on a different Asus board. My thoughts are to spend either £300 on a Ryzen 1400 plus board/8Gb of DDR4 RAM or £400 on a Ryzen 1600 with 16GB of RAM.
Anything lesser seems to be pointless upgrade reasons (it's 10 years old).