Upgrade old PC, or not bother?

rodders

rodders

rodders

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Mate has an old PC I built for him, spec below. It doesnt play Company of Heros 2. He is planning on building a new PC later in the year, but is it worth spending anything on this?

Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 LGA775 'Wolfdale' "Overclocking E0 Stepping" 3.33GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10000RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD1500HLFS)
Nvidia GTX480 SLI
Corsair TX 750W ATX2.2 SLI Compliant PSU
Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler (Socket AM2LGA775)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (66I-01939)
Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Samsung SM-T220 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Rose Red
GeIL 8GB (4x2GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GB28GB6400C4QC)
 
most of it needs an upgrade, but you could do it in a couple of steps.

1. new motherboard, cpu, ram, ssd, win10, use existing hdd for games storage

2. new gpu(s)

3. new monitor

it will seriously fly compared to what he has now. Can't believe some people still use vista, it really is a pig.
 
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There are lots of individually cheap things you could do: upgrade to Windows 7 or 10, upgrade to a quad core CPU, upgrade the graphics to a GTX 950 or 960, etc. But really, he'd just be spending money that would be better saved for a replacement PC.

It's not even worth spending money now with the view of transplanting later.
 
win7 and an SSD and you'll be suprised how fresh the PC will feel. Could throw in a Q6600 for about 17 quid on ebay. Also could update the GFX card.

The SSD and GPU will carry forward for when he is ready to upgrade the whole thing if you buy wisely. It all depends on his needs really.

Out of everything the only part that's be wasted there is the Q6600 (17-20 quid)
 
He wants to play COH2 at the moment with me.

When he gets round to it, he will spend a decent portion of money.

Would a new GPU not be bottle necked a lot? i.e if he is putting a 980 in his new pc, would it be worth getting that now, or will it just be held back too much?
 
GPU will be bottlenecked to some extent yes but upgrading the CPU to a different socket means replacing the whole CPU/MOBO/RAM combo which is the priciest bit. GPU will carry over as would SSD drives, etc and definitely want to look at a new Windows soon.
 
As Neoboy said a modern GPU would bottleneck, however it would still be a big improvement and you could carry it over to the new build when it's time.
 
My current system (also badly in need of an upgrade) is built around the same mobo, Asus P5Q Pro with some similar specs. Main differences are I'm using the Q6600 quad, which has stood the test of time very well (although showing its age now) and I have a GTX 660 and 480GB SSD (both added as upgrades).

The two upgrades that breathed new life into my machine and have helped keep it viable until now are the SSD and the GTX 660 (yes it's bottlenecked but it still helps in a lot of games).

A 980 will absolutely be bottlenecked. But if you're definitely planning to use one in a future new system then no harm in trying, it should boost certain games. However, Nvidia Pascal is on the horizon and so it may be worth hanging on to the pennies for a while.

A SSD is 100% worth upgrading to and can be transferred into any new build.

As for Windows Vista .... seriously? That's the biggest bottleneck possible.
 
Sir SpankalotUK said:
most of it needs an upgrade, but you could do it in a couple of steps.

1. new motherboard, cpu, ram, ssd, win10, use existing hdd for games storage

2. new gpu(s)

3. new monitor

it will seriously fly compared to what he has now. Can't believe some people still use vista, it really is a pig.
Click to expand...

This, if upgrading in stages. Them GPU's will be badly bottlenecked with your current t CPU. I've had a few of them cards and going from a q9550 @4ghz to a i7 930 made a big difference. The cards will still play games with OK settings as well.
 
£20 for a q6600

£30-£80 for hd 6850, gtx 660, gtx 560, hd7850 . gtx 580, r7 360, r9 270, 7870, gtx 570, 260x , 6970 just to name a few and all used at that price region obviously and most would be better than what he has or xfire with that psu.

£15 can get a used 500gb or £22 can get you a 1tb hard drive

upgrade to windows 7 64bit

this is what i would do or at least upgrade the graphics and hard drive and os if he plans to build new later in the year.


or sell the computer and buy a better one, can pick up better systems for £80-150 and i sold a similar system with xfire dx10 cards, 4gb ram, e8400 for £80, it did have a corsair hx1000, so probably undervalued slightly, but i was seeing quad core systems with gaming graphics cards for £100 on the bay or gumtree.
 
The SLI GTX480s should be ok, I wouldn't upgrade them unless it was to something decent that could be carried over to a new system. If it were me, I'd pick up a copy of windows 10, an SSD and keep an eye out for a cheap used core 2 Quad.
 
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