I have been looking into get a new computer. There is a few new games I want to play but they will not work on the one I have. Now my question is should I try and upgrade my computer. If so approximately how much will it cost? Or should I just get a new one? If i get a new one I would love for it to be easier to upgrade for future use. I don't plan on getting a new one until around black friday deals show up.
upgrading or buying?
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Unfortunately for you, upgrading is sort of out of the option now. Most of your hardware is very dated now, and would end up in a nightmare trying to upgrade bits and pieces. It's also more difficult to upgrade stuff that was manufactured by a company like Dell, as sometimes they use special/proprietary parts.
I would suggest building your own machine - it leaves the most room for upgrading possible. Give us a budget and an idea of what sort of games you play, and I'm sure we can make something up for you
I would suggest building your own machine - it leaves the most room for upgrading possible. Give us a budget and an idea of what sort of games you play, and I'm sure we can make something up for you
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Unfortunately for you, upgrading is sort of out of the option now. Most of your hardware is very dated now, and would end up in a nightmare trying to upgrade bits and pieces.
I would suggest building your own machine - it leaves the most room for upgrading possible. Give us a budget and an idea of what sort of games you play, and I'm sure we can make something up for you
Yup I second this
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Build definitely. Time to retire that system. Reformat the old system and use it for a surfing pc hooked up to a tv with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Might even have just enough balls to decode to use as a steam in home game streaming.
you will be blown away by the difference you will see in performance.
1 thing i cannot stress enough.. get a standard 7200 rpm for your games but use an SSD for your operating system . a 256 gig 850 evo is perfect for Operating system and software you regularly use and keep everything else like game files on the Hdd. I went with a 1 TB SSD for games and a 256 gig SSD for my "C" drive.
you will be blown away by the difference you will see in performance.
1 thing i cannot stress enough.. get a standard 7200 rpm for your games but use an SSD for your operating system . a 256 gig 850 evo is perfect for Operating system and software you regularly use and keep everything else like game files on the Hdd. I went with a 1 TB SSD for games and a 256 gig SSD for my "C" drive.
I don't really want to spend over $500. I was going to try and get it around black friday for deals. Don't really have many games I want to play I just want to be able to play them. The monitor I have is useable but I would love to get a computer where I can dual monitor.
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I think you're going to want to save a bit more than that. It's a VERY limited budget, even on some sort of black friday deal. It won't leave you much flexibility or ease of upgrade later on
You can get a decent rig for around that price. When I say decent I mean you can get a basic gaming rig. If you want to have something that you can use for 10 years you need to cough up some coin. There is nothing wrong with saving and using what you have until you are ready to go. Id say if you can save 1000 total... we can help you build one and be crafty about what to get.
Well... You need to buy future proof core components. You will for sure want to spend a good chunk of money on a solid motherboard and I say buy a good hard drive (you dont want to cheap out and possibly lose a lot of stuff)
CPU id say you can cheap out on but sometimes you can get bundles of a good mobo and cpu.
Cooling you can upgrade later if you plan on overclocking
GPU you can upgrade later
Ram you can upgrade later (or buy more later)
Tower is something you will want to splurge on a little (dont go crazy) because your stuck with it
PSU id buy for what you want the future build to be. If you plan on a nice GPU or running 2 get a 750W at least
Really thats it...
Example: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/xLVygL
Its 200 over budget but im just adding in the best low end stuff i can think of. We can tweak it more if you want.
CPU id say you can cheap out on but sometimes you can get bundles of a good mobo and cpu.
Cooling you can upgrade later if you plan on overclocking
GPU you can upgrade later
Ram you can upgrade later (or buy more later)
Tower is something you will want to splurge on a little (dont go crazy) because your stuck with it
PSU id buy for what you want the future build to be. If you plan on a nice GPU or running 2 get a 750W at least
Really thats it...
Example: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/xLVygL
Its 200 over budget but im just adding in the best low end stuff i can think of. We can tweak it more if you want.
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http://pcpartpicker.com/list/nZRW4C
This is what I would grab in that price range.
A lot of the parts you can change out to fit your needs/cost if you want. like the CPU could get the i3 if you need to drop the budget. But if you want to still keep a quad core drop the GPU for one you can find second hand in the $100 range or so but I would advise not to go for anything weaker then a GTX 950/AMD 470.
Another thing you can do would be to upgrade the hard drive for an SSD but with lower storage (around the 250GB range) You lose on capacity but gain huge on speed.
But if you plan to wait till later to buy parts (like much later) I would try and save up more. The closer you can save to around the $1000 mark the better your build will be.
This is what I would grab in that price range.
A lot of the parts you can change out to fit your needs/cost if you want. like the CPU could get the i3 if you need to drop the budget. But if you want to still keep a quad core drop the GPU for one you can find second hand in the $100 range or so but I would advise not to go for anything weaker then a GTX 950/AMD 470.
Another thing you can do would be to upgrade the hard drive for an SSD but with lower storage (around the 250GB range) You lose on capacity but gain huge on speed.
But if you plan to wait till later to buy parts (like much later) I would try and save up more. The closer you can save to around the $1000 mark the better your build will be.
I can not recommend on his budget to allocate a third to almost half his budget on a motherboard. For most people who are not going to be overclocking, running a sli/crossfire build, or have large amount of storage, a low end or mid range MB is all they really need. You do lose out on some of the nicer things like more USB ports and some of the flash but in the long run you can always upgrade it down the line to fit your needs then.
For the most part I agree with you Chocolate. I myself have this board so I am a bit biased. The amount of control-ability is insane and i can see myself with my rig for at least 10 years. Thats the big thing is that the board is going to be the last thing you will ever upgrade so in my opinion you make it count.
Again if you have a budget of 500 right now but eventually want to upgrade it to a rig that can run with the 1500-2000 budgets you have to dump money into you core hardware.
Here is a equally good mobo half the price
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Q9Gj4D/asus-motherboard-z170a
Again if you have a budget of 500 right now but eventually want to upgrade it to a rig that can run with the 1500-2000 budgets you have to dump money into you core hardware.
Here is a equally good mobo half the price
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Q9Gj4D/asus-motherboard-z170a
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