quick upgrade question?

lankz92

Hey guys, quick question. The gf is using my old pc lately

Core2quad q8300?? I think. Lga775
Gtx 460.
4gb ram.

Also have a radeon 1gb i think its a 5750 going spare.

Its getting it hard to keep up these days.
Stuttering/freezing after 30 mins on low in most games.

Iv got a lga1155 board going spare would it be worth upgrading to that with an i5 2400/2500 and a gtx 750/760 or would i just be in the same boat this time next year? Or is there better options?
Budget would be no more than maybe €150 but i can sell off the above bits if there worth it.

Also im upgrading the ram in my own pc so will have 8gb to go into it provided it fits.

Not playing anything too demanding, mostly just survival games not available on console.

Thanks for any advice

V-man

i5 2400/2500 will be a huge difference.
Sandy bridge is in a different league compared to Core 2 generation.

Both GTX460 and HD5750 are both way too slow for today's full HD games and no longer have proper driver support.
Skip the GTX750/760 and go for the newly released GTX1050 (Ti), much faster and within your budget.
If you don't like nVidia you can consider the RX 460 (slower than 1050) or stretch your budget and go for the RX 470 (much faster)

Xenoronin

The GTX760 isn't amazing, but it's not a bad stopgap if you need something to tide ye over for a while. I survived on one for 3 years without issue Still plays the latest games if you drop the graphics settings down.

lankz92

Its ddr3 ram i have in my own pc which im changing so that will be put in.

The spare board is lga1155. As rock, model i think is h61 but i'll have to check.

So i just need a new cpu and gpu.

Id happily buy a 950 or 1050 for her but she'll think iv gone over kill.

Budgeting €50-60 for the cpu and about €100 for gpu, cex near me have a 760 for €110, if i trade in the 2 gpu's i have i'll get it for €70

Xenoronin

Hmmm, might be a bit more for the CPU and the GPU is worth a good bit less than 110. Check on adverts.ie

lankz92

Yep i know cex overprice everything but i can trade in stuff which is handy.

Think i can get an i5 2400 from ebay for about €60 if i keep an eye out.

But the 1050 2gb is only £110 in uk so maybe i can stretch to that.

Iv got some searches set on adverts to notify me when things pop up so keeping an eye on there. But the gtx 760 do seem to be priced at 90-110

TerrorFirmer

Sell old Pc for €150 (should be easy enough get that for it as it would still be good for CS:Go, Minecraft, etc)

Buy 2nd hand Dell Vostro/Optiplex based on i5-2400/8GB for around €150 on Ebay and add a 2nd hand GTX750/ti for around 60-80.

110 for a GTX760 isn't a terrible price from CEX considering they offer a full 24 month warranty. They still go for 80-90 second hand with zilch guarantees or warranty.

lankz92

Quick update. Iv gone ahead and bought the gtx 760 from cex. Traded a bunch of stuff i had about and got it for €15 plus the traded stuff.

Have a new case on the way and keeping an eye out for an i5.

Quick question is it worth adding 120gb ssd or should i just leave a normal hdd in there? Or should i spend the extra on a 240? Trying to stick to a tight budget

minitrue

An SSD is generally the most significant upgrade you can make to any machine and releases the bottleneck of terrible access times from hard disks (which haven't really changed in decade(s)). You'll often find people saying they only changed to an SSD and found it felt like a completely new machine.

Random barely relevant anecdote, I was running some of my own stuff (importing data) and was sitting there going "this usually takes 30 seconds and it's been running for about 10 minutes" until I suddenly realised I'd moved it to the wrong place and it was now on a hard disk instead of SSD They really are like two completely different things.

I've no idea how much space you really need but if you can get a big enough SSD that you can install everything on there (and keep any videos/photos/documents/backups and other less used odd files on a hard disk if needed) things should fly along much more happily/snappily. If you really think you can fit everything in 120GB and want to spend the minimum go for it but 240GB is probably a lot more likely to have enough room to keep at least all your most important stuff (windows + games + other software) on there. 480GB is even better value for money (€/GB).

Without details I'd say avoid the 120GB (about €50) and get a 240GB (about €80) or 480GB (about €120) as soon as you can squeeze out the funds.