Best bang for buck upgrade to older PC ?

deadl0ck

Hi all,

I have an old gaming PC that I'm still using - it's an Inspiron 660 board with 8GG RAM and a core i5-2500 @ 3.3GHz

The HDD is an SSD that I swapped in a while back

The graphics card is an NVidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB

Is there something, relatively cheap (100 Euro or less) I can do to improve it ?

I was thinking maybe a 2nd Hand Graphics Card - any suggestions would be greatly appreciated !

Thanks !

Spear

What games are being targeted? There's not much options, given it's age.

Pcgamer

Could find a cheap i7 3770 or xeon(make sure its a 4 core 8 thread). 3770 is 65 on cex.

The graphics card probably something like the Gtx 970 would be a good fit if you can find one for right price.

Edit: just see its a Dell. Let others confirm before taking my word for it.

dreamers75

Dell so you maybe limited by the PSU.

2500 is a beast for overclocking but fitting an AIO in there will be hard.

deadl0ck

Spear wrote: »

What games are being targeted? There's not much options, given it's age.

Hmmm - I'd love to play Doom Eternal but not sure if it could handle it

Spear

deadl0ck wrote: »

Hmmm - I'd love to play Doom Eternal but not sure if it could handle it

Doom Eternal is more forgiving of weaker hardware than expected. But you'd need a good deal more powerful GPU as a starting point. The CPU just meets the bare minimum requirements.

beauf

The problem you have is even with the your best cpu and a 1650 you'll be struggling to get 60fps in many titles with med/low detail. Can't see it being useful even at that for longer than 12 months. Is that worth the cost? Amy money into that machine is dead money.

Depends what your playing. Which you haven't mentioned.

A CPU and 1650 maybe more ram is 250-300. Is that worth it for another 12 months of low end gaming. If that all you want to spend maybe it is.

We've a couple of machines with a bit better cpu and 1050 I'm debating if a 1650 is worth it.

beauf

Finding it hard to find stock of parts to build a replacement budget gaming rig. Higher end parts seem to have better availablity. So in that light maybe upgrade might be worth it.

I'm thinking of having laptop. As it would allow us to move it around the house easier.

Homelander

Not worth spending much money. The i5-2500 sucks in most new games like COD or Battlefield and will be pegged at 100% constantly.

Doom Eternal would probably be OK with a better card.

Problem is now everything has gone mad, new parts are all out of stock and 2nd hand prices are utterly crazy.

Previously you would have gotten an RX470 or GTX970 type card for less than €100 that would give a good boost but not sure now.

deadl0ck

Yeah - prices seem to be a bit mad alright - I think I'll have to wait it out for now