Please help with my sons PC

[AdamPhilpott]

PLEASE HELP MY SON!!!

Hi Guys & Girls,

 

I need help with my sons pc. My son is 12 years old and has autism. He lives trains all day, everyday. A big part of his day is Train Simulator. He plays on his pc i bought him from ebay a year ago but is not running at a decent frame rate and crashes often which causes him great distress. I have basic knowledge of computers but with my basic know how i cant figure out what is wrong and what it needs. I have attached a screenshot showing what hardware the pc has.

 

Ram is DDR3 1600Mhz

Not sure if processor is good enough, not sure what processor i coup upgrade to,

With an upgrade to graphics card would this be enough, i need to work on a minimal budget as money is tight, but any advice would be appreciated.

 

Thanks people.

[RonnieOP]

Never played the game but looking at the system requirements online it seems like the pc has everything it needs outside of a better video card.

 

idk your budget or area, but 1050tis should be going for dirt cheap these days and would be able to handle that game.

[homeap5]

For sure graphics card is a problem here. It's cheapest GPU used only for displaying screen and not much more these days. CPU is not great but still, it should not be a problem with train simulator games.

 

Problem may be different - even with bad GPU and not great CPU, system and game should not crash. It may be faulty ram, bad cpu cooler (unlikely since GPU is bottleneck here), bad PSU or anything else in fact. Without more testing is hard to say.

 

But it may be also GPU that uses probably passive cooling and is not designed for hard gaming. Replace GPU to anything like Radeon RX580, RX570 even or GeForce 1050Ti and you'll be fine. You must replace GPU anyway so it's not a big risk - no matter if ram or PSU is faulty or not, your GPU still is too weak to handle games with even medium quality.

 

[kirashi]

9 minutes ago, AdamPhilpott said:

I need help with my sons pc. My son is 12 years old and has autism. He lives trains all day, everyday. A big part of his day is Train Simulator. He plays on his pc i bought him from ebay a year ago but is not running at a decent frame rate and crashes often which causes him great distress. I have basic knowledge of computers but with my basic know how i cant figure out what is wrong and what it needs. I have attached a screenshot showing what hardware the pc has.

 

With an upgrade to graphics card would this be enough, i need to work on a minimal budget as money is tight, but any advice would be appreciated.

Agreed with the other 2 posters above me; upgrading the GPU to a GTX 1050 Ti or AMD equivalent (even if you find a used one in working order for a good price) should be all you need to get Train Simulator running nicely. Of course, if it's crashing for a reason unrelated to low graphics power, this may not fix it, but the main issue here is the low power of the GT 710 card currently in the system.

[jaslion]

You could also try removing the gpu (gt710) and using the onboard gpu. It's quite a bit better than the gt 710 is. However the crashing is still an issue on it's own that shouldt happen even with weak hardware.

[Sir0Tek]

What a system... Remove that GT 710 and use the integrated apu from that 6600K, it is faster and probably less troublesome. Check if the cooler needs to be repasted, maybe get a good aftermarket cooler for the cpu.

Check if the ram came in 2x modules, check with memtest86 that the memory is good and not causing any errors. 

 

 

[homeap5]

If you want to fix only crash at the beginning, try to set RAM to 1333 MHz instead of 1600. Or try just single ram stick. It will be good start to check what is wrong.

 

[AdamPhilpott]

Thanks for the advice people, i did think it was graphics card upgrade needed but wasn't sure if what would be suitable,

The GT 710 only came about after useless advice from local pc repair shop, was only £40 so meh.

 

The Ram is 2 x 8gb sticks

I had a look to see if cooling was an issue, when in bios, the CPU has 80ºc-83ºc temp, is that normal?

 

Should i look for a suitable cooling with the bigger graphics card. Thanks guys

[homeap5]

80-83 im BIOS? It's very high.

[WereCatf]

7 hours ago, AdamPhilpott said:

I had a look to see if cooling was an issue, when in bios, the CPU has 80ºc-83ºc temp, is that normal?

How many case-fans does the PC have and what direction do they blow? Those temps are a tad high, so you could start by checking that all the fans are working, then use compressed air in a can to clean up the CPU-cooler and, if you dare to, you could take the whole motherboard out, then remove the CPU-cooler and replace the old thermal paste with fresh paste -- though, be sure to check that you put every single cable back in the same way it was when taking the PC apart. Noctua's NT-H2 is some of the most expensive thermal-paste on the market at the moment, but it also performs extremely well; I use it myself as well.

 

As for the crashing-issue: I recommend you download memtest86+ and let it run for an hour or two to see, if all the RAM is working correctly. If memtest86+ doesn't report any issues, the crashing is something else -- possibly the GPU, like others have mentioned above.

[AdamPhilpott]

3 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

How many case-fans does the PC have and what direction do they blow? Those temps are a tad high, so you could start by checking that all the fans are working, then use compressed air in a can to clean up the CPU-cooler and, if you dare to, you could take the whole motherboard out, then remove the CPU-cooler and replace the old thermal paste with fresh paste -- though, be sure to check that you put every single cable back in the same way it was when taking the PC apart. Noctua's NT-H2 is some of the most expensive thermal-paste on the market at the moment, but it also performs extremely well; I use it myself as well.

 

As for the crashing-issue: I recommend you download memtest86+ and let it run for an hour or two to see, if all the RAM is working correctly. If memtest86+ doesn't report any issues, the crashing is something else -- possibly the GPU, like others have mentioned above.

The case has 1 x rear 120mm

1 x 90mm side fan

 

Thanks

[WereCatf]

4 minutes ago, AdamPhilpott said:

The case has 1 x rear 120mm

1 x 90mm side fan

Wow, that's terrible. Check if you can add one or two fans on the front. The rear-fan should be blowing air out from the case, whereas the fan(s) on the front should be pulling air into the case.

[jaslion]

9 hours ago, AdamPhilpott said:

Thanks for the advice people, i did think it was graphics card upgrade needed but wasn't sure if what would be suitable,

The GT 710 only came about after useless advice from local pc repair shop, was only £40 so meh.

 

The Ram is 2 x 8gb sticks

I had a look to see if cooling was an issue, when in bios, the CPU has 80ºc-83ºc temp, is that normal?

 

Should i look for a suitable cooling with the bigger graphics card. Thanks guys

80c in bios shouldnt happen at all. It's basically doing nothing then. It should be 40 max then so something is for real wrong. Could you install hwmonitor to check cpu temps whilst the computer is on doing not really anything and then check the temps whilst gaming.

[homeap5]

CPU cooler is mounted bad or mounted without thermal paste.

 

Two case fans for computer like yours is enough, no need to insert 2 additional fans like people do these days.