Upgrade or buy new system

Optimallawman · November 4, 2019

Hello, I just recently found your Youtube channel and find it informative and entertaining. I have a question about upgrading or buying a new system. I have a Dell Inspiron 3487 PC. I boutght it at Best Buy several years ago. I have upgraded the memory from the 4GB up to 12GB, and added a Graphics card. The processor in this is an Intel Pentium G3240 @ 3.10GHz. It is dual core. I am wanting to move up to a quad core processor. According to my research I can replace the CPU with 4th Gen Core I series CPU's. Would it be more cost effective to just buy a whole new system? I use the pc for some gaming, mostly older games, surfing the web and some "office" type work. I would appreciate any advice you may have. Thanks in advance!!

dizmo · November 4, 2019

Depends what your budget is, and what games you play at what resolution and settings.

If you answer the questions in this thread it'll help people help you.

Welcome to the forum.

Tacos4all · November 5, 2019

1 hour ago, Genwyn said:

Really depends on what you want to do with it. An i7 4770 or 4790 is still like 250$ used. And that kind of money can get you a cpu, motherboard and ddr4 for a current gen Ryzen system.

If you don’t intend to upgrade again for a long time, as in your next upgrade will be a whole new pc, get a haswell i7.

If you expect to change things up more over time then get a whole new cpu/mobo/ram.

I agree with this guy. Perhaps if you shop around, you can save a buck or two on a 4770 or 4790. But if you do decide to only upgrade the CPU, I would recommend a 4790k or 4770k to get the most juice possible out of that socket on your current mobo. Though I doubt the mobo is even capable of overclocking so you may want to opt out of the K models of the processors we suggested.