Upgrading and replacing my 10 year old PC

[Hajfi]

Hi,

I just discovered my old PC I got many years ago. I used to play games quite a lot, but did not have time in past few years. I would love to upgrade my old PC, then add new parts and after that build a new PC in few months, so I can play some new games and to return to SC2 as I really enjoyed the game :D

It's Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, Nvidia 8800 GTX, 4GB DDR2 RAM, some old WD HDD and Blue Storm II 500 as power supply. 

 

On ebay I found 8GB kit of ram, that is max my MB support, I'll change CPU for C2Q Q9550 also from ebay. I think that will help a lot.  After that I plan to change power supply for Corsaire TX550, change HDD for M2 drive used with reduction to sata. Buy new GPU and finally after that buy a new MB, CPU and Ram, something like Ryzen 5 3600, B450 MB, 16 GB ram. I just struggle with the GPU. 

Do you think it's a good idea how to upgrade my pc in a few months? 

[boggy77]

why don't you upgrade directly with ryzen. why would you pay for the q9550 only to use it for a few months?

[Princess Luna]

Just go straight with the new Ryzen build, it makes no sense to "upgrade" such an ancient machine.

[Chrizl1990]

Just bite the bullet and build a Ryzen system ... you won't regret it!

[Spakes]

First of all, buy an SSD ASAP. If you want to get better perfomance on LGA775 on cheap, get X5450 and OC it to 4 GHz (unless you can trade your Q6600 for Q9550 for zero dollars).

But to be fair, you'd better jump straight to Ryzen, if you're able to. If budget is not going to survive such uupgrade, then do upgrades in following order:

0) OC + OS CleanUp

1) SSD

2) RAM

3) Xeon X5450 (you might find it on AliExpress already converted to LGA775 for less than 20$US + shipping)

4) GPU

5) Ryzen CPU+MoBo+RAM

Yes, I started from zero not only because it's old programmers meme, but also because it's not really an upgrade, but it can help you to make your system more responsive. Some of the programs on my GDrive folder (link is under this post aka in my signature) might be able to help you with that.

[Hajfi]

I would love to do the upgrade but there is budget limitation. And I still don't have time to play games as much as I would love to. So spend big money now just to find out I don't use it is a bit pointless. I would spend like 40$US right now to upgrade old parts to the max and then save some money to buy new parts if I use the PC. I already reinstall windows so that helped a lot. I found C2Q Q9550 for 20$US on ebay at that will boos my CPU performence by 25% give or take.