Worth upgrading an old dell PC (3470s)

[ColinJ451]

During the graphic card supply issues of a couple of years ago I upgraded my son's Dell pc with a gtx950, 16gb ddr3 ram and changed the PSU to 400w I believe. Think is a 500gb SSD as a boot drive.

The cpu is a i5 3470s with a standard pcie2 motherboard 

He's now getting to the point where he understandably wants more. Are looking at Boulders Gate 3 and Starfield as a starting point for an idea of games he's looking at 

 

Are there any graphic card upgrade paths that make sense on this unit that the CPU and motherboard is not going to throttle due to their age.

I have a 6700 10gb I could try out in there which is fairly low power (110w under load) so would you just suggest trying it or am I wasting my time and I would be better off starting from scratch in a new case with an am4 systemdue to cost and parts availability. Upgrade path isn't really a concern at this time

[mMontana]

I'd go with some "new build". IDK if I'd go with AM4 but that's nothing wrong with that. Choose a B chipset, well balance between features and price.

For containing budget, SSD might be part of the components you can save from the old build, but NVMe will be mostly the first step of upgrade.

6700 could be still a nice start for GPU

[SorryBella]

13 minutes ago, ColinJ451 said:

Are looking at Boulders Gate 3 and Starfield as a starting point for an idea of games he's looking at 

Both are better experienced at 6/12 configuration and the Ivy Bridge platform is limited to 4/8. I recommend starting new in this case, or at least half new. This personal recommendation of mine for almost all-used system is still very relevant on eBay, just need to look about for bids.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($125.00) 
Motherboard: ASRock B450 Steel Legend ATX AM4 Motherboard  (Purchased For $0.00) 
Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($48.97 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Mushkin Helix-L 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($38.99 @ Amazon) 
Case: MSI MAG FORGE 100M ATX Mid Tower Case  ($53.01 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: MSI MAG A650BN 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($69.98 @ Amazon) 
Custom: 150-200$ eBay Special (RX 6600 non XT, RX 5700XT, RTX 2060 Super, GTX 1660Ti, Ex Miner RTX 3060 12GB) ($150.00)
Total: $485.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-08-28 05:52 EDT-0400

 

490 bucks. The motherboard and CPU should be bought in a bundle listing, and some also include 16-32GB of RAM but right now DDR4 used and new market is on parity.

[ColinJ451]

Thanks all, was my feeling, but always worth checking