Turning a Dell XPS 420 into a gaming machine

[eugene1]

Hi All,

 

I am new to this good forum but have been watching some of the linus tech tips videos.

 

Anyway, I have a Dell XPS 420 with a q6600 2.4 ghz quad core intel, 3gb ram (will be upgraded to 8gb ddr2 ram soon), 2x 500 gb raid 0 hard drives, 375w psu.

 

I was thinking of buying a geforce 750 ti for about £100 - 110, but after some searching online a lot of people seem to rate the R9 270x a lot better and I think that one is about £20 - 35 more. The slight problem with the 270x is that I would have to buy another power supply. So to cut a long story short, when I looked into psu's i saw some forums recommending the R9 280, and now I am a bit stuck on what to do.

 

Do I just pay the £110 for the 750 ti and sitck with that for a year or so until I can save up money to buy / build another pc, or should I go for one of the cards and upgrade the psu, with the potential of maybe using the psu or graphics in the new pc in a year or so.

 

Some of the games that I have in my steam library that I would like to play is the witcher 1 and 2, fallout 3 etc. I normally buy steam games when they are about 60 - 75 percent off.

 

I was just looking for some advice and discussion on what I should do.

 

Thank You in advance for your advice and opinions

[yoshiii]

Hi All,

 

I am new to this good forum but have been watching some of the linus tech tips videos.

 

Anyway, I have a Dell XPS 420 with a q6600 2.4 ghz quad core intel, 3gb ram (will be upgraded to 8gb ddr2 ram soon), 2x 500 gb raid 0 hard drives, 375w psu.

 

I was thinking of buying a geforce 750 ti for about £100 - 110, but after some searching online a lot of people seem to rate the R9 270x a lot better and I think that one is about £20 - 35 more. The slight problem with the 270x is that I would have to buy another power supply. So to cut a long story short, when I looked into psu's i saw some forums recommending the R9 280, and now I am a bit stuck on what to do.

 

Do I just pay the £110 for the 750 ti and sitck with that for a year or so until I can save up money to buy / build another pc, or should I go for one of the cards and upgrade the psu, with the potential of maybe using the psu or graphics in the new pc in a year or so.

 

Some of the games that I have in my steam library that I would like to play is the witcher 1 and 2, fallout 3 etc. I normally buy steam games when they are about 60 - 75 percent off.

 

I was just looking for some advice and discussion on what I should do.

 

Thank You in advance for your advice and opinions

Hello

 

I had one, tried to upgrade it.

 

I did everything from upgrade to the hdd, to gpu and psu, and Windows 8.

 

The ram is too expensive for that older style ram unless someone gives you it or some how you get it cheap.

 

Machine wouldn't really play newer games well.  I tried to until it was time to just build a new pc.

 

Don't waste your money on that old pc.

Not recommended.  Spend your money on new stuff.

 

I had my cpu over clocked to 3 ghz, which is as far as I know the highest you can get on the mb because Dell locked the bios from overclocking. I used the tape method.

[yoshiii]

_{Another thing,}

 

_{The airflow in the case is not good.  you only have the one small fan at the very bottom which doesn't really help much and the one cpu cooler fan.   The rest of the case gets hot.   I have a Asus DU II gpu in there and that didn't really help.}

_{There is not any rear exhaust fans or any other way to add fans to that case.}

[eugene1]

Thanks for your responses guys.

 

In the end I ended up buying the asus 750 ti and the 8gb of ram arrived so I kited out the machine and ripped the samsung 840 evo ssd from my laptop and put it in the xps 420. I can play witcher on it now and it runs pretty well. The only thing I need to do now is to buy a backlit gaming keyboard!

 

Thanks again