Upgrade for budget PC

[whatevahmanfock]

Hello everyone,

I need some help or advice with the following problem.

I have:

·         CPU — Core 2 Quad q8400 (Stock speed)

·         Video card — Asus HD 7770 1gb ddr5

·         Motherboard – Asus p5qse2

·         Memory — 6 gb ddr2 (2x2gb, 2x1gb)

·         Power Supply – Thermaltake Smart m 650w

·         SSD – Kingston v300 128gb

·         HDD — WD wd3200aaks 320gb

·         Case — corsair carbide 200r

·         AOC 24’ full hd monitor

This PC is handling any office tasks pretty well, but the games - not so much. By games I mean WoW and Dota2. I'd like to get the most of what I currently have, my current budget is limited to 120-170 dollars (don't want to spend more, cuz it's not my main PC). What would be best to update the system?

I see two variants:

1)      Change CPU+motherboard+RAM – for example I can get g4400+8gb DD4 (2x4gb)+ASRock h110m-dgs (or something in that price bracket), leaving everything else

2)      Change the graphics card for a better one (which one?)

I will be glad to any advice, thank you!

[Phentos]

Swap out the CPU, mobo, and RAM.

 

The 7770 can handle the games you listed reasonably well enough, while getting a nice boost from the new parts.

[PCGeek]

Dude, the only thing you can really salvage from that is the case and the SSD.  Maybe also the PSU depending on the age.  If only the two are your options then it wouldn't really matter since either would give you benefits however I would toss it up and upgrade the GPU just because games are generally more GPU bound but I'm sure your CPU and memory are going to bottleneck you also.

[PCGeek]

5 minutes ago, Phentos said:

Swap out the CPU, mobo, and RAM.

 

The 7770 can handle the games you listed reasonably well enough, while getting a nice boost from the new parts.

Even though I said GPU I would agree with this.  It really is a toss up.

[dizmo]

Don't bother going with something new, get something used. An i3 will do a lot better than a Pentium chip.

[Aereldor]

If you can afford to wait for Zen, then wait for Zen. If not-

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 845 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($69.99 @ NCIX US) 
Motherboard: MSI A68HM-E33 V2 Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard  ($39.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Avexir Core Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($39.99 @ Newegg) 
Total: $149.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-12-28 04:06 EST-0500

[whatevahmanfock]

Thanks for advises guys! I know lot of components is very…very old, but i got them for free and they have not been used for a long time so they run like clockwork. I was very surprised how well this computer fits my needs. First of all it's a working PC for mail\office\web-browsing and some games ofc!

I'm not waiting "all ultra\high 1080p" game experience from this PC. I just want to understand what will give the greatest performance increase in games.

What mobo+CPU options will be best?

In my local stores g4400+mobo+8gb ram or Athlon x4 845+mobo+8gb ram will coast around 170$.

What to look for from used parts?