Any way to upgrade my system without it being too expensive?

[hazabaza1]

Long story short, got a new PC late last year, and it's been working a charm for the most part. However, my processor is kind of outdated from what I could tell. (Intel Core 2 Quad CPU 2.66 GHz according to Dxdiag)

I asked my cousin who's kind of a tech-head about it and the way he framed it it seems like to get any sort of significant boost I'd need to replace my motherboard and ram which would end up costing about £700. That's about the same price as the computer cost in the first place.

All the other important specs that I can find:
8 gig ram
GTX 670
Not sure if this helps, but system model is "P5Q DELUXE". Apparently.

If I could get a significant increase for... I dunno, around £200 max give or take any advice would be appreciated.

 

[thesilentman]

Long story short, got a new PC late last year, and it's been working a charm for the most part. However, my processor is kind of outdated from what I could tell. (Intel Core 2 Quad CPU 2.66 GHz according to Dxdiag)

I asked my cousin who's kind of a tech-head about it and the way he framed it it seems like to get any sort of significant boost I'd need to replace my motherboard and ram which would end up costing about £700. That's about the same price as the computer cost in the first place.

All the other important specs that I can find:
8 gig ram
GTX 670
Not sure if this helps, but system model is "P5Q DELUXE". Apparently.

If I could get a significant increase for... I dunno, around £200 max give or take any advice would be appreciated.

What's your motherboard model? It's possible to fit an i5 processor with 200 quid on there, depending on your motherboard. And you have a 64 bit OS running on it? You may want that as well.

 

[hazabaza1]

Long story short, got a new PC late last year, and it's been working a charm for the most part. However, my processor is kind of outdated from what I could tell. (Intel Core 2 Quad CPU 2.66 GHz according to Dxdiag)

I asked my cousin who's kind of a tech-head about it and the way he framed it it seems like to get any sort of significant boost I'd need to replace my motherboard and ram which would end up costing about £700. That's about the same price as the computer cost in the first place.

All the other important specs that I can find:
8 gig ram
GTX 670
Not sure if this helps, but system model is "P5Q DELUXE". Apparently.

If I could get a significant increase for... I dunno, around £200 max give or take any advice would be appreciated.

What's your motherboard model? It's possible to fit an i5 processor with 200 quid on there, depending on your motherboard. And you have a 64 bit OS running on it? You may want that as well.

Not exactly sure. How would I go about checking that?

 

[thesilentman]

Long story short, got a new PC late last year, and it's been working a charm for the most part. However, my processor is kind of outdated from what I could tell. (Intel Core 2 Quad CPU 2.66 GHz according to Dxdiag)

I asked my cousin who's kind of a tech-head about it and the way he framed it it seems like to get any sort of significant boost I'd need to replace my motherboard and ram which would end up costing about £700. That's about the same price as the computer cost in the first place.

All the other important specs that I can find:
8 gig ram
GTX 670
Not sure if this helps, but system model is "P5Q DELUXE". Apparently.

If I could get a significant increase for... I dunno, around £200 max give or take any advice would be appreciated.

What's your motherboard model? It's possible to fit an i5 processor with 200 quid on there, depending on your motherboard. And you have a 64 bit OS running on it? You may want that as well.

Not exactly sure. How would I go about checking that?

Is this a prebuilt system? If so, just google for the motherboard on the model of the PC. If not, I have no idea how.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

I take it this was a prebuilt? If so, go to the manufacturer's website, type in your model, and try to find your computer from there. You should be able to easily find some important information from there.

Your graphics card and RAM should be fine (even if your RAM isn't, getting 8 GB of RAM really wouldn't cost too much). Unfortunately, your processor is outdated, and is probably your main bottleneck for performance (how much of a bottleneck, or how much of an issue it is, I really couldn't tell you).

Unfortunately, if you want to upgrade your CPU to something more recent, you're going to have to replace your motherboard. If you were to do this, I would do quite a bit of research on whatever you plan on getting to make sure that your power supply can supply enough power to it, and make sure that it fits in your case, both of which can be big issues for prebuilts. I've once had to replace a motherboard, and ended up having to replace the power supply and case as well. Trust me, you don't want to be surprised here.

Just a note: I am not necessarily advocating you replace your CPU and motherboard. I really have no idea how feasible this would be based on your current setup, and I have no clue how much benefit you'd get from doing so, especially if you're happy with your current performance. I'm just saying that this seems, to me, to be the most logical upgrade path for your system based on what limited knowledge I have.

EDIT: Also, woo! 1000 posts!

 

[hazabaza1]

snip

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Bought the parts myself and previously mentioned cousin put it together.

I'll see if I can track down what's in there.

 

[thesilentman]

snip

snip

Bought the parts myself and previously mentioned cousin put it together.

I'll see if I can track down what's in there.

Hang on... You mentioned that the motherboard and RAM would cost 700 quid. You sure you didn't mistype? For 700, you'd be better off building a new PC. And since you have 200 quid already, it gives you enough for a killer system with a GTX 670.

 

[hazabaza1]

snip

snip

Bought the parts myself and previously mentioned cousin put it together.

I'll see if I can track down what's in there.

Hang on... You mentioned that the motherboard and RAM would cost 700 quid. You sure you didn't mistype? For 700, you'd be better off building a new PC. And since you have 200 quid already, it gives you enough for a killer system with a GTX 670.

Bleugh, let me elaborate a bit more. I'm being vague.

I got the PC built around last August when I basically just had student level money. I could afford everything like the graphics card and case and shit, but a processor and motherboard would have been way too expensive for me.
Luckily my cousin had some spares so he sold them to me for cheap and they're the ones I'm using now. Now that I got a job and would like to upgrade, there might have to be quite a leap in the quality of the motherboard to get a modern processor in it.
Not exactly sure what the RAM problem is, but the cousin mentioned needing a different type of ram for it to work properly. Or something.

Sorry if I'm not being helpful, I know basically fuck all about computers.

 

[TheGuy(wantstobe)]

Long story short, got a new PC late last year, and it's been working a charm for the most part. However, my processor is kind of outdated from what I could tell. (Intel Core 2 Quad CPU 2.66 GHz according to Dxdiag)

I asked my cousin who's kind of a tech-head about it and the way he framed it it seems like to get any sort of significant boost I'd need to replace my motherboard and ram which would end up costing about £700. That's about the same price as the computer cost in the first place.

All the other important specs that I can find:
8 gig ram
GTX 670
Not sure if this helps, but system model is "P5Q DELUXE". Apparently.

If I could get a significant increase for... I dunno, around £200 max give or take any advice would be appreciated.

£700?!? That's a bit much...

You've already supplied the motherboard name: It's the P5Q deluxe which has an LGA 775 socket for CPUs so you'll need a new one to put in anything like a I5 for a significant increase in performance.

A combination of this motherboard [http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/53875/Gigabyte-motherboard-H61MA-D2V-LGA1155-DDR3-ATX] and this CPU [http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/54293/Intel-CPU-Core-i5-3570K-Ivy-Bridge-LGA1155-Retail] should be a decent upgrade for relatively cheap. Only 2 RAM slots in that mobo though so if you've got 4x2GB you'll have to either get one with 4 slots or pickup some cheapish RAM (8GB in a 2x4GB configuration can be picked up for roughly £45)

edit: I noticed what you meant with the RAM thing. You need to get DDR3 RAM as you've got DDR2 currently. Here [http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/50094/Corsair-memory-8GB-Vengeance-Performance-Kit] is 8GB of the RAM you need to go with the stuff above.