Advice on possible upgrade

SmallBalls

I inherited this pc from a friend who moved abroad a few years back. He built it himself so I presume it was decent back in the day. I haven't much of a clue
Its still running fine, a little bit laggy at times and needs a new hard drive.
My main use for it is browsing and streaming movies/sport and a little bit of office work. Kids are starting to get into gaming as well so want to keep that in mind for any upgrades.
Any suggestions for bringing up to date?

Digital Solitude

CPU is getting up the years but that shouldn't be an issue for your uses. 5770 is ancient but depends on what the kids play.

I'd add an SSD and migrate the OS, see where that gets you

SmallBalls

Any SSD recommendations or is it much of a muchness?

Eoinmc97

Basically;
The core i3 is fine for streaming and office work, for gaming it really depends on the games. Newer games are starting to really slow down Dual-cores.
The RAM is decent, perhaps adding an extra 4GB would help with multi-tasking.
SSD's are very fast, but offer lower storage compared to their HDD brothers. Basically, a 120GB SSD will cost €50, but you can put the OS on it and it will load extremely quick. Perhaps you could get a 1TB HDD for €50 for storing movies/games?
Finally, the GPU is very old, and is incapable of most games today. However, recommending a GPU is hard to do, because we don't know what games your kids want to play.

TerrorFirmer

The really important question is what games are the kids playing?

If its kids wanting to play Call of Duty, Battlefield, GTA, etc - not a chance without a total overhaul of board/cpu/graphics card. Seeing as you needed a new hard drive anyway, in this case, you'd virtually be replacing most of the machine.

If it's just Minecraft and the like then it's still perfectly fine as is. New hard drive notwithstanding.

Core i3 is now on generation 5 and each generation is faster than the previous - it's an i3 in name but that i3-540 is actually much closer to a Core 2 Duo than a modern i3.

SmallBalls

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Core i3 is now on generation 5 and each generation is faster than the previous - it's an i3 in name but that i3-540 is actually much closer to a Core 2 Duo than a modern i3.

I presume if I wanted to change to a newer i3 I wouldn't have to change the main board as well?

Or would I be foolish not to?

grindle

You would have to change mobo, yes.

TerrorFirmer

If you don't want to change the motherboard, you can get socket 1156 processors very cheap second hand.

1st gen i3/i5/i7 are Socket 1156, 2nd and 3rd gen are Socket 1155, 4th gen are Socket 1150 and 5th gen is Socket 1151.

Upgrading to a 1st gen i3 or i5 of any type isn't really worth it, however, you can get a 1st gen i7-860 or similar for about €50 that would actually still be OK-ish for the latest games with a decent card.

GTX750 - €100
2nd hand i7-860 - €50
Another 4GB ram - €30

Total - shipping included, less than €200.

Otherwise the other option would be i3-4160, H81 Motherboard, 4GB ram, GTX750 - that will set you back about €300.

SmallBalls

Ok, little update. I've added a SSD with a fresh install of windows and everything is a lot more nippy. Also have a 1tb hdd to add for storage just need a new sata cable.

There seems to be a lot of variations on the H81 board, any particular recommendation? Also if I add more ram does it mater if its a different brand than my current or should I try to match it....Crucial Ballistix is what I have.

Eoinmc97

H81 is basically H81, brands might add little features here and there, but try and look for one that has features you want.
Mainly;
x16 PCI-E Lane (for the GPU)
Maybe a x1 PCI-E Lane for a wireless card perhaps
At least 3 SATA III ports (so you can add another hard drive SSD for gaming)
USB 3.0 if it has it, seeing as 2.0 speeds are kind of slow