my self built PC is feeling the test of time...any tips to upgrade..or buy

[oldgamer]

Hi people,my old pc is starting to struggle a bit when gaming,would it be possible to upgrade or is it time for a new one? the specs are..

intel core 2 duo 6600,

2gb hyperx ram,

Win 7 32 bit,

Nvidia gtx550,

80gb hard drive(there are 4 other hard drives in the case but i had to disconnect them due to a virus)

Motherboard Asus P5B deluxe,

Antec P180 case.

I mainly use the pc for gaming myself.Steam,Origin etc,i have been looking for a while now to upgrade it but i dont have the time to look in to all the different specs that are available now what with work & 3 children time is not on my side & i find myself getting confused,i had the idea of buying a cheap pc of ebay with an i7 & plenty of ram then just put my graphics in it but pci-e 3 is out?

I was also watching a motherboard but on further investigation it was socket 2011 & the i7 for it started @ about ?400.00.

My pc scores on the Windows rating 5.5,my graphics score a 7.3 but it seems the rest of it,chip.ram & hard drive are letting the side down but second hand prices to upgrade it seem to much compared to buying new.

Any advice will be very much appreciated.

[ShadowMajestic]

Or upgrade your current one, keeping the case, power supply etc. can save quite some money. Which then can be used for better hardware or just to keep it cheaper.

And whats creating that 5.5 score is probably the harddrive, unless you upgrade that to SSD, you wont be able to improve that by a lot.

And you wouldn't nessesarely need an i7.

Maybe an alternative.

something like

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130637

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113285

is maybe an option for having allot of CPU power you will not max out for gaming for quite a few years. In raw performance it isn't that much behind the i7's.

And its just 250$.

Oh and it doubles as a small space heater under heavy load.

[YounGMessiah]

How big are the other HDDs?

I would suggest upgrading to 8GB DDR2 for RAM.

Install Windows 7 64bit

Those would be small changes, but good performance boost.

See how that goes

[ShadowMajestic]

How big are the other HDDs?

I would suggest upgrading to 8GB DDR2 for RAM.

Install Windows 7 64bit

Those would be small changes, but good performance boost.

See how that goes

8 would be rather useless considering the rest of the specs. 4 should then be more then plenty. Windows 7 wont be any faster from 3,5-4gb+ RAM.

[+Byt Subscriber¹]

Upgrade the board , ram and cpu to an i5, 8GB RAM, decent board, thats the best thing you can do imo

[YounGMessiah]

I would seriously just try upgrading Windows 7 to 64bit, clean up all your HDDs and then use either 4GB or 8GB RAM.

See how that does you, if not a new motherboard is needed as thats holding you back.

[Alexander-dude]

I would add some RAM and an SSD, it should give you a big boost in speed.

[Noir Angel]

The GPU and RAM are probably the weakest links there.

Also, Socket 2011 is only for 6 core i7s, the consumer socket 1155 i7 quads are much cheaper at around ?260