Dell Studio 540 Gaming upgrade - Fairly low budget?

sconewithjam · Mar 17, 2013

Hi guys my sister is going to buy a Macbook Pro in a few weeks and she is kindly going to give me her Dell Studio 540 - from 2008 or something. The Specs are:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 @2.8 GHz CPU
ATI Radeon HD 3450 256MB Graphics card
2 GB Ram DDR2
Dell M017G Motherboard
I also have a 21.5 inch ASUS 1080p VGA Monitor
I've seen that quite a lot of people have overclocked the CPU so I will probably buy a new heatsink.
I basically want to upgrade this so I can play new games, so it would be great if you guys could offer your suggestions. Thanks

nikoli707 · Mar 17, 2013

kinda need to know what size/how many watts the power supply is inside that computer.

but i think its probably not that big, and since your on a "fairly low budget", the amd 7750 will work with just about any computer because its power requirements are so low and doesnt need a power plug.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131481

here is one and its $70 after rebate and comes with far cry 3

but with your 1080p monitor your probably going to want a 7850 which is much more powerful and should handle most games at 1080p, but it will require a much more powerful psu.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202004

anything past the $150 range and your going to see a severe cpu bottleneck as the one you have is quite old. consider selling the old computer and saving some money and doing a $500-600 budget gaming system because overall it will perform much better than this older dell.

sconewithjam · Mar 17, 2013

nikoli707 :

Thanks for the reply. Do you think I should upgrade the motherboard so I can get DDR 3 Ram because It's a lot cheaper than DDR 2 ?

Azn Cracker · Mar 17, 2013

sconewithjam :

No, its not worth it. If you want to upgrade the motherboard, you might as well just build a new system. Just get another 2gb stick of ddr2 ram. Also I don't think you can overclock that cpu since it doesnt have unlocked multipliers so don't waste your money on the heatsink.
Your best bet is to get the 7750 as nikoli suggested if your power supply can handle it. If not then will have to upgrade the power supply as well. So pretty much you have to upgrade everything on the computer to be able to play modern games.
Better choice would be to just build a new one from scratch if you have the money or do nothing at all.

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Dell Studio 540 Gaming upgrade - Fairly low budget?

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