Upgrading an old rig with slightly less older parts!

flakwon · Oct 16, 2014

Hi there, so I have this 7 years old pc with the following specs:

motherboard: asus m2n-x plus: http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/M2NX_Plus
CPU: athlon 64 x2 dual core 5600+ 2.80ghz
GPU: radeon hd3870

My laptop broke and it was actually really powerful (had hd5650 and I was running not that heavy games at 1920x1080 on my external monitor) and I mostly only play Dota 2 which surprisingly enough the above described pc is able to run at minimum settings but with less fps than my laptop.

I feel like my CPU is more of a bottleneck than my video and I don't want to spend too much money on a new pc cause I have another laptop but its with an integrated video so no games there.

I had a look through eBay and basically I've found a GPU and CPU which I like but I'm not sure if my mobo will support them.

1) CPU - will my motherboard be able to run any AM2+ CPU?
I have my eyes on a bunch of phenom quadcores that are AM2+ but when I went to http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/M2NX_Plus/HelpDesk_CPU/ they weren't in the supported CPU list. So I tried to find a CPU that was in the supported CPU list and I found this "AMD Phenom X3 8450 2.1 GHz (HD8450WCJ3BGH) Quad-Core CPU Socket AM2+ 600 MHz 2MB". The 8450 fits but the code after that doesn't fit with the one in the list, also it says its quad core when it should be triple core shouldn't it?

2) GPU - I have my eyes on these
http://www.ebuyer.com/625030-xfx-r5-230-1gb-ddr3-vga-dvi-hdmi-pci-e-graphics-card-r5-230a-zlh2
http://www.ebuyer.com/601859-gigabyte-r7-240-overclocked-2gb-ddr3-vga-dvi-hdmi-pci-e-graphics-card-gv-r724oc-2gi
OR
http://www.ebuyer.com/661553-zotac-gt-720-2gb-ddr3-vga-dual-link-dvi-hdmi-pci-e-graphics-zt-71201-20l
http://www.ebuyer.com/652168-zotac-gt-730-1gb-ddr5-vga-dvi-hdmi-pci-e-low-profile-graphics-zt-71102-10l

Will my motherboard support them? Are they even better than my HD3870. Also I want to be able to run dual monitor setup on the said video card.

Thank you all for reading my question!

[edit: added videocard]

NiCoM · Oct 17, 2014

On the cpu side of things, you should really only do a upgrade if you're going for the Phenom 9350 or 9450 quad-core processors, the rest are not that big of a performance increase from your current cpu, according to cpubenchmark.net, which boils some benchmarks down to one score:

Your CPU: 1461
Phenom 8450 triple-core: 1886
Phenom 9350e quad-core: 2335
Phenom 9450e quad-core: 2650

So i would go for one of those two quad-cores if you're keeping the mobo, they're both on the list of supported cpus but will need a BIOS update to function.
I don't know if you actually meant the Triple-core 8450e, with the "e" in the name, because the "non-e" is actually not on the supported cpus list, only the "e" one is, and it's about ~2000 in score on cpubenchmark.net.

For the GPU, i wouldn't buy those for gaming, they all have a certain price/performance, which is exactly what is says, how much bang for your buck you'll get with the gpu. The WORST bang for your buck you can get is when you go below a R7 250 or a GT740 in cards, lower and the price/performance goes down the toilet, so keep your current gpu until you can afford one of the above new cards, you might also want to look at older models or even used cards.
Though i think the R7 240 and GT730 is just on the edge of very poor price/performance, but both cards should run Dota 2 at decent settings 1080p with a constant 60fps, which means they might be ok for you to buy.

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Upgrading an old rig with slightly less older parts!

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