Make Dell Optiplex a Game PC with new motherboard and processor or start over with AMD based pc build for gaming

Trey Moore

Reputable
Oct 18, 2014
16
0
4,510
I have been looking to get more into pc gaming and want to upgrade and configure my old desktop completely if possible which i believe I should be able to do. The tower I have is from a Dell Optiplex 330 that ran Windows Xp home edition and only had a 1.8 GHZ processor and that is a single processor not dual core, and 2GB Ram with a 250 GB hard drive. I want the budget to stay somewhere between $450-$550 for rebuilding my system and looking to play pc games like NBA 2k15, Titanfall, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty Ghost and some Elder Scrolls and Lord of The Rings games. What could you recommend for me to do, to build a good system that I would hope could perform with hitting the 60 FPS or higher and i won't be needing a keyboard, mouse or monitor for this project as I will already have those. I already have a LCD monitor from Dell, so i should be good for playing games in HD settings. Right now it has been seeming like a better bet would be for me to go replace all my components as far as get a brand new motherboard, GPU, upgrade Ram and CPU and as well get a better cooling supply all together. This Dell Optiplex 330 runs pretty slow currently with Linux Mint cinnamon 17 installed. I want to put windows 7 or upgrade to 8 and would it work for me to get a AMD processor 64 bit and what hardware would fit this case and still keep me in a budget around $450-$550
 
Solution
You would save yourself a lot of headaches if you just went with a completely new build in a new case and salvage what you can from your old system (hard drive/optical drive).

Here's a sub $550 (before rebates) system that would get you started:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor ($62.27 @ TigerDirect)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-D2V Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($49.79 @ Newegg)
Memory: Pareema 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital RE3 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($41.94 @ Amazon)
Video Card: HIS Radeon R7 260X 1GB Video...

Wolfshadw

Titan
Moderator
You would save yourself a lot of headaches if you just went with a completely new build in a new case and salvage what you can from your old system (hard drive/optical drive).

Here's a sub $550 (before rebates) system that would get you started:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor ($62.27 @ TigerDirect)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-D2V Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($49.79 @ Newegg)
Memory: Pareema 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital RE3 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($41.94 @ Amazon)
Video Card: HIS Radeon R7 260X 1GB Video Card ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($44.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer ($13.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($88.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $501.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-18 02:09 EDT-0400

Of course, if you could salvage the drives (hard drive/optical drive) from your old system, you could use those funds saved towards a better processor/graphics card.

-Wolf sends
 
Solution