Upgrading Friend's Crap PC ($650 Upgrade Budget)

Josh McAdoo

Reputable
Jul 9, 2015
1
0
4,510
My friend has been gaming on a really bad pre-built dell desktop, and he's finally saved up ~$650.
He has RAM, a HDD, and all the peripherals he needs.
We mainly play CS:GO, but we occasionally boot up Dayz or Arma 3, and every now and then he edit's in Sony Vegas.

This is by no means a "High End" upgrade, but he'd like to get some decent performance improvements.

This is the first upgrade I've helped someone with so this is probably not optimized at all. Here are the parts I picked out http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ytBd23

He'd like to keep the case and form factor mentioned in the link.

Thank you in advance!

 
Solution
Your build is great. The power supply is a little overkill, no need for that.

If you can spend an extra 20 dollars or so:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.98 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($100.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($192.49 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Corsair Air 240 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($64.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $668.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and...

IAmTheTofu

Honorable
Sep 20, 2014
1,024
0
11,960
Your build is great. The power supply is a little overkill, no need for that.

If you can spend an extra 20 dollars or so:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.98 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($100.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($192.49 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Corsair Air 240 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($64.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $668.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-09 20:27 EDT-0400

If not:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($166.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($79.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($197.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Corsair Air 240 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($64.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $589.81
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-09 20:28 EDT-0400


The first build I suggested allows you to overclock and SLI whenever you'd like. To overclock you would just need to get an aftermarket cooler. The 212 EVO is too tall for your case. If you want the ability to SLI only, keep the MOBO but downgrade the CPU to a 4460 or 4590.
 
Solution

IAmTheTofu

Honorable
Sep 20, 2014
1,024
0
11,960


The R9 380 is basically an R9 285. 960 wins. I feel like AMD cards tend to be more expensive in the UK.