Prebuilt PC: How do I/Should I upgrade?

DamagedGoodsFS

Commendable
Jul 11, 2016
1
0
1,510
I've had this PC for years and have not upgraded it a bit. Here is a link to my Lenovo H415. When I first got it a few years back it had been great to me. Ran games perfectly as I needed and gave me everything I needed for school at the time, but now that it's irrelevant for school use and can hardly run even the simplest source games, I need an upgrade.

The decision that needs to be made here is that I am desperately in need of a better PC and need all of the necessary information regarding upgrading it. Money is tight and I've only managed to save up $500-650 to spend on the upgrade. After doing some research, I found that I may just be able to skimp and simply get a more current graphics card and PSU. Is this possible? What do I need to know when making an educated decision?

I play games that aren't extremely graphics intensive, but a friend of mine let me download Overwatch (a game that I am very interested in playing) temporarily to see if I could run it, but I could only play on minimal settings, 1360x768 res, and with 30fps. Please help me out.

TLDR; I need to find a way to upgrade my Lenovo H415 on a limited budget of $500-600 playing games such as Overwatch, SNOW, CS:GO, etc.
 
Solution
You need basically a new rig. You can however, use some parts, from your current system, to save some cash. Ram, HDD, and Optical drive should be reusable.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($78.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB ACX 2.0+ Video Card ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Deepcool KENDOMEN Black ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($65.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows...

logainofhades

Titan
Moderator
You need basically a new rig. You can however, use some parts, from your current system, to save some cash. Ram, HDD, and Optical drive should be reusable.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($78.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB ACX 2.0+ Video Card ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Deepcool KENDOMEN Black ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($65.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($83.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $628.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-11 15:56 EDT-0400

 
Solution
The problem with this lenovo, is a very weak CPU.
I couldn't find any reliable info if it's possible to upgrade it. But even if it's possible, it doe not worth the 100$ of AMD CPU.
for ~600$ (US prices) you can get a decent build for any modern game.
The below is an example.
You will have to reuse the hard disk from the old computer.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($197.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B150M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($65.38 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($34.49 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 2300 ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ NCIX US)
Other: Video card RX 480 or GTX 1060 ($250.00)
Total: $617.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-11 16:04 EDT-0400
 

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