Hey Guys got a question about upgrading a CPU, or rather other parts of a machine if neccesary.
A couple years back I purchased a barebones machine from Tiger Direct with the idea that my friend would be able to game on it at least a little bit, since then we've upgraded his case since he was getting overheating issues, or at least we think, anyways when I upgraded to a Coolmaster HAF tower I gave him my old one, a Smiledon case I beleive.
So anyways fast forward to recently he moved away from me to another state, so I can't actually go and help him install components etc, and he is sorta lacking in technical skill at computers. A few days ago I managed to talk him through replacing his power supply and Graphics Card using Windows messenger video chat, took a while but he got it. So, we did that, went from a 600 watt Ultra PSU to a Corsair 750 Watt something or other, I forget cause it was supposed to be a 650 watt but we got a 750 for the 650's price. Weird.
So anyways we took out the XFX 9600GSO that he was running and put in a EVGA GTX 460, we got everything up and running and ran some benchmarks and the results comparison wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be (Used Dawn of War II for a benchmark), considering the distance between the two cards in performance. This has me concerened that his machine is bottlnecking somwhere, the rest of the system is pretty outdated, a MSI KN92 Platinum Motherboard, XMS 2 PC6400 Corsair DDR2, and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+.
I'm thinking his CPU is the bottleneck, so that being said I guess my question is, I need a better cpu for that motherboard and was wondering what suggestions if any, anyone has. Currently I was looking at a Phenom X4 9850, to replace for about $80.
I would like to just upgrade his whole system, new mobo, new memory, and cpu all in one go, but I fear he lacks the technical skills to install those things on his own, also if he started having issues I couldn't be right there to help him with whatever issue it is, since I physically can't touch the computer. Also cost factors too, I can't go spending like $500+, hell for that I'd just build a whole new rig and send him that. I should also mention that I'm trying to avoid him having to do a reformat, but if he does have to then maybe just upgrading his whole machine may be better.
So were down to this, if I did go and get him all new stuff, how would I best go about getting him to install all this stuff? Or, should I bassically put in the CPU and mount the CPU fan then ship that as a whole to him? Then of course there's just replacing the CPU, a quick pop of the pin, pull out the old cpu, put new one in, apply some thermal paste then remount the fan.
Anyways here is the current spec of his machine, at least the parts I know.
MSI K9N2 SLI Platinum Motherboard nForce 750a, Socket AM2/AM2+
EVGA GTX 460 Graphics Card
4gb XMS 2 Corsair DDR2 PC6400 800mhz
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Dual Core I beleive
Seagate ST3500418AS Barracuda 500gb 7200.12 Hard Drive
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI
RAIDMAX SMILODON ATX-612WBP Black
Anyways I appreciate any answers and suggestions on what to do.
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upgrading sorta machine