New to PC gaming; looking for advice on current prebuilt rig

[halocade18]

I have always had a low end computer my entire life. After the last one broke entirely, I got a new prebuilt (stock) pc, and have slowly grown to appreciate PC gaming a lot more. At this point I realize I am gonna need some serious upgrades if I want to see how far down the rabbit hole of my curiosity goes.

I am generally aiming for fairly moderate-high settings (along with 1920x1080 since I got a high end monitor) on a few modern games, namely Starcraft 2, and older games as well. I am pretty tired of running games in 800x600 lowest settings and getting 25-30 fps haha.

Specs: (Copying and pasting from Performance Information and Tools.)
Processor Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5500 @ 2.80GHz
RAM: 6GB
Graphics Intel(R) G45/G43 Express Chipset 4.1
Gaming graphics 1695 MB Total available graphics memory (although the card itself is integrated and 64MB I think)
700 GB Hard Drive
Windows 7 64 Bit
Power Supply: ~300W

I am not too knowledgeable about computers, and as such, I have no idea where to start first. My budget is currently fairly low, I just would like to be able to play games in max res and decent settings.

 

[Swolern]

First of all it is not recommended to try to upgrade a pre-built system, and most of the time impossible.

If you want a gaming PC it is recommended to build your own PC from parts you can find cheap on the internet. First time build, no problem. Now a days its easy, all you do is plug in the parts together, screw in a couple screws, and run a CD to start. Step-by-step instructions all on Youtube.

So we need to know what your budget is???

A moderate gaming PC can start @ $500-600.

 

[Emelth]

Also to save so money take apart your broke computer and tell us what it has in it, cause we can probably re-use some of the parts to help reduce cost (main the Hard Drive which is crazy expensive, ROM drives are cheap but hey if it still works as well thats an extra $20 you can put towards a GPU).

 

[halocade18]

So for a medium-ish ended gaming oriented goal, my current PC can't just upgrade power supply and throw in a new gfx card?

 

[Ohmybad]

you could possibly put in a dedicated GPU and new PSU, but i think it would be more cost effective to build a new platform, i3 2nd gen + H61 + 6850... sounds like you could reuse your ROM, HDD and case.

 

[Emelth]

Check this out...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.755265&cm_sp=DIY_PC_Combos-_-755265-_-Combo

Add a GPU and you would be good, but wont be able to SLI/CF anything above GTX 550 (I would go with two 460s if you want to or one 560 Ti

 

[halocade18]

Well the problem is that currently my budget is too low (around $250) to do a whole custom rig setup. I was hoping to maybe just find a part or two that could make my system good enough to run the games in high FPS and max res, even if the settings themselves are low.

 

[Swolern]

Well the problem is that currently my budget is too low (around $250) to do a whole custom rig setup. I was hoping to maybe just find a part or two that could make my system good enough to run the games in high FPS and max res, even if the settings themselves are low.

The problem on most pre-built systems is the manufacturing company buys the cheapest components possible to get by on the tasks the PC was designed for. If its not designed as a gaming pc than some serious cuts can be made in order to save money. With just upgrading the PSU and GPU we would need to know specifics of the motherboard, if would even handle the upgrade. How many PCI-e slots and what version it is, ram DDR2, 3? At a start your processor is already limited to how high u can go.


There may be a little you can do depending on your specs, but would it be worth it? Or better to save that $250 and keep saving until u have enough. By that time the new GPUs and CPUs will be released giving much more gaming power at less cost and less power consumption.