Getting the most power possible from an eMachines el1850

[PowerBatamanta]

This is my first post here, I'm a bit of a newbie, and English is not my first language, but please, bear with me.

I have recently bought a new computer (an Acer eMachines el1850), which was quite cheap (€170) and now I wanted to tweak it in order to make games somehow playable.

Firstly, the specs:
Graphics card: Intel (R) g41 express chipset (however, in the case itself it says it's an Intel GMA X4500)
CPU: Intel Pentium (R) Dual-Core CPU E5800 @3.20 GHz
RAM: 4Gb DDR3
hard drive: Hitachi HDS721050CLA362
I couldn't gather much more information (I'm such a noob), but I have 500 Gb of disk space, and the computer is running Windows 7.

I've been thinking about overclocking the CPU or the Graphics card, since I have a very low budget (in fact, from none to €150), but I wanted to ask to experts before

 

[Proximon]

There will be no features on the board that will allow an overclock, pretty sure.

You can do much though by getting a GPU and PSU upgrade. Is it a full width tower or narrow? Does the board have a PCI-E slot?

Post pics of the interior and back, and a close-up of the PSU label.

 

[PowerBatamanta]

The case is quite narrow, and I haven't checked its inside yet, but I'm going to post many pics when I get my hands on a camera.
However, I have found a pic of the motherboard

 

[PowerBatamanta]

I've kept the case of an old computer, which can do the job:

BTW I have that computer unused, so I was wondering if any of its components could turn useful.

 

[Proximon]

That's a strange MB. It's mATX in width but it's awfully deep. We'll want a measurement there.

If that old case has the right spots for the standoffs (the parts that go under the board that it screws into) it may work. It does look like a standard ATX case.

Your board has two SATA ports that I can see. That's one SATA HDD and one DVD drive. That's all you get. It will accept DDR3 1066, and probably nothing higher. I doubt even more that it will overclock any.

It does have the one PCI-E slot for a GPU upgrade.

So your next step would be to see if you have a fit into that case. If so I will recommend a bit of modding to install another case fan

 

[richboyliang]

I'm sorry but you can't honestly expect to get much gaming out of an old PENTIUM computer. Those things have to settle for flash games, and even those might lag.

 

[Proximon]

The CPU is the equivalent of an Athlon II dual core and is quite acceptable as a low budget choice. It will run almost any modern game just fine given an adequate GPU.

 

[PowerBatamanta]

Thank very much
Also, I think people tend to underestimate cheap machines. I can play TF2 with acceptable settings just fine with an €170 prebuilt computer.

 

[PowerBatamanta]

BTW, Important thing here:

Here it says that my graphics card uses 32 mb of memory but I can raise that value to 128 from the BIOS. Should I do that?

 

[Proximon]

It's not going to make much difference I think. If you like.