Upgrade Advice Needed

[kirbysepicmeal]

So im buying a homebuilt pc including a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse from a friend for $80. I want to be able to upgrade it to play games, most likely Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike: GO and maybe battlefield 3.
I will also be using photoshop, illustrator, and i will be doing video editing. My budget is $300-$350 (the cheaper the better). So what parts should i get? I don't really care about high settings when i play games.

Specs that i know of:
[strike]Intel Pentium (Don't know model)[/strike] Pentium 4 @ 3.41 ghz
[strike]No graphics card[/strike] geforce 8800 gtx
[strike]4 GB ram[/strike] 3gb ram
[strike]500 GB hardrive[/strike]
Broken CD drive
a blue led fan
[strike]500w psu[/strike] 400w psu
Windows 7 32 bit
(My friends gave me wrong info do gotta edit post)

I don't know the motherboard size, but he said it support up to 16 GB of ram.
Also tell me if its worth 80 bucks

 

[manofchalk]

I will say it outright, on that budget and on parts this old/low end, I don't think you will get what you want. $350 doesnt go far in terms of computers.

We need more info on the specifications on the machine. That Pentium could be on the LGA775 socket, which means you will have to replace the mobo and possibly the RAM (LGA775 was around when DDR3 was being introduced, some chipsets supported DDR3 and others didnt).
Or its an LGA1155 Pentium, which means no mobo or RAM change.

So pop the lid off the case and see if you can find a product name for the motherboard, that will tell us what chipset (and therefore socket) it is.

If the motherboard is LGA1155, then we may pull be able to put in a CPU upgrade and maybe an entry level GPU. If its LGA775, then theres almost no hope of doing anything on this budget.

 

[stormoffires]

gonna have to second what mano said. I started out like you did when i went to make the big upgrade and well in the end i trashed the all but the case and ended up dumping 800 bucks into a nice new comp. You will probably need a new PSU when you added your video card, alot of times i see 500w fail to support newer cards. You will need more ram for bf3, but should be ok for the others. Dig into your comp and look for words and names on the MB that will indacte what MB it is, if your unsure pictures of the MB that can be read we can tell you what you got. plan for your money to go into MB/CPU/GPU.

 

[kirbysepicmeal]

Ok so, i can't find the info of the motherboard and no pic so srry, but i found out the cpu is a pentium 4 @ 3.4 ghz and it supports LGA 775. good thing i didnt buy the pc.

BTW the pc also comes with geforce 8800 gtx, so is it worth $80 with monitor (1366 x 768), keyboard, mouse. Im planning to just save up and build a whole new computer

 

[manofchalk]

I wouldn't buy the machine, nothing in it is salvageable except maybe the blue LED fan. The 8800GT would be useful in a home theater or family general use PC maybe, but is very old card that's not suited for gaming anymore.

The monitor might be useful if you have a better primary monitor and just use that one to extend the desktop. Mouse and keyboard depends on the brand/model and condition their in.

 

[stormoffires]

I had the ol p4 back in the was good even ran StarCraft 2! im sorry to say mate but the 8800 wasnt really worth holding onto, for 100 bucks you could find a better ATI card or so. good luck on your comp build any questions feel free to ask

 

[kirbysepicmeal]

Best answer selected by Kirbysepicmeal.