Gifted this PC by surprise, just looking at upgrade path for future

[irunjt]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229496
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009700

Hi all,

First of all, I've been a lurker on these forums for a while, and have to thank everyone that posts for their time and effort in helping people (like me!) out. You guys are awesome.

This PC was recently gifted to me as a Cyber Monday purchase by family. I've been lightly gaming/working on grad classes on a Asus K53e notebook (i3 2310 CPU @2.1GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU), for a while, always talking about wanting a new desktop rig.

In terms of the desktop, not looking a gift horse in the mouth by any means, but just looking at options for the future. I imagine the graphics card, and by extension the PSU can be upgraded. I'm not hot about Windows 8.1, but will manage I guess. Probably looking at a bigger hard drive at some point too. I know prices change all the time with new products launching, sales, etc., but what should I be looking at for this desktop setup specifically? How hard is it to put in a new GPU? HD? Is 8GB of RAM sufficient?

Thoughts on the keyboard/mouse?

I basically game a bit on WoW, OOTP15, CivV, etc. Have a pretty good Steam backlog of some games that need a decent rig, and some that don't. Would like to give Civ:BE a shot if possible at some point. I've avoided even looking at some games because I knew my laptop couldn't even come close to running them. Overall, I'm just excited about this providing a bit more power than my laptop.

So, in the end, I'm just looking for some guidance from what I've witnessed to be a great community. Thanks again.

 

[bootcher]

For gaming you will benefit greatly from a faster videocard, since the R7 240 is hardly more than an entry level videocard for gaming. Most likely you
will have to replace that psu when upgrading the videocard, 350 watt is a bit low, and it is probably not the best psu anyways.
A bigger harddrive will be needed, since 500 gb is simply not enough these days. You can just keep the 'old' 500 gb and add more harddrives. One path is to get a SSD first and another 1-2 tb later.
The motherboard is an H81, so it isn't the newest but you can upgrade the cpu later if needed. But future intel cpu's will only be supported by H/Z97 motherboards.
You can take a look at your DDR3, it might be a slow cas latency, so you could improve that a little by upgrading to a faster type.

 

[iron8orn]

No reason to think about upgrading the cpu since it will simply handle any gpu you throw at it.

I would say get a gpu and psu first.

 

[irunjt]

Are there good youtube videos or walkthroughs about the process of getting a new video card/hard drive that you all know of?

I'm a noob when it comes to doing stuff inside the case.

Should I look into adding more RAM? Guess it depends on the setup inside the box?

 

[bootcher]

search 'how to install xxxx' on google or youtube, you will find thousands of tutorials.

Usually 8 gb of ram is enough, only if you are editing very large files/photos/videos you might need more ram. For gaming it will not make a difference to add more ram.

 

[irunjt]

Alrighty. Thanks for the input everyone! Much appreciated.

 

[samjohnson]

Linus Tech Tips is quite good for that sort of thing.

https://www.youtube.com/user/LinusTechTips

Just search his channel for what you want, he has so much content what you want is probably on there somewhere.

Sam

 

[RazerZ]

Make sure the power supply you get for your card is a good unit and not a fire hazard. Click the PSU tier link in my sig and try to stick with PSUs in Tier One or Two. Also see if the power supply you get for your card will provide enough power to run it. See the link below.

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm

 

[irunjt]

Great links. Thanks everyone!