Looking into building a PC... A few newbie questions?

Question

Ok, my current computer is pretty crap. It's a Dell Precision 670. 2 - 2.8Ghz processors, 1 GB of RAM, some crappy graphics card. I've only ever really needed it for school and stuff like that, which it's fine for. It's perfectly fine for schoolwork, youtube, basics like that. Now that I have some free time (and some money) I'm looking into possibly improving it to the point where I can dabble in some gaming. I'm trying to gather information so that I can figure out what I'm up against before I get into something I won't be able to follow through on. I've got a bunch of questions, hopefully they're easy for you. Even if you can't or don't feel like answering all of them, I appreciate any help you can give me.
Now, my questions are:
1. Can I simply improve upon this machine enough to get it to the point where it's gaming-worthy?
2. If so, is it a matter of just swapping out parts? If not, what are the basics of what it will entail?
3. How much $ am I looking into investing to make it run well for most FPS games? [I'd appreciate if you could briefly give an idea of how much I can improve (if improving my current machine is even a possibility) with say $400 and compare the performance with $300 or $500 as well, if you could].
4. How much time will it take? I'm a patient person, so it's not a big deal, I just prefer to know how big of a commitment this is.
5. Can I do one portion at a time, run the computer, then move on to another portion at a later time, if I weren't in the mode to work on it one day? (Just curious).
6. Is there anything else I need to know? :D

Answer 1

Ok, I appreciate the fact that you're willing to do some work and figure some things out, not just have everything spoonfed to you. More power too you.



1. Theoretically yes, you could improve that system to the point where you could game decently on it. However, the end result will be that you have a completely different computer, you just bought one part at a time.

2. To a certain point, yes. However, some parts need to be swapped out together or swapped out after some significant planning. Your motherboard and processor for example: which processors you can support is entirely dependent on your motherboard. If you buy a mobo that uses an older chipset, you won't be able to get any of the new processors for it and will be stuck with outdated and crappy hardware. Also, you need to plan when you buy a new case. Make sure that your motherboard will fit in it. Other than that, everything can be swapped out one at a time.

3. A good bit. Gaming rigs are known for three things: looking like a boss, running faster than anything else in the house, and costing more than said house. Ok, last is not quite true, but you get the idea. A really good rig will be worth $800-$1500 dollars. Of course, you can go beyond that, but that's overkill. But, with $400 to start with you can upgrade your GPU, your RAM, and maybe get an SSD. Save the rest, you'll need it for the CPU and mobo.

4. If you had the money all at once, it would take a week for shipping and then three days to put it all together, break it twice, and then get it working. Since you're going in increments, think a year or two. So, when you get your parts, plan ahead. Go ahead and get a really top notch graphics card now, because by the time everything else is put together it won't be quite as new.

5. Kind of, it depends on what you are working on. If you're just putting in more RAM, sure. If you're putting in a new gpu, you'll want to dedicate a weekend to that. That can often be tricky and if it goes wrong you'll have to undo everything to get your computer working again.. If you are overclocking, dedicate several weekends. That's very tricky and cannot be stopped halfway through to check your email.



6. Here's a general idea of what order you want to be upgrading things in, and what are the best manufacturers:



RAM: Corsair

Case: Corsair, Cooler Master, Thermaltake, Antec

Power supply: Corsair, Thermaltake

HDD: Western Digital, Seagate

SSD: Samsung, Crucial, Corsair

GPU: AMD, Nvidia

Monitor: Asus, Sony, AOE

Mobo: MSI, ASRock, Gigabyte, Asus

CPU: Intel

CPU cooler: Cooler Master, Thermaltake, Corsair



Oh, and one more thing. This is the build I've been working on for a while. I've been told it could play Crysis 3 on ultra. It should give you some ideas :

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1tf3n

Answer 2

Looking at the dell support site, it looks like your motherboard has a pci-e slot for a video card, dual xeon processors and a fair number of memory expansion slots using ddr2 400 (pc3200) memory.



Dell cases are not ideal for using random aftermarket parts in, probably on purpose. But you most likely can use a lot of different parts in there. The cheapest thing to do would be to just throw in about 4gb of pc3200 memory, I like to get the ones with 4-4-4-12 timings, if your bios will support those settings. Don't bother getting more than 4gb unless you have or plan to get a 64 bit operating system on there. Which would mean replacing your drivers too of course.



Well really the first thing I'd do with that thing is find a new bios for the motherboard to replace the dell crippled bios that I'm sure that it has. That means figuring out what exact model of oem motherboard is in there and reflashing that.



I'm not sure if this would mean having to replace the dell crippled version of windows it's probably running, and reformatting your harddrive and so on. Maybe you don't want to do that much work.



If you're determined to do this as cheap as possible I'd probably just try replacing the ram with aftermarket pc3200, about 4gb worth, and really the timings aren't that critical. Look up what the voltage on your current memory is supposed to be though and make sure the replacements are supposed to be used with that.



If you want to spend money after that, I'd look at upgrading the video. You might be limited on space in that dell case, and the power supply would probably have to be replaced also. After buying memory and a new power supply you're probably only going to have a couple hundred bucks left in your 400 dollar budget, but you can get a decent base level gaming video card for that.



Here's part of the support site for your dell, you can dig some of your specs out of that



http://www.dell.com/support/Manuals/us/en/19/Product/precision-670



If you want to try reflashing bios and stuff, be careful. You have to be sure and get the exact bios for the board, or you will probably trash it, for example.

Answer 3

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