Help me Upgrade my PC

[chunchasku]

Hi everyone. I have an HP a4302f.
It kinda sucks, lol. I need somthing to boost my gameing
Here are my comp specs

HP Pavilion a4300 Desktop PC series*-* HP Pavilion a4302f Desktop PC Product Specifications - c02035413 - HP Business Support Center

I am trying to get my Pc to play Starcraft 2 on higher settings without trouble.
What should i upgrade? My video card, my processor, my ram?
I've had so many different awnsers from people its hard to figure this out.

Any Ideas would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks

[ShyguyXPC]

Your Video card, and Power supply. are what looks like in most need of upgrades, CPU isn't too bad, if you have that Athlon II X2 Dual core running at 2.8GHz. Its a lower end Dual core, but still plenty fast for the game.

May not run on max settings but its more than capable.


Am I reading the Specs right, it says in that link the PC comes with 5GB of RAM? Thats a bit of an odd number for RAM Capacity.

would have to be Two 2GB sticks and a 1GB stick or a 4GB stick and 1GB Stick... Or 4GB stick and 2 512MB sticks.


in any case, if there is 4 or 5 GB of RAM in the PC there is more than enough.


What kind of budget do you have to spend on upgrades, we need to know that before suggesting anything.

But as said, you WILL need a new Power Supply Upgrade along with the Video card to make sure the whole system with new card doesn't overload the current low end PSU and fry the whole system in the end.

[chunchasku]

I have like 3-4 hundred for a spending limit. for now.
and yeah, it came with 5gb ram. it is kinda wierd. I'm uising an 8 gb flash drive with ready boost to make my computer faster. by 4GB i think? i dont really know how that works.

But yeah, any suggestions on what stuff to buy would be apreiciated. I'm not good at these things. My friends tell me that its possible to get components that wont work with my cpu's chipset or whatever, so, thanks for helping

[ShyguyXPC]

Pfft, Ready boost doesn't make it that much faster, not when your already running 5GB of RAM, I wouldn't even use Ready Boost with that much RAM, it was intended for system with extreme low RAM capabilities. If your system is set up right, anything over 2GB of RAM, you really don't need Ready boost.



$300-400 Budget... For now?



Thats almost enough for a complete new system (case, Mobo, CPU, RAM, PSU, GPU, HDD, DVD, No OS)

Granted it wouldn't be much faster over what you have now.


But you could easily gut and reuse some of your current PC's hardware in a newer system.

Or at the least, transplant all of it with a New Video card and PSU into a newer Case for better cooling, Room, and upgrades in future.




Actually from looking at Newegg for parts, looks like you could do a significant upgrade on the System with CPU, Video Card, PSU, Case, Extra New faster Hard drive to install games too, and still have money to spare with the $400 max budget.



Just an example (this CPU wouldn't be ALL that faster in your games, though may allow more multitasking abilities while gaming or running other software while gaming):

CPU: Newegg.com - AMD Athlon II X4 645 Propus 3.1GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX645WFGMBOX

GPU: Newegg.com - ZOTAC AMP! ZT-50402-10L GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

HDD: Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Case: Newegg.com - Sentey Black Box Series BX2-4292 v2.1 Mid Tower Computer Case / HD Audio / SECC 0.7mm / 4x USB /E-Sata / 4x 120mm Fans (+ 3 Optional) / HD CAGE / ATX-MATX-ITX

PSU: Newegg.com - CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 V2 430W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Before shipping, total is $382.95

After Shipping: $391.65

Not including, $20 Mail In Rebate Card.

According to the link you provided it shows that your PC supports this CPU, originally I thought about the Phenom II X4 840, but since its actually just a Athlon II X4 with more cache and Speed bumped to 3.2GHz for a bit of a performance boost and AMD slapped the Phenom II Name on it (it uses the Athlon II Propus Core, apparently AMD realized higher clock Athlon II's were catching up in performance to lower end Phenom II's so this is a stop gap measure to transition from one to the other). Wasn't sure if it would be recognized by your Motherboard, or would need a Bios Update, so went with the Athlon II X4 listed above instead since it should be recognized according to your link.



If you don't really need a Hard drive upgrade (more space, faster speed, just install along side current one for the games and stuff to be on), then you could take that off the list and money saved for put towards a better Video card, Radeon 6850, or GTX 460 1GB Or even A Radeon 6870, or Geforce GTX 560, and a bit better PSU.

But I'd highly recommend a new case to put things into for better cooling of GPU and CPU and better upgrade path.


Keep in mind any of this, especially Case transplantation could void the Warranty on your HP if its still good.


If it were me, I'd put the money towards a Better GPU, Better Case, and Power Supply, As well as Hard drive for more space, I find 500GB fills up quite fast these days.

But with the bulk of the Budget towards the GPU. a Athlon II X4 @ 2.8GHz is still a pretty good performing CPU and should be quite decent for most gaming IMO.

[-FMA]

Personally I would just get a psu and gpu right now. Save up and get a new computer and carry those over. I would not spend 400 to upgrade.