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Thread ID: 122900	2012-01-19 10:16:00	Core 2 Duo PC - Upgrade Suggestions	Chemical Ali (118)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1254977	2012-01-19 10:16:00	Hi Looking at upgrade suggestions for my Core 2 Duo PC. It has an E8500 Core 2 Duo CPU on a Gigabyte motherboard, a 7200RPM Samsung HDD (750GB), Creative Audigy soundcard + a 9600GT PCI-E video card along with 2GB RAM running Windows 7 32-bit. Not looking at a total overhaul (i.e. new CPU and motherboard) as will end up having to replace RAM as well. I'm thinking improvements to the hard drive, video card and possibly adding USB 3 capability via a PCI card are the best options???	Chemical Ali (118)
1254978	2012-01-19 12:56:00	Not much wrong in the HDD department unless you're looking at a SSd. New bid card wouldn't go a miss. What's your psu like? More ram? Don't think there are enoug usb3 devices to warrant an upgrade to that.	icow (15313)
1254979	2012-01-19 15:55:00	You could thrown in a small SSD for the OS and some applications, keep your current drive for file storage, which would improve performance loads. The biggest bottleneck, generally speaking, is the hard drive in a PC. A better graphics card is also a good idea, but there is only so much the rest of the PC will be able to handle, so don't go all out and spend loads on one. USB 3 isn't very common on devices at the moment, and it is backwards compatible with USB 2 anyway, so I wouldn't even bother.	DaveBritton (7395)
1254980	2012-01-19 18:02:00	It has an E8500 Core 2 Duo CPU on a Gigabyte motherboard, a 7200RPM Samsung HDD (750GB), Creative Audigy soundcard + a 9600GT PCI-E video card along with 2GB RAM running Windows 7 32-bit. I'm thinking improvements to the hard drive, video card and possibly adding USB 3 capability via a PCI card are the best options??? GPU, RAM and HDD.	pctek (84)
1254981	2012-01-19 19:11:00	If you can bump it up to 4GB of RAM it will have the most noticeable effect in my opinion. Graphics card is a good option because if you upgrade later you can use it on the new build. It's still pretty good as is and isn't worth spending too much on because it would quickly get close to the price of an upgrade. For example a pentium G620 CPU (basically close to the equivalent of what you have), a cheap H61 motherboard, and 4GB of RAM can all be had for approx $250 - $300 and while it may sound low end it would be capable of taking an i7, a modern graphics card, and 8GB of RAM or more making it infinately more upgradeable. Switching to an i3 would add another $80 or more. I mention only as a comparison, if you could find a quad core CPU for your board it would cost more than a whole upgrade most likely and older RAM is more expensive also. So if it was me I'd look at Graphics and maybe Hdd as you can re-use those, and RAM if you can get it cheaply enough. The rest I wouldn't upgrade.	dugimodo (138)
1254982	2012-01-19 19:41:00	Definitely start with RAM, if you have 64-bit Windows 7 go for 8GB if you can (I have 4GB).	pcuser42 (130)
1254983	2012-01-20 03:07:00	Definitely start with RAM, if you have 64-bit Windows 7 go for 8GB if you can (I have 4GB). +1 agree with that.	skeptile2 (16539)
1254984	2012-01-20 04:24:00	Running 32-bit Windows 7 but had heard somewhere that I can install 64-bit Windows 7 suing the same license key - does anyone know if that's correct?	Chemical Ali (118)
1254985	2012-01-20 04:27:00	Hi All Thanks for the thoughtful suggestions which pretty much aligned with what I was thinking -- almost considering a full mo'bo/CPU/RAM upgrade and adding new HDD & graphics card later on. But it's still a good machine and runs well so it seems a bit of a shame to replace everything even though the economics (as Dugimodo points out) almost make sense to do that ....	Chemical Ali (118)
1254986	2012-01-20 04:41:00	Running 32-bit Windows 7 but had heard somewhere that I can install 64-bit Windows 7 suing the same license key - does anyone know if that's correct? Yes. But you need to do a full reinstall.	pcuser42 (130)
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