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Is it worth upgrading a Dell Inspiron 530?


..:D&G:..

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Hello guys, I have a Dell Inspiron 530 and I was thinking of upgrading it. My budget is £300 and I wanted to get a new motherboard (DG33M03), a new Power Supply (CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 ATX PSU), a Graphics Card (Nvidia-Geforce-GT-730-Graphics-Card-4-GB) and maybe a new CPU (Yorkfield Quad Core, Q9650, 3.0G, 12MB, 1333 FSB, as it's the best I can get for that motherboard)

But the question is, is it really worth it? I am a gamer, playing games like Dying Light, (maybe GTA 5), Far Cry 4, Watch Dogs etc.

I really need advice in this, as I don't want to waste my money, when I could of get a better PC.

Thank you.

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  • MTA Team

Yeah, the problem here is that these are rather old parts already. The graphics card you've listed is hardly worth to spend any money on due to poor performance in gaming.

Only the PSU might be worthy to consider for a simple gaming PC.

Definitely try going for at least a 4th gen (Haswell-based) Intel Core i3 CPU (i5 preferred) and maybe an aftermarket gpu such as Radeon HD7850 or similar. That should save you a lot of performance-related headaches for a while.

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  • MTA Team

Just ditch that case and get a different one then. There are many cheap and good PC cases out there... like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811129181

As for graphics cards, the amount of the video memory will be the least of your problems, really. It's mostly the GPU itself and the memory bus width that matter the most, and the GT730 does not deliver in neither of them.

See for yourself:

http://www.pc-specs.com/gpu/comparison- ... on-hd-7850

http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.ph ... on-hd-7850

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What else is there in the case that you'll keep? You're basically building a whole new PC, only keeping the case.

[quote name=..:D&G:..]The thing is that inspiron 530 has only 2 motherboards, and none of them support the i3 or i5 series. Also, Radeon HD7850 has only 2GB dedicated memory, and I want at least 3GB just to make sure I can run games on medium at least, with a decent FPS and maybe no lag.

2 motherboards? Where did you see that? The case is a midtower, you should be able to put in there any ATX-sized motherboard.

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It's up to you. Choose whatever you like the most that fits in your budget. All you need to do is make sure that the motherboard you choose is compatible with your case, as in form factor. Any midtower should be compatible with the ATX form factor, which is the most common.

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Nope. £800 build with 2GB of RAM? 8GB is the standard now, at least 4GB is a must, especially for the games you want to play. Definitely change that i7 to an i5 and you might as well change your power supply to a higher quality one (XFX Pro 550W Core Edition is a good one)

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I selected 2GB ram because I know someone that has 8GB rams and could lend me 2 of them, but I changed the specs and got a 16GB ram and downgraded from i7 to i5-4690. Also, I asked the people from pc specialist and they told me that I do not require a higher voltage PSU, the maximum I need is 480, so I'll stay with 550, also, they only have corsairs..

I am mostly worried about the graphics card, do you think that this 3GB AMD RADEON™ R9 280X - DVI, HDMI, mDP - DX® 11, Eyefinity 4 Capable is any good?

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[quote name=..:D&G:..]I selected 2GB ram because I know someone that has 8GB rams and could lend me 2 of them, but I changed the specs and got a 16GB ram

You're wasting your money. For gaming, you won't need 16GB of RAM.

[quote name=..:D&G:..]Also, I asked the people from pc specialist and they told me that I do not require a higher voltage PSU, the maximum I need is 480, so I'll stay with 550, also, they only have corsairs..

I never mentioned voltage. I'm talking about quality, not power. The power supply is low-end, not even 80 PLUS certified. It doesn't have to be another brand, just not a low-end PSU on a £800 build.

[quote name=..:D&G:..]I am mostly worried about the graphics card, do you think that this 3GB AMD RADEON™ R9 280X - DVI, HDMI, mDP - DX® 11, Eyefinity 4 Capable is any good?

It's more than enough for current generation games in high graphics settings.

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  • MTA Team

It's simply because it's cheaper and for the price difference between i5 and i7 you would get more RAM so your pc would perform much better in games rather than the original PC build you've listed.

That i7 is not newer than i5 as they come from the same cpu generation (4th gen Intel Core CPU - also known as Haswell), but is a bit faster and more expensive.

As for the motherboard, would there be a significant price increase between the one you've chosen and these ones below? I've listed the differences between the motherboards in case you'd like to check what you'd be paying extra for.

http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/Z97 ... fications/ (will also support the 5th gen Intel Core CPUs; newer and better chipset, also a full atx format, so you'd get more RAM and PCI/PCIe slots and fan connectors and generally more space on the motherboard for extra cpu cooling etc., and a M.2 SSD port)

http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/Z97 ... fications/ (similar as above, but with a different chipset cooling)

http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/Z97 ... fications/ (same as ones above + better audio codec/sound card, an additional fan connector)

http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/Z97 ... fications/ (same as the one above + better stock chipset cooling and a vrm section cooling, also an even better audio codec/sound card and yet another fan connector, DisplayPort for built-in graphics, no PCI ports but more PCIe ports instead)

An Asus Z97-K or Z97-C would be a good choice for you I guess. If you have got a 5.1 speaker system, go with the Z97-C or Z97-PRO if they're not much more expensive.

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Ok so, I decided not to take windows as it costs a lot (£107) and they will install a trial anyway to do the tests, so I can install windows myself. That saved me a lot of money, money is not really a problem, but I don't want to spend more on building then on buying, because I saw nearly the same specs and 1TB memory for £500. Anyway, these are the motherboards available:

JqB0S.png

Also, for the cooler I was thinking of going with Super Quiet 22dBA Triple Copper Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler, the rest are liquid/hydro coolers, and I don't want to risk spillage :P

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