I have a old Dell 530 sitting here and I want to know if it can handle any kinds of games (mostly fallout / new vegas and skyrim) it has no hdd to it. but the spec of it are below I am looking on maybe overclocking but not sure if it's worth doing or not? Please let me know if are any parts that can be upgraded I am very worried about the PSU for the GPU, should be ok with it running at 720p resolution? Dell Inspiron 530 Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz 6GB RAM (DDR2) HIS Radeon HD 4670 IceQ 1GB 128-Bit DDR3 Raidmax RX - 500AF PSU 500 Watt DVDRW 5 port USB PCI card 4 External 1 Internal (12 USB ports all together)
To be honest, your system's hanging by a thread. You can play some games at the most basic settings at 720p maybe.
R9 390 or GTX 970 can both be picked up for around the $300 mark on newegg. GTX 970 uses around 170-180W under load, depending on which version you end up finding. Assuming the rest of your system uses around 250W (I.e. Assuming you're not overclocking) then you should be around the 420-450W range, which should be safe enough on a cheap PSU brand, although I agree with @Joe88 that you don't want to push it anywhere near the claimed rating of 500W. Cheap PSUs rarely hit their claimed rating before exploding (more smoke than fire) and brandless PSUs are fire hazards waiting to happen. You might be safer getting a graphics card one step lower like the R9 380 or GTX 960 and using the $70-100 saved from the budget to getting a PSU from a decent brand like Seasonic. You won't need more than 500-600W, but decent brands can usually go 100% safely and even sometimes 120% safely (but not recommended), and tend to have much higher energy efficiency (gold rated or higher).
Unless there is a future cpu/mb upgraded planned, I'd go with a 960/380. Q6600 will hold back both the 970/390. No point spending that money, just to be held back by the cpu. Probably take the 960 over the 380 as well due to lower overhead on Nvidia drivers, squeeze out as much performance from the cpu as you can.
If i were you, I'd get one of those Haswell pentiums with a reasonable motherboard and a so-so graphics card. [Short term solution] (maybe you could sell some old stuff) Long term solution, invest in a good, robust gpu first, then the others. But since you wanna play at 720p, you might as well go with the short term solution i just mentioned. A GTX 950 card would be more than enough i think. eg. Intel Pentium G3258 ASRock B85M-ITX MSI GTX 950 2GB GDDR5 Total: $284 (prices taken from newegg) Use the difference for some DDR3 ram
Thanks guys. I am a bit confused on the gpu, is it too much for the psu to handle? I already was playing around with some games last night and I didn't have any issues at all just minor pauses at random. I am going to probably put in a SSD in there I already have a gt 740 which looks compatible with my setup, would getting a beefer psu help much where it is right now? BTW this thing is a beast I got to say first quad from intel is pretty sweet playing games on.
bump, well according to wikipedia I cannot upgrade the gpu any higher than the 4670, unless they are wrong about that. I also meant this for older gaming not newer stuff I'll say pre 2012 games. Might want to switch out the gpu soon not sure but what would be the nvidia gpu equivalent to the hd radeon 4670 would it be worth it?
