Advise for upgrading Biostar TH 55b HD

[mykawa]

Getting old and lazy, was going to just buy a new faster computer but felt even if I do this I should still clean up this one that I build many years ago for the grandkids to use. Really don't want to build a new one, like I said i'm older and getting lazy. Main reason to buy or upgrade is I started to play (try to play) Ark Survival Evolved.

I will list my system last but questions I have are:

1. What is the best video card I can put in this without bottlenecking the CPU?
2. I have two slots of ram of 2 Gb now and I know I should just change out and put in two 8 Gb sticks but can I (should I) for the cost savings just add two sticks in the open slots?
3. Cost effective would there be any major advantage of buying putting in a newer CPU? I think I have first gen. Intel I3. If so how much advantage do you think it would be in this motherboard?
4. After upgrading should I upgrade to Windows 10 or stay with what have?
5. I will also be getting a SSD to load primary game on, should I load Windows on this drive also?

Motherboard- Biostar TH 55b HD
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Video card -Radeon HD 4850 (yes its old but at the time it was faster then newer cards)
Memory 4 Gb in two sticks of 2 ( uses ddr2 (2000) (1800) (1600)
CPU- I3 Chipset: Intel H55
System is overclocked slightly using the motherboard overclock software but not sure what it is clocked at. (checking system shows 530 @ 2.93 GHz)
Onboard Audio

Any advise will be helpful (except laughing)

 

[Lutfij]

1| The highest you can go while with the i3-530 processor in place is a GTX750Ti.

2| Ram upgrades should be considered as buying one shoe since one out of your existing pair got lost. The salesman will never sell you one out of a pair and that means you're going to have to buy a pair. Similarly ram's shouldn't be mixed and matched due to inconsistencies with manufacturing standards and brands as well as internal timings are concerned. Since you have 4 slots, it's best to max them out to prevent dust accumulation and with the prices of DDR3 4GB sticks being so low, it'd be a bad idea to only go for 8GB now.

You should pickup 2 of these kits or just one of this though you should flash your BIOS with the versions found here prior to going for the ram upgrade. Work your way up from your version to the latest to avoid any bricking/corruption..

3| There would be a significant difference if you could put in an i5-750(off Ebay) simply because you'd be able to get a true quad core performance CPU in your system and with today's titles and applications taking advantage of more than one core, it'd be a good stepping stone to see what the latest titles feel like albeit the GTX750Ti would hold you back. You could go higher with the GPU side.

4| You're more than a happy camper with Windows 7. Windows 10's driver support is non existent and you don't want to be troubleshooting on older hardware with your current state of affairs.

5| Get the largest SSD you can afford, preferably 256GB or more, and have that as your BOOT drive(while plugged into SATA port 1) and install your games on your boot drive. Mind you, SSD's shouldn't have partitions on it so essentially it's one big drive with your OS and games on it.

* Your board runs off of DDR3 rams not DDR2 😉
** As a note of measure, we'll also need to know your PSU's make and model as well as your chassis. You could benefit with going for a new chassis as well like an N200 by Coolermaster to improve your cooling.
*** If you'd like to go for overclocking then the i5-750 would be the way to go with DDR3-1600MHz rams but the BIOS update is mandatory while also thinking of putting some copper heatsinks for heat dissipation of your CPU's VRM area like these.