Phenom X2 555, upgrade or build new?

[Ryan Dahlheimer]

Specs on current PC:
Phenom II X2 555 CPU
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 GPU
Western Digital Blue 7200 rpm 500 GB HD
ASUS M4A87TD EVO Motherboard
4 GB ddr3 Ripjaws Memory

My question to you is, should I upgrade my CPU or build a new computer?

Motherboard is an am3 socket type which would leave me looking at a phenom x4 or x6 but I'm unsure if I'll really notice a difference.

Option #2 seems to be upgrading my CPU and motherboard, though this seems costly if you think it would be a better alternative to building a whole new rig I would go this route.

And option #3 of course going with a whole new PC, all I really wanna do is play CSGO and H1Z1 with music playing or with a Skype call in the background so I don't think this would be necessary but not sure.

 

[bootcher]

It depends a bit on your budget, but I would opt for option #2. Get a intel i3 cpu with an H97 motherboard or an AMD FM2+ with a good overclocking motherboard for about $150-200. You can still use the DD3 ram and all other components and your old case. If you have more budget you can get a new GPU and also a new PSU to make sure everything runs well. Also get more ram to a total of 8 gb.

I wouldn't upgrade the cpu, since you'll be spending money on cpu's that are no longer being made, and the difference in performance wouldn't be so much.

 

[Ryan Dahlheimer]

Thanks, I think I'll upgrade motherboard CPU and GPU since everything will be out already from swapping motherboards and it'll be getting done eventually 😛

 

[FreshRestart]

You current phenom II can run CSGO just fine assuming you pair it with a strong enough GPU. Not sure about H1Z1 though. The Phenom II may benifit from a bit of overclocking, I believe these chips have an OC ceiling of 4 GHz, that is quite the boost from the 3.2 GHz base clock. If you can get the Phenom II X4 or X6 for cheap then go for it, it will allow you to run game and run some music and Skype in the background which shouldn't be CPU intensive tasks to start with. You can also try to unlock the two locked cores in your processor or at least one of them if your motherboard supports this. Should give you a nice boost in performance and multitasking. If you successfully do that and find you do not need to upgrade the CPU+ motherboard anymore, you should upgrade your memory to 8 GBs if you are running a 64x system and your GFX card.