Seeking upgrade advice for old gaming PC

Velorien

Distinguished
Jul 23, 2010
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18,535
Hi there.

I've discovered to my dismay that my PC is physically incapable of running Dragon Age: Inquisition, and struggles badly with Shadow of Mordor, so it is time to upgrade. Could I please have your advice?

My budget is £300-500.

Current system:
CPU: Intel® Core™2 Duo E6850 (2 X 3.00 GHz) 1333 MHz FSB/4 MB L2 Cache
Motherboard: Gigabyte P43-ES3G
RAM: 8 GB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz (4x2GB)
GPU: NVidia GeForce GTX 560 SE
PSU: 600 W Quiet Quad Rail PSU
Cooling: ASUS SILENT KNIGHT II PURE COPPER ULTRA COOLER

Based on a small amount of research, the upgrade parts I'm currently looking at are the following:
CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 Haswell Quad-Core 3.2 GHz @ £125.58
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Extreme6 @ £109.05
GPU: Radeon R9 290X @ £171.85
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) @ £50.89
Total: £457.37 + shipping

Is there any way I can improve on this? I should mention that I have no overclocking experience.
 
Solution
Unless you know your LGA775 cooler will fit on LGA1156, LGA1155, and LGA1150 it may not fit. (Might have a second set of brackets). It will come with a stock cooler which is fine for a non-overclocking CPU. Might get a little noisy when you game.

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
Not much call for a Z series board with a CPU that can't overclock. And no need to get it for SLI either since he is going AMD on the GPU. (Though nothing wrong with getting it in case you ever want to replace the CPU)

H97 board would be adequate.
 

logainofhades

Titan
Moderator

Velorien

Distinguished
Jul 23, 2010
26
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18,535
One more thing: given that several generations of technology have passed since this PC was new, do I need to worry about replacing my PSU/cooler to support these components?
 

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
Unless you know your LGA775 cooler will fit on LGA1156, LGA1155, and LGA1150 it may not fit. (Might have a second set of brackets). It will come with a stock cooler which is fine for a non-overclocking CPU. Might get a little noisy when you game.
 
Solution