Question Upgrading PC for Windows 10

Jan 30, 2020
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I've had my custom made PC for about 6 years now, and want to upgrade some parts, and also get Windows 10 since 7 is no longer being supported. I'm looking to spend up to £450. I use my PC for gaming, I do play games but mostly old emulators and some newer titles on Steam which runs fine on it. Mostly use PC for Internet, videos etc. Here are current stats:

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Card name: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. F2h, 26/05/2014
Processor: AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor, AMD64 Family 21 Model 2 Stepping 0, CPU Count: 6
Total Physical RAM: 16 GB
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
Hard Drives: C: 119 GB (7 GB Free); D: 459 GB (237 GB Free); G: 931 GB (392 GB Free);
Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. 970A-DS3P, ver x.x, s/n To be filled by O.E.M.
System: American Megatrends Inc., ver ALASKA - 1072009, s/n To be filled by O.E.M.

Here is the graphics card details:
Card name: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x6810)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6810&SUBSYS_2336148C&REV_00
Display Memory: 4095 MB
Dedicated Memory: 2025 MB
Shared Memory: 2070 MB
Current Mode: 1360 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

I'm currently looking at the following which I found recently, on the page there are other options for the parts:
https://www.cclonline.com/pc/gaming...01/?siteID=hL3Qp0zRBOc-W23OvTBp9wNhTHLOvi5E0A
Game Max Centauri Mid Tower Gaming Case - Black £28
AMD Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6GHz 4 Core £79
BeQuiet! Pure Rock Slim CPU Cooler £21
Gigabyte A320M-S2H AMD Socket AM4 Motherboard £45
Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 16GB (2x 8GB) 3200MHz £75
CCL Choice 240GB 2.5" SATA III SSD £24
Seagate BarraCuda 1TB SATA III 3.5" Hard Drive £37
TP-Link TL-WN881ND 300Mbps £9
Fractal Design Essence OEM 500W 80+ PSU £30

Total parts £348 - Built with 3 years warranty

I'm not looking for anything fancy or that can launch a Saturn 5 rocket, just something basic and simple. Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
Jan 30, 2020
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Did you have a look at the website? Is there any other budget PCs for my budget that you can recommend that are better than what I have?
Also where is the best place to get Windows 10 from as the OS?
 
Here's the "custom build" cost. Seems pretty cost competitive.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£103.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-A320M-S2H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£42.98 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport AT 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Storage: ADATA SU630 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£26.49 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate BarraCuda 1 TB 2.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£36.64 @ Currys PC World Business)
Case: GameMax Centauri ATX Mid Tower Case (£30.17 @ Box Limited)
Power Supply: GameMax GP 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£34.45 @ Amazon UK)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link TL-WN881ND PCIe x1 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter (£11.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £286.71
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-02-05 15:23 GMT+0000


The point I'm trying to make is that this system doesn't seem to be significantly better/faster than your current one. Certainly hampered by the tight budget. Your computing needs aren't terribly high. Why not just keep your current PC and do the Win10 upgrade on that? You ought to be able to do the upgrade for free still.
 
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Jan 30, 2020
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I have a budget of £450 and the one you have put together there is £286, surely one with better parts is available nearer the £450 budget.
Also lets say I do the Windows 10 upgrade, getting rid of Windows 7 and everything I have on my PC that I don't back up, and the upgrade makes my PC crash constantly like it did before, then what would I do?
 
I was matching the same parts list as the pre-built machine you provided just to show that it seems the cost is competitive. What I don't care for with that builder is that they don't offer very flexible options, especially given your relatively tight budget. They offer less build customization to keep prices down, and obviously they're not going to cover every $100 budget increments from $300 to $1500 which is prohibitive. One step up on their site and you've exceeded the budget by a fair margin.

Are you suggesting now that you're willing and able to build a PC yourself? Because that opens up much more/better possibilities.

If not, we're probably headed in the direction of choosing that $290 prebuilt and adding a GPU to it. Something like a $110 RX570 or similar.

If you get into building yourself, you can use your full budget more effectively , so the build starts to look something like this:
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor (£106.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£64.99 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£56.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£51.66 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon RX 570 4 GB Gaming 4G Video Card (£109.99 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cougar MG130-G MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£34.38 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: GameMax GP 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£35.00 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £459.99

You'd [likely] have the same GPU in both cases, but here you've got a much better CPU, better mobo (with 4 RAM slots, OC support, etc), larger faster SSD, etc etc. Assuming you've already got WiFi covered on your existing machine that you can carry over, as well as your current 2 hard drives for storing pictures/documents/videos etc. This is now a significant upgrade compared to your current system.

In the DIY approach, you're not being forced to buy things you don't need (WiFi card, HDD, etc), so your money can be used for making other items better. Not sure what case you have or how good/old your current PSU is, but those could be possible candidates for recycling as well, which would open up even more budget for further upgrades.
 
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Jan 30, 2020
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I literally have no experience in building PCs so I wouldn't know where to begin, the only thing I've done is replace RAM. That's why i'm looking for a pre-built PC, yes I know it would be cheaper to get the parts and fit it all together myself but i'm sure it wouldn't go right and i'd mess something up.

So any prebuilt PC for £450 from UK site would be perfect for me, and I need Windows 10 too.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
I literally have no experience in building PCs so I wouldn't know where to begin, the only thing I've done is replace RAM. That's why i'm looking for a pre-built PC, yes I know it would be cheaper to get the parts and fit it all together myself but i'm sure it wouldn't go right and i'd mess something up.

So any prebuilt PC for £450 from UK site would be perfect for me, and I need Windows 10 too.
A prebuilt system almost always comes with Win 10 already installed.
 

Oussebon

Upstanding
Feb 17, 2020
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Also lets say I do the Windows 10 upgrade, getting rid of Windows 7 and everything I have on my PC that I don't back up, and the upgrade makes my PC crash constantly like it did before, then what would I do?

Just to check, are you aware that it is still possible to do a Windows 10 upgrade for free?

https://www.howtogeek.com/266072/yo...ws-10-for-free-with-a-windows-7-8-or-8.1-key/

MS appear to still allow the upgrade.

What you can do is upgrade your licence to Windows 10 on your existing system.

Perform a clean install of Windows 10,
https://www.groovypost.com/howto/clean-install-Windows-10/
Deleting all paritions.

This will wipe anything on those drives, so make sure to back up any important data first. You can usually copy steam files game back over too, saving you needing to redownload.

Doing a clean install is strongly preferable to doing an in-place upgrade (i.e. where you tell Windows to try to upgrade the OS while keeping your stuff).

If you still have crashes after that, there's a fair chance it's a hardware issue.

You can, however, most likely tie the Windows licence to your MS account and then use that on a new computer.
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-link-your-windows-10-product-key-microsoft-account

So does anybody know a good site that I can get a PC better than the one I have at the moment pre-build for £400 or around that amount?
The R5 2400G is fine as a CPU but is still quite low end and the main 'point' of it is that it offers integrated graphics. You apparently already have an AMD R9 graphics card. What exactly is it, e.g. R9 290? R9 270x?

Your existing GPU will be way better than the integrated graphics on the APU.

If you don't want to self-build your options are a bit limited. The UK company PC Specialist let you buy PCs without GPUs or Windows licences. Could be worth looking, I checked CCL, Overclockers, and Cyberpower and they didn't seem to.
 

punkncat

Champion
Ambassador
I would point out that in a couple of the above referenced builds there is a pairing of a 3xx motherboard with a 2xxx CPU. It is highly likely that you will run into a BIOS issue that will not allow that build to boot properly.
With your budget I would suggest stepping down to an R5 1600. If you wish to keep that 2xxx CPU and my recommended course of action is to purchase a good B450 motherboard.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Are you trolling me?
Quality of Windows (and in fact every other OS) has everything to do with hardware. Basically the better optimized OS, the better it runs with said hardware......
No, not trolling.
Just trying to get my arms around your statement of "more DIY" is due to Windows.

Rather, it is a case of more and more crap from the low end prebuilts. Parts and assembly.
No matter what the OS.