Vostro 230 Mini Tower Upgrades

[Nuvola]

Hello, this is gonna be my first post on this site. I have a Dell Vostro 230 Mini Tower that I'm looking to upgrade to do some moderate gaming (mainly Skyrim and Batman Arkham Origins) at high settings. I am not looking to build a new computer as I'm low on budget and don't know how to.

Here are my current specs:

Processor: Pentium(R) Dual-Core E5800 @ 3.20 GHz
Video Card: GT 430 2gb DDR3
System Model: Vostro 230 Installed
Ram: 4gb
OS: Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
Power Supply: 300W power supply

I have been looking at a few graphic cards, mainly
Radeon HD 7850
Radeon HD 7770
GTX 660
GTX 650 Ti

Through some research over the internet, I find that the HD 7850 graphics card is the most suitable for my needs at its price or are there any other graphics cards that can offer great price to performance ratio? In order to prevent bottlenecking, I am also looking to buy a new CPU. What is the best CPU that I can upgrade to without changing my current motherboard? I am a little tight on budget so the cheaper the better. Also, I'm assuming that I'll need a new PSU as well. So, what's the best PSU that I can upgrade to? My budget for everything is around $ 250 but I'm willing to go as high as $ 300 if needed.

Any suggestions will be greatly welcomed.

 

[Trimax]

You will struggle to run games on a dual-core cpu on high settings maybe on medium you will be fine. But your PC has some really old specs and only a 300w PSU.

So if you were going to upgrade you would need to get a new and PSU and GPU to run games.

You will also need to check if your mobo is compatible with the GPU you end up getting.

 

[Trimax]

I would recommend getting these :

GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121725

PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139050

 

[Nuvola]

You will struggle to run games on a dual-core cpu on high settings maybe on medium you will be fine. But your PC has some really old specs and only a 300w PSU.

So if you were going to upgrade you would need to get a new and PSU and GPU to run games.

You will also need to check if your mobo is compatible with the GPU you end up getting.

I'm thinking about upgrading the CPU to the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 processor. And mind telling me how to determine which GPU is compatible with my mobo? Thanks in advance.

 

[Trimax]

You will struggle to run games on a dual-core cpu on high settings maybe on medium you will be fine. But your PC has some really old specs and only a 300w PSU.

So if you were going to upgrade you would need to get a new and PSU and GPU to run games.

You will also need to check if your mobo is compatible with the GPU you end up getting.

I'm thinking about upgrading the CPU to the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 processor. And mind telling me how to determine which GPU is compatible with my mobo? Thanks in advance.

Look at the connection on your mobo and compare it to the connection on the card, if it's compatible it should work aslong as the bios etc is upto date.

Also if you can get the GPU, PSU & CPU you will have a decent system for gaming. Also maybe think about upgrading your ram to 8GB.

 

[Nuvola]

Well, that's not really an option since the maximum memory for the Vostro 230 is only 4gb...Btw, thanks for your quick replies.