What upgrades could I use for my old PC?

[awesome.gamer1987]

Im looking to see if i would be able to upgrade some components on my old PC, for example like could i add a gtx 1060 or better processor, or more ram? I want to know so i wont need to buy a new PC, i want to see if my pc can have upgrades so it can become a great gaming rig and enough to video edit at 1080p.

My PC is a HP Pavilion p6230y, you can find info about it here:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01859871

Thank you! Have a good day

 

[DSzymborski]

Great gaming rig is a little much. You can upgrade to any 125W Phenom IIx4, which will generally be 25-40% more powerful than your current CPU (just avoid the 140W version of the 965 Black). Still, these are 2009 processors, so you need to keep your expectations realistic and anything faster than the Phenoms will require a new platform.

Given the age of the platform, you won't receive any real benefit from anything faster than a 1050ti, which is the maximum I'd recommend you go without a platform upgrade. You'd need to upgrade the PSU to run any better GPUs anyway and make sure that you don't choose a 1050ti that requires supplementary power (so shy away from ones with an aggressive factory overclock).

It's an entry-level gaming rig at this point, but the CPU is somewhat similar in overall performance to pre-Haswell i3 Intel CPUs in the highly-threaded applications you'll use in video editing. But you will have to be generous with the setting reductions when playing games, especially ones that tax the CPU. Again, the Phenoms were great little chips -- I still have a 965 in a spare rig -- but they've been showing their age for a while.

 

[Darkbreeze]

There are no CPUs worth the upgrade, not really, on that machine. If you are running a 64 bit version of Windows then you CAN upgrade the memory to 16GB but it's probably not going to be particularly useful since the rest of the system doesn't, and won't, run fast enough or support the proper instruction sets on some newer software to make it worth it.

You MIGHT be able to upgrade to a recent Gen graphics card like the GTX 1060, but you also might not. As has become apparent from a number of recent threads, some of these new graphics cards have firmware that is not supported by older legacy bios motherboards. It is becoming more frequent that a motherboard with UEFI bios is required on many newer cards. You will need to check with both your motherboard (HP) system manufacturer and the GPU card manufacturer to verify these compatibility issues as nobody aside from them really has those details and you won't find them on any product pages.

Honestly, your money would be better spend upgrading to a newer system, but if you CAN find a newer GPU card that is supported on your motherboard then in that case it would make sense to get the GPU card first, since you could immediately gain a performance advantage until you are able to upgrade the rest of the system.

Finding confirmation of a specific card that has been proven to work on your exact motherboard would be the best way to avoid any complications.

Also, the power supply is likely a pile of OEM junk, as mentioned above, so you'd best plan on replacing that with a higher grade replacement before or at the same time as any GPU card upgrade.

 

[awesome.gamer1987]

Great gaming rig is a little much. You can upgrade to any 125W Phenom IIx4, which will generally be 25-40% more powerful than your current CPU (just avoid the 140W version of the 965 Black). Still, these are 2009 processors, so you need to keep your expectations realistic and anything faster than the Phenoms will require a new platform.

Given the age of the platform, you won't receive any real benefit from anything faster than a 1050ti, which is the maximum I'd recommend you go without a platform upgrade. You'd need to upgrade the PSU to run any better GPUs anyway and make sure that you don't choose a 1050ti that requires supplementary power (so shy away from ones with an aggressive factory overclock).

It's an entry-level gaming rig at this point, but the CPU is somewhat similar in overall performance to pre-Haswell i3 Intel CPUs in the highly-threaded applications you'll use in video editing. But you will have to be generous with the setting reductions when playing games, especially ones that tax the CPU. Again, the Phenoms were great little chips -- I still have a 965 in a spare rig -- but they've been showing their age for a while.

Will it help if i upgraded the psu aswell? Also the ram? Also if it wont be any trouble sending me the links to the recommended components?

 

[Darkbreeze]

It's an entry-level gaming rig at this point

I realize you're trying to offer a best case scenario here, as well as being somewhat kind in your analysis, but I think that might be overly optimistic. I would really consider an "entry level gaming rig" something with at least a Haswell or newer i3, a higher end Ryzen 3 or at the VERY least, even an FX6 or 8 core CPU.

And for video editing, not even gonna lie, I wouldn't even make an effort to use that CPU anymore. Even the FX 6300 that is itself already five years old, kicks the crap out of that Phenom II.

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/82?vs=699

I'm not saying it's useless, it's still somewhat viable, but you need to temper your expectations with a fairly large grain of salt.