Hi all,
I'd like to upgrade a few bits and pieces of kit in my 4 year old Dell (yes, yes, I know...) but I'm not sure where to begin. I'm not afraid of actually fitting bits of the computer as I used to do it all the time with my dad when I was younger, but I don't really keep up with tech stuff so I don't know which bits I HAVE to upgrade and so forth - and most of the time the current kit suits me just fine.
Current specs - Core 2 Quad Q8300 2/5Ghz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 1GB Geforce GT220, Inspiron 545 Mini Tower, 640GB HDD (no interest in replacing this)
Budget - UK, looking to spend at most about £500
Main Use - general usage really but it would be good if I could play relatively recent games at decent settings - I don't need to future-proof, but it would be nice to play the last Settlers game without it juddering away, or League of Legends in the summer without the computer resetting itself every 15 minutes due to overheating...
Monitor Resolution: 1600x900, and not planning to replace it as I don't have the space
List SPECIFIC games or applications that you MUST be able to run well: 30 FPS is acceptable - PCSX2 I guess is a priority but otherwise nothing specific. Fancy stuff isn't important to me.
Looking to reuse any parts?: Hard drive, monitor, and as much of anything else as possible
When will you build?: Do you have a deadline? - yes, I want to do this in the next week or two if possible.
Will you be overclocking?: absolutely not
Probably not the most interesting stats to help with, but it would be great if someone could give me some pointers. I've been a PC gamer for years, but I tend towards point and click adventures and 2D games so I'm not much of a hardware beast