Buying a PC then upgrading

[hdawg06]

Any thoughts on buying a PC then doing a few upgrades instead of building one?

Sam's Club has this Desktop on sale on Black Friday for $499. I am curious if I could just throw in a good graphics card and have a computer that could play quite a few of the modern games at a good frame rate.

If not, I would have to build a computer. My last build did not go so well, but that may have been because of the P180 case I bought that ultimately had many issues with the PSU being on the bottom and it overheating.

Plus, I would like a 23" LED monitor, so that computer is basically $300 when you deduct the price of a monitor from it. Is that a decent computer? If not, could you provide other computers that I could buy or easily upgrade(only a few things max) for around the $500-600. Can exclude the monitor. I have keyboard/mouse.

 

[bigbadgreen]

From previous experience of upgrading friends and families systems to make them last longer it's hit or miss. Some companies used proprietary equipment. The biggest issue you usually run in to is the power supply. If you upgrade to a high end card and need 2 pci connections the installed supply might not have it. All fine and good you say and you plan to upgrade the supply now. Well if they decided to use a proprietary power connector on the motherboard you'll be out of luck. Unless you cut and splice the connectors.

My advice would be to find out if the power supply uses standard connectors and better yet if it has the ability for extra outputs. If it all works out then make sure it actually has enough power to run the card.

If if works it'll go smoothly. If you run into issues it can be a real nightmare.

 

[Forceman]

What are you going to be doing with it? If all you want is an everyday web/office computer, than it is often cheaper to just buy a pre-built one from somebody. If you want something a little more robust, than you are probably better of building it yourself, instead of trying to upgrade something cheap. As bigbadgreen pointed out, pre-builts often save money on power supplies, making them problematic to upgrade.

 

[hdawg06]

What are you going to be doing with it? If all you want is an everyday web/office computer, than it is often cheaper to just buy a pre-built one from somebody. If you want something a little more robust, than you are probably better of building it yourself, instead of trying to upgrade something cheap. As bigbadgreen pointed out, pre-builts often save money on power supplies, making them problematic to upgrade.

Quite a bit of gaming, but mostly older games. I 2box on EverQuest and would like to be able to play the new Counter-Strike with decent FPS.I play Counter-Strike Source and some RPGs and others such as Stalker, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Civ 4.

If the prebuilt isn't that good, any ideas on a cheap computer? I could always salvage the Corsair 520w PSU from my old computer, but I would not reuse that shitty P180 case.

 

[mda]

Any potential upgrades may be hamstrung by the motherboard and the PSU used in the system.

For modern games, you may just want to build your own. The Llano also isn't such a good platform if you intend to use a discrete GPU / for gaming too.

 

[Dangman]

Any thoughts on buying a PC then doing a few upgrades instead of building one?

With the right deal, the willingness to forgo overclocking and longer warranties, buying a prebuilt PC and then upgrading it to a semi-gaming PC isn't tood bad of a choice. It's also depedent on how much money you're willing to spend on the upgrades.

Sam's Club has this Desktop on sale on Black Friday for $499. I am curious if I could just throw in a good graphics card and have a computer that could play quite a few of the modern games at a good frame rate.

You would have to replace the power supply as the included PSU isn't too great. Considering that's a 23" 1080P monitor and if you're looking for medium settings at that high of a resolution, you're looking at around $170 to $200 for the video card. There might also be PSU clearance issues as well.

If the prebuilt isn't that good, any ideas on a cheap computer? I could always salvage the Corsair 520w PSU from my old computer, but I would not reuse that shitty P180 case.

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