First thing to upgrade on older Asus
Posted by No_Specialist_8687@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 5 comments
Hey all,
I haven’t gamed in quite some time. My roommate bought a new prebuilt computer and was going to trash his, so I said I would take it. After fully wiping it, it’s definitely performing better, but still not great.
I asked him what the first thing to upgrade would be, and he said it’s not worth upgrading just buy a new one. I am not a big fan of buying new, so if I were to upgrade, where would you start? I don’t know too much about the technical specs, but I do realize the 8gb of ram is definitely low. I also realize, some upgrades may be limited by other upgrades, as in the motherboard can’t support this amount of ram etc. Here are the specs: Baseboard Product: A68HM-K Baseboard Version: Rev X.0x Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) X4 860k QUAD Core Processor 3.70 GHz
All I will use this computer for is playing some WOW, which it already runs surprisingly not bad, but I’d be willing to spend a little bit to make it more pleasant.
Alasio@reddit
Nope it's way too old. These are what you need to upgrade:
CPU and motherboard - Obviously you need a new CPU. But your motherboard is so old that you also need to upgrade the motherboard.
RAM - Yours looks like it's running DDR3 which is also way old and isn't supported anymore. We're now at DDR5 and modern motherboards would at best support DDR4 only.
Storage - You could likely re-use your HDD but both Windows and games these days require SSDs to run smoothly.
PSU - Maybe you could re-use the PSU but being that old, it'd be better to get a new one too.
Case - This one you could likely re-use. Just make sure that it has sufficient airflow.
WoW isn't a hard game to run and a budget modern PC would be able to run it well. Agreed that just starting new would be best.
No_Specialist_8687@reddit (OP)
Let me add - it does have a Samsung SSD (500GB) 840EVO
If this computer is currently running wow, and I’m not really having problems, would small updates like going to 16gb ram vs 8gb not make it run noticeably better?
Alasio@reddit
Yes that would likely help if you're already maxing out on your RAM usage. Getting the right DDR3 can be a little tricky, best to just replace the old one with a new DDR3 kit for 16GB.
No_Specialist_8687@reddit (OP)
It has 2x Corsair Vengeance, 8gb (2x4gb) I found the same 2 cards -16gb (2x8gb) for $20 on eBay. Figured these would drop right in and maybe offer some improvement? eBay
Alasio@reddit
Same MHz and CL? There is also DDR3L which isn't the same. Just asking as a precaution really. If you want to be doubly sure, get the Crucial System Scanner which get all the specs for you.