Upgrade kit or just upgrade parts?

[Taranee]

Hello again all,

So previously I asked you to give me a hand with deciding on a new graphics card. (which turned out great and I've made my decision thanks!)
Now I have a different question..

My boyfriend is experiencing low fps on some of the newer games (I'll post of what he plays together with his specs) and he knows he should upgrade his computer, most likely his CPU and RAM. But then he's wondering if he might be better off ordering a whole new upgrade kit? (these contain a new Motherboard, CPU and RAM memory)

His current specs (this is an 'off the shelf' computer) :

Motherboard: Packard Bell MCP73
CPU: QuadCore Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200, 2333 MHz (7 x 333)
RAM: 4096 MB (DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM)
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6850 (1024 MB)
PSU: Antec TruePower 650W

Games he plays:
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Skyrim
WoW
GW2
Rift
DiabloIII
The Witcher 2

He'd like to be able to max them all out and run upcoming games (Black Ops 2 for instance.) smoothly too

He's thinking of a budget around €300 but he's not sure if that's a reasonable amount? So don't hesitate to post a little above it as well.

Thanks once again!

[vesseblah]

Upgrade kits work just as well as separate parts. Important difference is that with parts you can pick and choose the exact specs you want, while with kits you're usually at the mercy of the retailer who wants to dump out some parts that aren't moving off the shelf otherwise.

Before getting new motherboard one of you should doublecheck that the case of the current computer is actually standard size. HP for example sometimes uses cases of weird sizes and shapes which prevents simple motherboard swapping. If you can stretch budget up to 350€ you should be able to get i5-2500K/i5-3570K processor, some Z77 motherboard and 8GB of RAM quite easily which will last next five years at least without need for upgrading.

[chazus]

I just priced out from newegg a 3570K, 8gb RAM, and Asrock Z75 board (Pretty much what I'm buying in about 2-3 weeks) and it came out to 285€. I know prices will be slightly different over there, but the point stands that you can get pretty much the best in CPU/RAM for that much.

[vesseblah]

I just priced out from newegg a ... and it came out to 285€. I know prices will be slightly different over there,

Because of taxes and simply the fact that Newegg is ten times bigger than any electronics store in Europe, the prices here are significantly higher.

Good rule of thumb is that you take Newegg price as it is and change the $ sign to € without any currency conversions. $230 i5-3570K really does cost about 230€ in here, nowhere even close to 190€ you'd get from simple currency exchange rates.

[Taranee]

Before getting new motherboard one of you should doublecheck that the case of the current computer is actually standard size. HP for example sometimes uses cases of weird sizes and shapes which prevents simple motherboard swapping..

Thanks for that! Was def. Something we didn't think of.

So basically what you're all saying is that he def needs to upgrade his MoBo too?

[Deleted]

You can get a i5 3570k, Z77 mobo, 8 gb 1600 ram for about 350 euro.
Which will be a decent upgrade, however for TW2 to run on max settings (minus ubersampling) you will need a new gpu

Intel Core i5 3570K Boxed
€ 206,-

Corsair Vengeance CML8GX3M2A1600C9 Low Profile
€ 39,99

Asrock Z77 Pro4-M
€ 84,95

Cheapest shop to get those from is alternate.nl (you can also buy them separate from different shops, which will save only 10 euro)
Check out tweakers.nl for the prices

And regarding the case etc, this is a micro atx board, but if you want to be sure. you can always buy a new case for around 30-40 euro