PC Gaming Upgrade Help

Hi, my son is wanting to upgrade his desktop and has asked for some advise. I’veupgraded a few PCs but I’m recovering a stroke so need some help/advice with this!
He currently has:
Processor: Intel Core i7 860 @ 2.8GHz,4 cores, 8 Logical
Motherboard: Dell Inc. 0G3HR7 (CPU1)
RAM: 6G DDR3 @ 653MHz
He would like to just upgrade the CPU – is that possible?
Dose he also need to update the motherboard too?
He needs to keep the price low so any advice would be appreciated (he wants to use it for gaming with a CPU benchmark of ~9000).
Any help or advise would be really appreciated – thanks.

The CPU is an I7-860, which uses LGA 1156. According to Wikipedia, the fastest I7 LGA 1156 CPU was an I7-880. It's clock frequency was less than 10% above the I7-860, so it'd be a poor upgrade, even if the Dell supported it (which it may not).

Unfortunately, to use a more modern CPU, he'd need a new motherboard. LGA 1151, with a Z270 chipset, looks like the performance choice. The matching CPU would be 7th generation (Kaby Lake). That would require DDR4 RAM as well.

I wonder what graphics card is in the machine (Dell Studio XPS 8100, based on the motherboard)? It only has a 350W PSU, which won't support a high-end gaming graphics card. It's not clear without further research to see whether much of the 8100 would be salvageable for a new build.

Unless you or your son is into do-it-yourself for the fun of it, it may make more economic sense to just buy a whole new machine.

I agree, upgrading the CPU would not be worth it - at all. If it is only using the built in graphics on the motherboard, and can be upgraded with a graphics card (which looks like would also need a power supply upgrade), that would be much more improvement over the CPU. Also, if it has a mechanical hard disk drive, upgrading to an SSD will improve overall performance, but not necessarily gaming graphics.

Thanks guys! I really appreciate our help.From the help I have now convinced my son that it needs to be replayed! It looks like the start (with quite a few other things!) with a AMD-FX-8350 and GIGABYTE 970A-DS3P.The old desktop has 780W -G5 Power Extreme. Would that be ok for us to get started?I have started to look at a SSD, so that would be sweet if we we cab budget for it.

winchesterstoke said:

Thanks guys! I really appreciate our help.From the help I have now convinced my son that it needs to be replayed! It looks like the start (with quite a few other things!) with a AMD-FX-8350 and GIGABYTE 970A-DS3P.The old desktop has 780W -G5 Power Extreme. Would that be ok for us to get started?I have started to look at a SSD, so that would be sweet if we we cab budget for it.

I'm unconvinced that an FX-8350 would be enough of an upgrade to justify the effort. (That's not to criticize it, it's just that an I7-860 is already a pretty good CPU.)

I wonder if a graphics card upgrade would make more sense. Depends on the sorts of games in question, and what monitor resolution your son wants.

My son has a XFX RadeonHD 8870 – would that be better to upgrade do you think?The Intel i7-860 @ 2.8GHz seems to be getting a bench of 5054, where as the FX-8350 gets a bench of 8940. That seems a decent increase or am I missing something (and I could be wrong!)? My son only has a double HD screen, and its unlikely he’ll get a 4k screen (not for quite a while).He wants to get games that he tells me need to get benchmark of around 9000! I’ll see if I can get some more details.
Many thanks for your advice and help. Really appreciated.

Raner said:

If your wanting a gaming PC and don't want to your wallet to get to thin... Go with AMD.
If money is no object then go Intel...

Just because it's Intel does not mean it has to be expensive. The Core i5-7600k is a fantastic CPU for gaming, and is around $230. And it's just over 9200 PassMark CPU Benchmarks. I'd couple that with a GeForce 1060 or 1070 video card and he should be golden.

pparks1 said:

Just because it's Intel does not mean it has to be expensive. The Core i5-7600k is a fantastic CPU for gaming, and is around $230. And it's just over 9200 PassMark CPU Benchmarks. I'd couple that with a GeForce 1060 or 1070 video card and he should be golden.

Thanks: I had a look at the i5-7600k cost around double of the cost of the FS8350: £103 (UK) against £212 - so too much for my son :-(.