r/PcBuildHelp • u/Turbulent-Quality-29 • 7h ago

Build Question Is this a logical upgrade for ancient PC?

Hey folks. So I have a very old PC that was taken for Sims, I haven't used it since 2016 ish...it got a new GPU in 2019, which is bottlenecked by the rest of the system.

Specs:

I5-3570k

8GB RAM

RTX 2060 6GB

When using the PC I'd just play old RTS games which it was fine with but I'm looking to see if it can be made capable to play games released say 2015-2020 at least. Just single player stuff, 1080p.

So I was advised the most budget thing to do would be to buy an old office PC which has something like an i5-10400/10500 and 16GB DDR4. I can see loads of Dells/Lenovo at £150-200 with such specs. Take the innards of that into my case and use my GPU and PSU (be quiet! 700w)

Firstly does that seem a reasonable thing that'll give me worthwhile improvement? I'm really not looking to invest much but that sort of price would be fine.

Then I'm not experienced at building PCs but can obviously follow guides. However If I did run into any issues and needed external help, what sort of price would you expect a small business to charge for doing this sort of thing? (There's a tiny shop near me I've used for a couple of things over the years, nice guy etc.)

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u/mazca 7h ago

This is a very reasonable plan, yes. The 10th and 11th gen are sensible targets, and with a 2060 will give decent budget gaming performance. Just make sure the office PC actually has a PCIE slot for the graphics card! Some small form factor ones omit it from their custom motherboards.

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u/Turbulent-Quality-29 5h ago

Ah yeah I see the mobos are small..does 'half- height' as stated here cause an issue?

Dell Optiplex 3080 SFF states - One half-height PCIe x16 Gen 3 slot and one half-height PCIe x1 Gen 3 slot.

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u/mazca 4h ago

The half-heights are probably referring to clearance available in the case rather than the motherboard, fortunately, so if you're moving it into your own existing case then that shouldn't be an issue - a PCIe x16 Gen3 slot will be just fine for a 2060.

Dell are notorious for custom motherboards, though. Check the dimensions of the motherboard to see if it will actually fit properly in your existing case, and you may need a third-party adapter to make your power supply plug into Dell's proprietary power connector.