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Is it viable for me to upgrade?

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Hi.

I am new to this so please excuse my ignorance.

I have a low-end gaming PC and would like to upgrade so that I can play more graphically demanding games and am wondering if it is possible to do so without having to buy a completely new pc.

As it stands I can run only VALORANT smoothly. Even with that when I try to run anything in the background even discord I get massive frame drops.

Basically what I am asking is, can I upgrade say the RAM and graphics card to solve these problems? If so what would you recommend?

Thanks in advance.

This is my current setup:

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit

CPU
Intel Core i5 7400 @ 3.00GHz 74 °C

Kaby Lake 14nm Technology

RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel Unknown @ 1197MHz (17-17-17-39)

Motherboard
MSI H110M PRO-VD PLUS (MS-7A15) (U3E1) 74 °C

Graphics
VS248 (1920x1080@60Hz)

VS248 (1920x1080@60Hz)

2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (NVIDIA) 27 °C

Storage
931GB TOSHIBA HDWD110 (SATA ) 29 °C

Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NSD1

Audio
NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM)
 
upgrading is a vicious cycle - upgrade one component and another will become the bottleneck, you'll never really get to touch the Holy Grail. :)
and in my experience, saying the words low-end and gaming in the same sentence is another way of saying you have a really fast Word/Excel PC or a not quiet adequate gaming rig.

your 7th gen Core i5 isn't too bad - but a surprising amount of processing is still passed off to the CPU, leaving the GPU to do other things.
so a Core i7 wouldn't be a bad thing, but that's a costly upgrade.
as is a graphics card - there's almost no limit to the absurdity in money you can spend in that one area alone.

so bang for buck, you're greatest chance of improvement would be to upgrade your hard drive to a solid state drive and install the games on that.
and get another stick of 8GB memory to not just make it 16GB but it'll then take full advantage of dual channel mode.

after those relatively cheap and easy upgrade then you can reassess the performance and if required, consider the GPU options.
 
upgrading is a vicious cycle - upgrade one component and another will become the bottleneck, you'll never really get to touch the Holy Grail. :)
and in my experience, saying the words low-end and gaming in the same sentence is another way of saying you have a really fast Word/Excel PC or a not quiet adequate gaming rig.

your 7th gen Core i5 isn't too bad - but a surprising amount of processing is still passed off to the CPU, leaving the GPU to do other things.
so a Core i7 wouldn't be a bad thing, but that's a costly upgrade.
as is a graphics card - there's almost no limit to the absurdity in money you can spend in that one area alone.

so bang for buck, you're greatest chance of improvement would be to upgrade your hard drive to a solid state drive and install the games on that.
and get another stick of 8GB memory to not just make it 16GB but it'll then take full advantage of dual channel mode.

after those relatively cheap and easy upgrade then you can reassess the performance and if required, consider the GPU options.
Thanks for your reply.

I suppose my issue is that I am completely ignorant to what upgrades are actually compatible with my current rig. Is there a specific sized SSD that I would need for example? and for the RAM, is it literally as simple as buying another 8gb stick and putting it in?
 
a fresh installation of Win10 with all its updates and Office installed takes about 20GB of space.
then start adding big ticket items like PhotoShop, AutoCAD, CorelDraw and it starts adding up.
even if you don't have those demanding sort of programs, games can be even worse, i use a rough guide of 10Gb per game once you start getting mods, packs and updates, that starts exponentially increasing.

so a 512GB SSD would be my minimum recommendation, but 1TB units aren't too much more. 512GB for about $100 and 1TB for about $150.

and yes, adding another stick of RAM is ALMOST that easy. well.... it should be and usually is but every now and then, you get a stick that just doesn't want to play nice.
check out the memory compatibility list in the manual on the motherboard manufacturers website.
but basically if you get the same one you already have you should be sweet.

there will be a sticker on the memory stick that will have all the important info that you need.

another option is to take the rig into a PC shop and they will add the extra RAM for you, turn the PC on to test and if not compatible, keep swapping until it is.
if they are good, they'll do it while you wait and just charge a basic fee to cover their time.
 
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a fresh installation of Win10 with all its updates and Office installed takes about 20GB of space.
then start adding big ticket items like PhotoShop, AutoCAD, CorelDraw and it starts adding up.
even if you don't have those demanding sort of programs, games can be even worse, i use a rough guide of 10Gb per game once you start getting mods, packs and updates, that starts exponentially increasing.

so a 512GB SSD would be my minimum recommendation, but 1TB units are too much more. 512GB for about $100 and 1TB for about $150.

and yes, adding another stick of RAM is ALMOST that easy. well.... it should be and usually is but every now and then, you get a stick that just doesn't want to play nice.
check out the memory compatibility list in the manual on the motherboard manufacturers website.
but basically if you get the same one you already have you should be sweet.

there will be a sticker on the memory stick that will have all the important info that you need.

another option is to take the rig into a PC shop and they will add the extra RAM for you, turn the PC on to test and if not compatible, keep swapping until it is.
if they are good, they'll do it while you wait and just charge a basic fee to cover their time.
Thank you, that is helpful, appreciate your time.
 
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