My wife's 11-year-old gaming PC is reaching the end of its useful life. She mainly plays cozy and simulator games such as Waterpark Simulator, TCG Card Shop Simulator, Stardew Valley, and Crime Scene Cleaner, but she also plays World of Warcraft, Baldur's Gate 3, and The Witcher 3. Her current system struggles badly with WoW and has very long loading times, especially in Baldur's Gate 3.
She is perfectly happy with 30 FPS or higher at 1080p and does not care much about maximum graphics settings. We would like a new PC that should remain usable for several years, with a budget of roughly $600–$700 CAD including tax, although we could stretch slightly if it makes a meaningful difference. We do not need a monitor, Wi-Fi, or unusually small case.
I may be able to provide one of my RTX 2080 Super graphics cards. It came from an Alienware Aurora, but I am not sure whether it can be installed in a standard PC. We may also be able to reuse the existing 1TB WD Blue SATA SSD, although I am unsure whether its speed or age is contributing to the slow loading times.
The current PC has an AMD Athlon X4 760K, an MSI A88X motherboard, 8GB of DDR3 memory, and a GTX 1650. Would it be better to build around the RTX 2080 Super and buy a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM, or look for a used gaming PC or complete system instead?
3 Answers
For this budget, a used gaming PC may offer better value than buying every part new. Look for something from roughly the last five to seven years with a Ryzen 5 5600 or similar processor, 16GB of DDR4 memory, and a graphics card around an RTX 2060 Super, RTX 2070, or RTX 3060. If you already have the RTX 2080 Super, you can ignore the graphics card and focus on the platform, power supply, and storage.
The old Athlon and 8GB of DDR3 are the main limitations in the current machine. Replacing the CPU, motherboard, and RAM would make a huge improvement, but the old power supply should not be trusted without checking its age and quality.
The WD Blue SATA SSD is slower than a modern NVMe drive, but it should still be dramatically faster than a hard drive and is unlikely to explain 15–20 FPS in WoW. It can be reused temporarily if its health is good and it has plenty of free space. A newer NVMe SSD would improve boot and loading times, but the CPU, RAM, and graphics card are the priority for game performance.
Check the SSD’s health with a drive-monitoring tool and consider replacing it if it is nearly full, showing warnings, or has very high wear. For a fresh build, a 1TB NVMe drive is a worthwhile but not absolutely essential upgrade.
The RTX 2080 Super should work in a normal modern PC; it is not generally locked to the Alienware system. It would be a very strong choice for 1080p gaming and is more than enough for WoW, Baldur’s Gate 3, and The Witcher 3 at the settings she wants.
A sensible route would be a reasonably modern CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a compatible motherboard, while reusing the graphics card. Just make sure the power supply has enough wattage, the correct PCIe power connectors, and is a decent-quality model. The Alienware power supply and case may have proprietary connectors or mounting, so verify those before trying to reuse them.
That helps a lot. The PC was custom-built originally, but I’ll check the power supply model and connectors before assuming the old parts can be reused.