We can't explain the universe, just describe it; and we don't know whether our theories are true, we just know they're not wrong. >Harald Lesch
Btw. I think your system already qualifies as entry level gaming. Almost any system with a somewhat gaming oriented discrete video card does. The biggest hurt is your 512 MB of graphics RAM which forces you to hold back on the texture and anti-aliasing.
Then the CPU. It's really old and slow, but surprisingly, a lot of games are fine with that.
Still there's reasonable upgrades to make it a decent gaming computer:
Good catch from Roy on the efficiency, I'd get a 750 Ti though. Still as efficient as the non-Ti but 10-20 % faster (and 20% more expensive) but it has (and is designed for) 2 GB RAM. And the trend in graphics cards seems to be to get more memory for better looking textures. And believe me, textures really can define how good a game looks, now that we have established a solid base of (lighting) effects (= shader model) any card is featuring. There's already games on the market that make use of up to 6 GB (!) of video RAM, so don't go small there if you want it to last another 4 years.
As Roy said, get whatever RAM you can get for cheapest. Don't look at the MHz first, make sure you get 9 CAS latency THEN look for MHz. But in the end RAM will not bottleneck you whichever you get.
As Roy said, you could keep the PSU
Mobo looks fine. The only thing to complain about is that it has only 2 USB 3.0 ports on the rear (+ an internal slot for front panels your case might or might not have).
I won't try to convince you to get an Intel CPU because you don't seem to be looking for a fast CPU (nor would you need to for most games, as previously stated) or power/heat efficient CPU, but for cost efficiency - and AMD clearly wins there.
Slightly off-topic: What do you think is a cost-efficient step up from a 750ti?
Check
this chart whenever you're trying to decide on a GPU. 1 Tier is roughly 15% faster. 3 Tiers up are a reasonable upgrade.
EDIT:
Almost forgot to mention a blatant oversight that struck me when I read your upgrades:
Get a SSD ffs! They are the hyper triggers of computers. (
) They are not for gaming but they make everything else so responsive you'll wonder how you survived without it. And they are really getting cheap now.
120/128 GB should be enough since you already have enough storage. And videos won't load any faster on SSDs and game loading times are also just barely improved.
The Samsung 840 Evo has the best price / performance ratio right now, but if you want to save a few bucks don't shy away from cheap ones. They will still speed up system boot by 3-4 times compared to now. Other loading times will increase accordingly, of course.
And an upgrade is also the ideal time to put the OS on a new drive as it wouldn't drag along all the old drivers and makes a system feel fresh at the same time.
EDIT2: (You guys are writing faster than I can keep up)
I'm not so good on nVidia cards - it looks like the cheaper ones are MSI (who I've known as a reliable brand) while the more expensive are Asus and EVGA. Any particular recommendations there?
Get Zotac if you're looking for the cheapest brand. I've had a few Zotac cards and they "just worked" until replaced so I can't say anything about quality or service.
Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jun 27 2014, 1:53 am by NudeRaider.
