I could use a little advice on upgrading my machine without spending too much money (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago by Glifted@lemmy.world to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.ml

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So I've been using this machine for a little over 10 years now and making upgrades as nessesary. I don't care much for graphic quality so it's mostly been fine. However, my FPS on certain games has started to become pretty frustrating so I'm trying to come up with inexpensive options to upgrade.

In particular I'm trying to play Nuclear Option online and am having a lot of trouble late in the match. I'm guessing this is due to the high amount of smoke effects but I'm not an expert in any way.

I'm getting 10~20 FPS regardless of graphic settings. I've also checked on my GPU and it maxes out at around 50% utilization so I'm guessing the processor is my limitation

The best CPU my motherboard can take is a i7-4790k (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I think I can get one for $100ish but I'm not sure if that would make enough of a difference. It also seems like DDR3 era board/CPU combos are a little more expensive but fairly affordable on ebay. However, I'm not really sure what would be a good value and worth the investment performance-wise.

Any advice you could give is appreciated. Thanks

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[-] Glifted@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Actually this might be a great idea. Before the current PC I used an $80 refurb I got from Microcenter. I slapped a video card in there and that lasted me a few years before I had to upgrade again.

I will take a look at the old office pc market and see what I can find in my budget. Thanks

Edit: old office PC 's don't seem to be as good of a deal as they used to be

[-] st3ph3n@midwest.social 6 points 1 month ago

Just be careful with those - they often have weak-ass power supplies that won’t be able to drive a beefier GPU, or may not be able to physically fit said GPU in their cases depending on form factor. They often also have non-standard power supplies that you can’t just easily swap out with an off the shelf ATX PSU. (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, DELL)

[-] kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago

Dell optiplexes regularly sell on ebay for like $50-60, and they often have 6th-gen intel i5s inside

this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026

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