Looking to buy/build a new budget PC

[plaguis]

Hey all, finally decided it was time to upgrade my ancient computer as it has recently started having some stability issues, and I've also taken a large interest in the MMO World of Warcraft. I've been playing at 2-5 fps during empty questing areas, followed by hard drive failures. This thing is too old Anyways, I've been looking around for a cheap cheap prebuilt computer, as it seems I'd have to spend just as much to build what I'm looking for myself (please show me if not!), and this is what I've come up with for specs so far:

AMD A55 Chipset
Processor: AMD A4-3420 Dual Core @ 2.8 GHZ, 1 MB L2 cache
RAM: 6 GB DDR3 @ 1600 MHZ
HDD: 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA (unknown brand)
Graphics: ATI Radeon 6410D (integrated APU chip)
PSU: 300w (unknown brand, I believe it's a standard ATX size)

Link

Now my first question is, would this be good enough to run some not so modern games like WoW at decent (~30) framerates in raids/battlegrounds/groups? I'd be playing at low resolution (1024x768 SD) and low graphical settings don't bother me in the least.

My second question is if the first answer is no, it's not powerful enough I believe I can fit a different PSU in this box, although I'm not 110% if it has a 6 pin connector or what inside...any clues there? And if not would I be safe throwing an ATI Radeon 7750 in it? I know that only draws power from the PCI-E 16x slot, but I'd feel much safer doing that if I could throw a 350w+ PSU in it. Any input?

Thank you everyone for your time!

Oh, forgot to add, I'd really like to keep the budget under $350 if at all possible. Thanks again all!

[Pete Mack]

If you want old-school graphics, just about anything is enough. Looking around, the fastest GPUs at $50 are only 1.5x faster, so this is pretty close to the best you can get for $350.

[Derakon]

I rather expect this to be spam -- it's the user's first post and it's not related to the forums. I wouldn't be surprised if an advertisement sneaks in through their sig in a bit.

[Philip]

I'm pretty sure he's posted dumps before.

[Raajaton]

WoW will not run particularly well on integrated graphics. Although the rest of the PC may be better than what you're currently using, you likely will be getting extremely poor FPS without an actual graphics card.

That being said, theoretically you should be able to put that 7750 in there, which would make the game run pretty well in most situations. The only potential problem would be clearance inside the case. Those graphics cards can be fairly large, and depending on how they have everything laid out inside it might be tough for it to fit. If you want to be sure, you should be able to locate the physical dimensions of the graphics card from the manufacturer or on a retailers website, and perhaps go to a local store that sells that model PC and see if you can take a measurement.

300w PSU is fairly weak. If you want to check to see if it will be able to support that machine with that graphics card, you can use a PSU calculator to give you a ballpark figure of what kind of power draw the PC will have. Here is an example : http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/

[ekolis]

They still make dual core desktop CPU's? I thought everything was quad-core now...

[Pete Mack]

They still make dual core desktop CPU's? I thought everything was quad-core now...

It's a refurbished machine. If he wants to play low-res games, the GPU is probably more important.

[plaguis]

I rather expect this to be spam -- it's the user's first post and it's not related to the forums. I wouldn't be surprised if an advertisement sneaks in through their sig in a bit.

I assure you I am not spam, I've posted several dumps as someone kindly pointed out and was just looking for some input on a PC I understand the suspicion though. Any questions related to Angband and it's variants I've seen answered in older posts and various documentation, so I've had no need to more than lurk for a good while.

OT: Thank you for your input everyone, I did a lot of research and found out I can fit both a new PSU in the case and a graphics card up to around the 7750/7700 if the default power isn't enough. Like I said, I've existed on a slow ass single core and >512 MB RAM forever, I haven't even had the chance to try out Half Life 2 yet So even if it isn't enough to handle WoW, I am nearly positive it'll be enough to run Half Life 2 or even Morrowind smoothly. Thanks all

[Derakon]

I apologize for the implied insult then, and honestly I'm glad it's not spam!

Good luck with the computer build.