Acer Aspire x3990 GPU upgrade

Hello, forums!

I own Acer Aspire x3990 PC and want to upgrade it with a new, CPU, RAM, a pair of HDDs and most importantly GPU. I acknowledge that this PC is very old and it's better to build or buy a new one but it suits me perfectly as a musician that does a little of gaming.

I currently own GT 530 (GPU) and i5-2320 (CPU). I want to upgrade the CPU to i7-2600k and, what concerns me the most — the GPU. Forums say that GTX 1050 ti is perfect for it, while others say GTX 760. Of course, the first one sounds better than the second one, but I'm not sure with compatibility, so that's why I came here.

Thanks for your attention and hope you're having a great day! 😁

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billsey

That is an oldie all right. They shipped those with Intel's Sandy Bridge CPUs and chipset with 65W or 95W TDPs, so any of the Sandy Bridge in that power range should work. The BIOS won't have any K features exposed though so a 2600K will act the same as a 2600. A CPU upgrade will likely be the last thing on your list though. Start with replacing the main HDD with a SSD, cloning the existing drive to the new one. That is by far the biggest overall performance gain for the cost. Next is memory, you max out at 8GB using two 4GB sticks, DDR3 (not DDR3L) at 1333MHz. Next would be a GPU, though be aware your PCIe x16 slot is 2.0, not 3.0, so choose accordingly. Also be aware that most modern GPUs require a UEFI BIOS, and yours is legacy instead. Only then should you look at the CPU…