New to this but want to upgrade.

[cadra1324]

Hi everybody, I've been having some computer troubles lately.

I have a Dell XPS 420, Dell XPS 420 Specs - Desktops - CNET Reviews, those are the specs I'm pretty sure. I've kept all the stock hardware in it except for my video card, which is a (BFG)Nvidia GeForce 9800GTX. The computer ran wonderfully until recently, it started to slow down and on games that I use to run fine on, WoW to be specific, it is really showing that something is wrong.

I was just curious as to if I should even bother upgrading some stuff inside or just saving up to buy a new computer? I was thinking that maybe buying more RAM and a better Power Supply might help with the problem but then again, I don't know anything about this kinda stuff.

Thanks, Adam.

 

[brinks]

Have you ever reinstalled the windows on it? If not, then it's probably slowing down because of junk on the hard drive.
You could try defragging the hard drive,clean up the hard drive by removing unused programs. Make sure the hard drive is not full or else the system will run slower because of this. Disable or stop programs running in the background if aren't needed.

Adding more ram probably won't help that much, adding a new psu won't do nothing to help unless you are having problems with the current one.

 

[cadra1324]

I reformatted the computer less then a week ago due to a virus.

 

[brinks]

Ok, what about temperatures of your hardware... maybe things are running hot and is being throttled down.

Download that and post a screenshot if you can.
CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

 

[cadra1324]

I'm not at home, I will be in about 30 minutes so I can post it then. But I had a talk with my friend and he said the same thing so I downloaded a similar program and off the top of my head I know my GPU was at 72C roughly and the 4 or 5 under CPU were like, 46-55 I think. If that helps, I can give the ss when I get home if it doesn't.

 

[patonb]

72C is fine for load but not idle.

 

[brinks]

Post up the ss anyways when you have time, every bit of info will help.
If those are the temps under load than it looks alright.

 

[cadra1324]

Here you go:
http://i.imgur.com/hcyDz.jpg
I opened it up and let it sit for about 5 minutes. This seems to be what its staying at with nothing really open.

 

[brinks]

You might have to post another ss after putting some load on the gpu to check out the load temp. Right now it seems a a bit hot but I heard those cards usually ran pretty hot.

 

[cadra1324]

Okay here:
http://i.imgur.com/E6BUT.jpg
This is with WoW on the 'Ultra' setting and Minecraft running. Which should be a hassle for my computer now because as you can see by the memory javaw.exe is taking up I think I have a leak with Java, still haven't figured that one out but that's a different problem.