Is this PC Wall-Mart PC a decent upgrade?

I have a custom built PC that I've had now for around three years and it's really starting to show its age. It sports an AMD Quad Core x4 640, 4 gigs of DDR3 memory, Geforce 560 Ti and a hard-drive that is at least nearly five years old and from an older PC from way back and a CD Drive that is also just as old as the hard-drive. I bought 8 gigs of memory to throw in there a year ago to find that my motherboard only reads 2 gigs to each slot, so I have 8 gigs in there but it only registers 4. I want to upgrade, but as a college student I don't have nearly the amount of money to use on a good, future proof PC. I've been shopping around just out of curiosity sake online, but to my surprise my local Wall-Mart has a desktop Dell that has a i5 Intel Quad Core (not sure specs, but it said second generation), 8 gigs of ddr3 memory and an intel HD graphics card with Windows 8. It retailed for no more than 600 dollars. It didn't seem like a bad decision, as I could get it, and throw my old Geforce 560 ti in there. It also has a 1 TB hard-drive and CD-burner. Would this be a decent upgrade that could last me, at least the next couple of years or so and till I'm out of college and be a decent speed boost from my older machine?

The trouble with those machines is that they almost never have very much upgrade potential. They will often only have one PCE slot, or none in some cases. That means you'd have to swap out the motherboard to do any real upgrade, and if you're going to do that, then you might as well just do that with your current system. I'm not saying it's 100% not a good choice, but be careful about what you are buying.

Short answer: No

Long Answer: The reason why a Dell product will not be a sufficient upgrade is that Dell tends to use cheap products. Especially the power supply unit. Now, you did not state whether you will be using this desktop as a gaming computer. If you only need the basic surf the internet, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc that would be common for college students to use. I would suggest to look for a better price. I have seen desktops that are similar to the one that you have just described sell for four hundred dollars at Best Buy. I have a Dell desktop that my brother uses and it only has a 300w PSU. Additionally, the GPU that he had installed in that desktop happened to get fired due to the PSU being really well....crap.

I have never liked pre-built systems. They just suck in general.

@wasabicurry: It would be for gaming, but you guys answered what I was already suspecting. Thanks.

I would honestly not buy a PC anymore and build one. For 600$ you can build one with better parts inside + use what you have already and have it last longer.

@mrpilkington:

You need a 64bit operating system, or your machine can only adress 4 GBs of RAM. So that might be your problem in that regard.

In my opinion, I'd first get a next generation console before upgrading my computer. Now's definitely not a good time for such a thing. You can definitely play all current gen games on your PC on higher resultions and framerates and more detail, and it'd take a significant investment to play next generation games on a brand new PC with a significant increase of fidelity. Some few games certainly already overstrain what you've got, at least on higher settings, but most should run just fine with some minor tweaks.

In the end, it comes down to your purse. If money ain't tight, do whatever you want. If it is, and you have to be smart about it - just don't. I'd say 2 years from now will be when it's smart to invest in a gaming PC again. At least if you don't want (or can't) spend top dollar on your system.

I'll just echo others and say no. Don't waste your money, make a real investment that will last you a lot longer.

@mrpilkington: I thing that may bite you on the Dell would mostly be in terms of powersupply and cooling with a GPU. Casually googling shows Intel systems with that card at 285W, which may be a bit much for the sort of PSU included in those (checking if it will fit is also potentially a concern).

For a 560Ti I'm not sure a 640 is all that terrible of a CPU to go with it anyway. I'd generally suggest going for something gaming oriented or doing a more substantive rebuild instead of potentially getting into something that will never be reasonably upgradable (barring subbing everything out, but than custom parts can be an issue).

This reply might be kind of pointless considering the other responses though. Anyway, cheers.

@seppli: I have Windows 7 Home-Premium, so is that my issue with not being able to access the 8 gigs? I thought it was the motherboards specs.

@mrpilkington: Depends on whether it's 32 bit or 64 bit.

@rollingzeppelin: Yep! I believe that is my problem. I knew that it couldn't have been my motherboard, since my motherboard was advanced enough when I bought it to support up to 6-cores. I'm not sure how many gigs it can support, but I know it's more than 8. My operating system is only 32-bit. So here is my concern, now that I need to upgrade my operating system to fix my issue with performance and get the 8 gigs of ram that would help me, do I buy Windows 7 Ultimate or Windows 8? Which windows 8 do I buy if so?

@seppli: Yep! I believe that is my problem. I knew that it couldn't have been my motherboard, since my motherboard was advanced enough when I bought it to support up to 6-cores. I'm not sure how many gigs it can support, but I know it's more than 8. My operating system is only 32-bit. So here is my concern, now that I need to upgrade my operating system to fix my issue with performance and get the 8 gigs of ram that would help me, do I buy Windows 7 Ultimate or Windows 8? Which windows 8 do I buy if so?

Erm... I'm a layman myself. Pretty sure you'll find the right choice in OS when you google it. I think it's not unlikely that you can just get a trial version or so from Microsoft. Dunno. Has been 3 years since I last grappled with the subject.

@mrpilkington: Apparently it is possible to upgrade from 32-bit windows 7 to 64-bit windows 8.

http://winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-upgrade-32bit-64bit-144649

Just need to buy the proper install media. Otherwise you would need to find a separate 64-bit version of 7. It might be worth looking at a machine running windows 8 at a circuit city best buy to see if the work flow bothers you. At the least windows 8 does seem to prioritize responsiveness, but on some points the UI is more tablet suited than desktop.