Advice on whether to upgrade or rebuild?

I don't want to be able to max out next years games.  The system I have right now plays most games at average setting and I'm fine with that.  However after playing wildstar this weekend and Assassin's creed 4 and having to turn the graphics down to just under medium I'm a little perturbed.  Should I trash the whole system and save up for a new PC or just spend $150 to get another 4 gigs of outdated ram and a CPU liquid cooler and OC my CPU a bit.  Obviously I'd like to forgo getting a new system if possible but I would like to play the 2 aforementioned games at a high resolution, not ultra just High. 

Any advice??


Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131368

CPU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103674

Currently runs at around 55C (which is a little hot right?? invest in a liquid cooler and OC?)

RAM

4 Gigs of DDR2 1066

2 sticks of 2G Crucial

GPU

Asus® GeForce GTX 650 1GB Plug-in 1058 MHz Graphic Card

PSU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139020

 

well you could try selling your MB, CPU, RAM as a combo should get $150 to $200 and buy new am3+ MB and cpu like a 6core or 8 core and ddr3 for $350 to $400 then your weak spot will be your GPU.

or check your craiglist you might be able to find some cheap DDR2 1066 on there. its so expensive on ebay like $20 per GB 

For those games where you are having trouble ramping up the graphics, its not your CPU or RAM holding you back, its that graphics card. The GTX 650 is a bit weak to be putting against those games. You are better off keeping the MB and CPU and upgrading your card. Get 750 Ti or a 760 and you will be good to go.

hmmm. Interesting takes on the problem. I think i will search craigslist for someones old 1066 ddr 2 ram and try to get up to 8 gigs.  As well as purchase a 750 Ti or something better. Is graphics cards at this time limited by my graphics card or should I just upgrade the GPU as high as possible.  I've heard that even the PCIe3 GPU cards will rollback and work in PCIe2 slots. Is this true?  I used to build PC's alot but have gotten out of the game for awhile. Everything changes so much in such a short time. lol

 

PCIe3 cards work fine on PCIe2. and yes, you are limited by your graphics card pretty hard. Trust me, my little sister has a really old PC that has a 1.6 ghz dual core, and a 650 Ti, and she can run vanilla skyrim on High settings. CPU is not as important as GPU for most gaming. Get the most powerful graphics card you can afford, and you will see vast improvements.