Upgrading an Alienware R2

[delrey]

Hello Everyone,

I bought an old Alienware R2 from a friend last year. It came with the following:
i7 960 stock 3.2Ghz (original closed loop water cooler)
X58/Alienware MB
12 GB DDR3 (1333 Mhz I believe)
1TB HDD drive (Original WD Black and new WD Blue)
Currently 650ti Boost graphics (had 2 in SLI, 1 of them fried. I am planning on buying a 1060 soon.)
Unknown wattage on PSU. Assuming it's a decent amount of watts as it had SLI graphics, but probably not efficient.

The 650ti Boost is a dog for gaming. I can play BF1 but on low to medium. I'm looking to see if I can use the case and PSU with a new MB/Platform. I'm looking on getting a Ryzen (unknown on which one yet) with 16GB of ram and probably a B350 series board. The current system does have LED on the case but I do not care if it works or not. As long as the new MB will fit and the current PSU will work. Even changing the PSU is an option, assuming it'll fit. I'm hoping someone here has done or seen an upgrade done to an older Alienware. Thank you for all of your help.

 

[delrey]

Bought the 1060: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...05&cm_re=gigabyte_1060-_-14-125-905-_-Product

Clues on the other upgrade?

 

[Jollyriffic]

100% should not upgrade in that case. Alienware/dell have a nasty habit of building just terrible cases that aren't optimal for air flow, upgrading, and over complicate cases making them way heavier than they need to be.
The R2 is a lot like a console, where everything is done with a simple console style box where doing anything with it would be a pain.
Even if you can only afford to get the cpu, motherboard, ram, gpu, and a psu, just build outside of a case till you can afford one. I went YEARS with my motherboard laying on my desk on top of a sheet of wood but you could use cardboard if you want.
I included a PSU, because dell/alienware are notorious for using underpowered garbage PSUs.

Anytime you're asking about upgrade items, you need to list what specifically you do now, want to do, with the system.
Then include a budget.
Lets say I want to do video editing, but I don't really game. in this case I would need a much stronger cpu and could go with a pretty basic/cheap gpu. if I want to do both then I'd have to sacrifice some cpu (depending on the budget) to level both of them into a workable area.
-budget
-task now
-task down the road

 

[delrey]

Thanks for your info. What I really wanted to know is if the case and PSU were able to be used for the upgrade. Per your post, not a good idea. Thanks again.

As for what to upgrade with, I pretty much know what I want. My point to this post was to see how viable upgrading with the R2 case and PSU was.