Trepidation on upgrading prebuilt PC's PSU and Vid Card

[Raenil]

Hey, all. got a bit of a puzzler here with my friend's computer. We want to get him able to play Star Wars, The Old Republic with his 3 year old prebuilt computer. It's actually got a pretty good processor, looks like a dual core that runs at 2.7 Ghz, but it's running integrated graphics that just won't cut it, and has a 250w power supply. The official specs are here.

Thing is, it's been a long time since I took apart or built a computer, so i'm worried about what parts are compatible with his computer. He can only spend about 100-150 dollars, and only needs a new PSU and graphics card. Can anyone link us a ~500w PSU and decent graphics card that won't accidentally fry his system? i've seen about that size of power output for ~50 bucks on Newegg, and graphics cards can be as expensive as the buyer wants, and all that.

Any help is greatly appreciated, folks!

[PhoenixEnigma]

There's not any reason you even need a 500W PSU - with any reasonable video card, that system will never pull anywhere near that much. I'd bet money it won't break 300W under load. Right now, I'd grab this Antec, as it's a decent unit and a good price. The EarthWatts 380W might not be a bad choice, either.

For the video card, I'd go with this 6770 if you're looking to the higher end of the budget, as XFX has one of the best warranties around and the 6770 should be plenty fast enough (and anything faster would be held back by the CPU anyways). A 550Ti would be another option, little pricier and a little faster still, but if he wants something from the nVidia ecosystem (CUDA, PhysX, etc), it's the only decent option around that pricepoint. On the lower end, this 6750 is probably the best value you'll find if you don't trust rebates, or this 6770 if you do.

In terms of compatibility, the specs page there indicates a PCI-e 16x slot should be free, and someone on Newegg claims to have replaced the PSU so I am pretty sure it's ATX-compatible, so you should be set on that front.

[Raenil]

Thanks a bunch, Enigma!

On a side note, we installed TOR on his computer as-is, and it crashes on startup. Could that be because his card literally cannot support it (Since in-game graphics are used on the login screen)?

[PhoenixEnigma]

It's entirely possible - the 6150 is way, way below the minimum recommend for the game*, and support for integrated GPUs tends to be spotty at best.

*Though technically it supports DX9.0c, and you could configure it with 256MB RAM, it's still nowhere close