Would this be worth upgrading?

[Backwardsman97]

One of my friends was getting rid of some stuff, so they gave me two old computers and a monitor and a bunch of other stuff for $50. The computers were a eMachines w3080 and an s2482. They said the w3080 didn't work, but all it had was a bunch of viruses that I since cleaned off. As far as I can see, it runs pretty well for doing everything except playing games. The onboard video can't handle any kind of games. My question is, what kind of video card would I even be able to put in this thing, and would it be worth spending like $130 for it? Because I know a $100 here and there adds up quickly and I wouldn't want to end up one day spending a few hundred on it when I could have saved up and built a pretty top end one. The only games I am interested in playing is like Counter Strike:Source, Garry's Mod, and GTA:SA.

 

[cboucher]

Emachines are notorious for flaky power supplies. Half the time they take out the motherboard as well when the PSU fails. Without looking at the specs of your particular eMachines I can say that the PSU and GPU will both have to be upgraded, minimum. Not worth it in my opinion, however. Emachines are just too cheaply built to run software as taxing as modern games.

 

[Tommy Boy]

All emachines are really made for is browsing the internet, email and word processing, light stuff like that. If you're interested in gaming then you should save your money and go for a new build. Emachines are just too cheap to bother with.

 

[Backwardsman97]

Well if I got a card with it, would it be able to run those games? This is the card I was looking at. If it could just run those games for like $70 to $100 I think it would be worth it. After a while, I could sell this to a friend and save up for a good rig. Here[url] are the specs if it helps.

 

[cboucher]

If you upgraded anything, you would have to upgrade the PSU first. Stock PSUs on eMachines fail all the time and can end up damaging anything it's plugged into, including brand new video cards...