Can I upgrade my HP Pavilion P6000 PC to improve gaming performance?

Would this work for me? I'm looking to upgrade an HP Pavilion P6000 series PC to make it faster to play games more smoothly. It currently has an AMD Athlon 220 processor and 5GB of RAM, and I'm looking to upgrade the processor to an AMD Ryzen 5 and 16GB of RAM and am wondering if this would work.

Is there a better suggestion for a new gamer on a $300 budget? Thanks for any info!

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the question. I'll do my best to help!

Looking into your HP Pavilion P6000, it appears to be model P6523 with the Athlon 220, as you mentioned above. With that, the upgrade to AMD Ryzen 5 isn't possible, as the sockets are entirely different. That doesn't mean you can't upgrade your current CPU, though; instead, we need to look for something on the AM2+/AM3 socket.

This should leave you with options from the Athlon X2, X3, and X4 series, or you can move to the Phenom X2, X4, or X6, with the top end being the Phenom II X6 1090T. These CPUs are likely only available on the second-hand market, but shouldn't cost much as they are a few generations old now. You can pick up the 1090T on eBay for around $70.

As for the memory, you should find this quite easily at any online retailer. Looking online myself, I see a few kits from Crucial, Kingston, and Patriot around the $60 price point.

Good luck!