A gaming PC is the ultimate place to play for any gamer. It's customizable, offers a wide array of games at a rather low price bundled with free multiplayer. However, a gaming PC with even decent specs will cost you a significant amount of money, enough to buy a month's groceries and still have some spare for drinks.
A feasible solution to the above problem may be to upgrade a pre-built gaming PC. You can either upgrade the old gaming PC that you made yourself or purchase an old PC and upgrade it to a gaming PC.
A quick word of caution: If you are looking forward to upgrading a pre-built gaming PC, it is recommended that you work on a custom built rather than a store-bought vanilla PC, given that the store bought PC will not be have been made while keeping upgrades in mind so the slot selection and layout may be a bit tricky to get around. Read our Pre-Built vs Custom PC's article if you want to know more about this subject.
A short answer to the question above is 'YES'; you can upgrade a pre-built gaming PC. It sounds like a viable option on paper since it a pre-built PC will come with crucial components such as a CPU, a power supply unit, wifi card, ram, cooling fans and a lot more in the box. All you'll need to do is add a graphics card and upgrade the ram and CPU if need be.
It seems to be quite an easy and affordable option to break into PC gaming or bring up your old rag of PC up to today's standards. However, it is not a child's play when it comes to upgrading a pre-built gaming PC.
The first thing you would want to upgrade in a pre-built gaming PC is the graphics card. So you want that big GTX 1080 in your in new PC? Unfortunately, the power supply unit is not compatible with the new graphics card. So now you got a new power supply unit that is compatible with the graphics card? It's a shame that the motherboard does not have enough lanes. So now you got a new motherboard to with enough lanes to fit the new graphics card, and everything is ready? Too bad the PC case is not big enough. So now you get a new PC case as well that fits the graphics card, and everything is running smoothly now.
Now that you've got everything in place, you realise that you've spent way too much and it might have been cheaper to build a gaming PC from scratch.
Numerous problems may arise while upgrading a pre-built gaming PC. For example, you can only accommodate as much ram as there is designated space in the motherboard. Fitting new components in an old or vanilla case may prove to be difficult and even impossible in some cases.
In the end, it is possible to upgrade a pre-built gaming PC. However, if you opt to do so, make sure to conduct thorough research of the compatibility of your current components and case with the parts you wish to upgrade.
