Yeah, it would be nice if we could have 5Ghz CPUs that could be passivly cooled instead of worrying about huge fan/heatsinks or watercooling. Wasn't there a CPU release recently that came with closed loop liquid cooling unit isntead of a heatsink/fan combo?

Another option to consider could be the upcoming 470. It will be more powerful than the 370 or the 960 that Raistline mentioned (also a good option), and also cheaper than both of them uf the rumors are true: http://www.techpowerup.com/223604/amd-radeon-rx-470-could-surprise-with-pricing $149 for the 4GB version.

I've never used an anti static wristband. I just touch the floor with a barefoot (well, plus socket) foot and constantly touch the chassis. Never had a problem.

Aye if you touch the chassis of the PC (the metal at the back) you'll equalize any charge between you and the motherboard, even moreso if the PC is plugged in since otherwise it will not be earthed at the time you do it, an earthed wall of the house would do it too, or like you said the floor (as long as it isn't a wooden up stairs floor) would do the same discharge from you into the earth.

It's just one of those things which I would raise to someone who is completely new to building a PC and as Dreamcast210 said a bit ago he didn't know there was anything other than the wattage of a PSU to consider then I would always make sure that person gets as much bits of info as possible before they end up doing something which might cost them a component or the whole PC, I do agree though, if you work inside PC's a lot you'll never really go through the bother of a wriststrap, I've got a pair of the things... but working in a centre with 300 PCs, I think I maybe put it on a couple of times on my first week.

I see wristbands as a way to make you feel safer and focus on the task.

As long as they're used right, a mate of mine used to always put it on and clip the biting part of it onto his shirt cuffs.... for those unsure about what this band does, this is the equivilent of trying to protect yourself from injury with a motorbike helmet, which is in a box sitting in your sidecar of the bike, it's there, just not doing anything.

With that CPU..... Unfortunately it will bottleneck alot of cards, that and it only has 4GB of DDR3 ram since you're not on skylake. I would honestly build a new rig if you want to game on PC with STABLE HIGH END SETTINGS. That being said no one here can for sure tell you how your CPU would work with a new graphics card (RX 480/970/1070) since it's really old. It gets 30 FPS in less intensive parts on GTA V with a 750ti on Very High. So I would assume you could get medium-high settings with an RX 480 at 60fps or higher on most AAA games. You won't want to put in a higher range GPU because of the bottleneck. You are definitely going to want to get more RAM. So I would look at the 480x benchmarks and buy it if the price/performance is as good as projected (200 bucks for 980 perfromance is a steal).  

Edit:  If your Dell power supply is not upgradable you might not be able to put a decent GPU (or any Discrete GPU at all) in the PC since the people above me say it's different than most PSUs.  If the case is too small the GPU might not even fit at all.  NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO BUY A GPU.  Wait for AMD and nVidia's new cards.

nononononononono! no! Sorry for any misunderstanding here Raistline and myself were talking about older PC setups, many years ago Dell had their own PSU connections to the motherboard so as such couldn't be upgraded, or could be, but only with other Dell brand PSUs, it has been several generations of PC since that was the case, they are all uniform now! Sorry again for any misunderstanding.

While an i3 is rather low in power btw it's not that old, launching in 2010, considering the i5 he could easily upgrade to launched in 2009, also... really a whole "rig" replacement isn't required if he wants to go from onboard graphics level of gaming up to the likes of ps3/360 gen gaming, his system with the additions mentioned in this thread will give a very nice experience in those games if set up correctly.

And again, memory is a bit low in this system, but based on http://www.cnet.com/products/dell-inspiron-620-core-i5-2310-2-9-ghz-8-gb-1-tb-led-24/specs/ he can bring it up to 8gb from 4gb and if feeling like the cpu needs a bit more powah can bring the i3 up to an i5 for relatively small cost (even though it would be an older cpu :) har har).

I'm all about getting the most from older(even though age isn't the case here) hardware, blasting up Overwatch myself on medium settings with a Core2Quad(circa 2007), 12gb DDR2 ram and a 550Ti build.

Not to worry. I already upgraded my RAM to 8GB and put in a new power supply yesterday. Just waiting on the GTX 960 I ordered from Amazon to show up at my door. Right now, I won't update the CPU but probably will in the future. As I said before, I'm not looking for high end graphics or anything, just the ability to play more games on my computer.

Is there much to know when I update from the i3 to the i5? Looking at it, it appeared to be as simple as swapping out the RAM.

Replacing the CPU is easy.

I'd suggest to do a little work with the PC before changing the CPU. That will warm the thermal paste (the grease between the CPU and the cooler, also called TIM) making it easier to remove the cooler from the CPU.

And before putting it up together, remove all the TIM from the cooler (use alcohol or TIM cleaners) and apply new TIM to guarantee the proper contact and heat transfer between the CPU and the cooler.

OK. Now this CPU talk has got me looking into the costs to replace my CPU. I see a lot of different version of an i5 CPU. How can I know if it'll work with my machine? Any suggestions?