Upgrade or replace? PC

[breamster]

OK - I have a laggy old Intel i3 (2nd gen?),16Gb ram. PC running windows 10.

I would like something a bit speedier, windows 11. General office use and some games for the kids (but not the latest and greatest).

I am tight and don't want too spend much ideally less than £400 or nearer £300?

Options are:
1)Motherboard, CPU and RAM bundle upgrade. Say £300? Current case is Micro ATX so presumably easily upgradable. And presumably my win10 can be upgraded to win11 for free? Is it worth getting a separate GPU?

2) Replace with a reconditioned Optplex or similar.

3) Something else?

SSD and drives have all been upgraded in the last year or so can be reused.

What would you do? Any gotchas?

Are are there any retailers that are quite cheap at the moment or do I just need to shop around?

Thanks.

[the-photographer]

Easy choice is a compact Optiplex from

40% off All items at the Dell Refurbished Store
https://www.hotukdeals.com/vouchers/40-off-all-ite...

Or from the thousands available on ebay, just make sure it has built-in Wifi

[WrekinCrew]

breamster said:

.... And presumably my win10 can be upgraded to win11 for free? ...

I believe you can change hardware provided you have Retail Win10. Some say it works with OEM Win10 if you use a Microsoft account (not local) logon but other's disagree. If it objects you can get very cheap (and apparently legal) Win11 activation keys.

"slmgr /dlv" at a command prompt will tell you what Windows you have.

[grumbledoak]

I can't imagine a 2nd gen i3 has an NVMe M.2 drive to re-use, so it's motherboard, CPU, RAM, M.2 drive. Unless you desperately want to build I would probably buy a new one.

I would start here: https://www.dell.com/en-uk/dfh/lp/outlet to get an idea.