Medicius

Thanks for the responses. I never even looked at the 3600, but now watching gaming comparison videos and looking at price it seems somewhat of a no-brainer. Also, thank you for the welcome to the forum!

Hi all, Thank you in advance for taking the time to review my questions and respond with your ideas! I'm looking for advice on a Christmas Gift for my son. Looking to update CPU/MB/PSU using some of the newer-ish equipment already in his current build. Currently my son has the following build: PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price CPU Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4 GHz Quad-Core Processor Motherboard MSI Z77A-G41 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard Memory PNY Optima 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1333 Memory $54.99 Memory PNY Optima 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1333 Memory $161.98 @ Amazon Storage Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive $74.98 @ Amazon Storage Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $44.89 @ OutletPC Video Card MSI GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB Video Card Case NZXT H500i ATX Mid Tower Case $114.98 @ NZXT Power Supply Corsair CX 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply $139.89 @ OutletPC Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM 64-bit $99.89 @ OutletPC Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total $691.60 Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-10-20 14:24 EDT-0400 We downloaded the free W10 update, if that matters. Primarily, he uses this for FPS or BR games (CS:GO, Apex, Fortnite, and others of that ilk) on a 27" 1080p 60hz monitor. But as of last year, he started seeing heavy stutters and even crashing in some of the BR style games. He's had this build, minus the 1070 and H500i case for 8(??) years. I feel it's time for an upgrade vs. more investigations into why he's not seeing decent performance. So as I look to move him into this decade, I've been researching CPU/MB combinations and frankly I feel as if I've dumbed myself down in the last few years. So I'm reaching out to you folks here for advice. AMD or Intel, what MB, new PSU, etc based on the following factors: Location: US Intended use: Semi-competitive CS:GO, Fortnite, Apex, and new FPS or BR games as they come out. He usually has discord, forums, streaming video running in the background that he alt-tab's to between rounds, etc. Peripherals needed: None at this time Budget: $500-800 (CPU/MB/PSU), (anything left over will be applied to GPU for birthday a couple months later) Keeping/existing equipment: Case, Memory (I have 16G spare DDR4), Storage will carry-over but eventually will add NVME, GPU will be upgraded next year. Thank you once again for your time and thoughts! Medicius

Hey guys, I'm sure we screwed up something. We upgraded a computer in our house with a new MB, CPU and RAM. We kept the old Windows install on a HDD and after replacing parts everything booted up as normal. With one exception. The HD Audio manager was missing. I went through the troubleshooter and it noted it was missing... When I tried going out to Realtek's site, it looked like it was hacked and/or hd audio manager can't be found. So now I'm starting from scratch with MB install DVD. But isn't it odd that RT's HD Audio manager would be the only thing to go missing?