TechyTeach

It will be the boot drive, yeah. I have an OS licence (Win10 Home) on my current SSHD which I will transfer over when I install the NVME drive. The budget is for the GPU and SSD. If I could squeeze a monitor in, I would push it up to nearer £500, but the £400 budget is for GPU and SSD and isn't really moveable at the moment.

Thank you so much for this pointer! I would have probably gone to plug and play then been confused why my old HDD didn't show up! XD I've gone for the Sabrent Rocket Q and will have to wait and see on the GPU front. It doesn't sound like the RDNA2 or 3000 series are likely to be aimed at my part of the market, but fingers crossed they'll have a pricing knock-on effect at the very least! I'll definitely return to the forum in future if I look at second hand GPUs - wouldn't have a clue where to begin! Thank you so much for all your advice, it makes a lot more sense to me now!

I stand corrected! Thank you! I mis-read a bit of text on the label in a photo (gen 3x4 confused me...) I'm going to sound really stupid here, but I thought M.2 and NVME were the same thing... Is NVME something special? i.e. all NVME are M.2 form, but not all M.2 are NVME?

Yup, that sounds like the best option. I know you mentioned the This looks like it's PCI Gen 4. I think my B450 Mobo will only support Gen 3 - is it still worth it? Or would One of these be more appropriate? PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price Storage Western Digital Blue 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive £101.76 @ BT Shop Storage Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive £98.67 @ CCL Computers Storage Kingston A2000 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive £101.98 @ Laptops Direct Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total £302.41 Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-03 21:04 BST+0100

I was afraid that might be the case...

Is that the general pattern with GPU prices? I wasn't sure if they would go down much or even go up as they get phased out of production. How future proof would you rate a 1660S for my purposes? (I don't tend to play the latest and greatest games until a couple of years have passed and they come on offer, so I can afford to be at leat 1-2 years behind the curve as it were)

Wow, thank you for the quick response! I'd have to check with the bank manager (wife) about pushing up to £568 but that looks like a really good balance. Does having a 2-fan vs 3-fan GPU make a big difference to either performance or coolness/noisiness?

Budget (including currency): £400 Country: UK Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: GTA V, Minecraft (java - modded/shaders), Far Cry 3/Primal, Dying Light, some basic video editing tools for remote learning for pupils (I have done some screen recording for tutorials and teaching, and this would continue to be important) Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 (stock cooler, but debating an upgrade) RAM: 3200MHz 16GB RAM - Can't remember the name, I think it's Corsair, CL-18 MOBO: MSI B450 Pro Carbon Gaming with Wifi PSU - overkill Seasonic platinum tier 800W (It was on an exceptional deal and there were general shortages of other options at the time of purchase) Case: Fractal Meshify C - two included case fans + 2 Noctua 120mm (configured as 1 rear exhaust, 1 top exhaust (lined up with CPU) and two front intakes) The above are all recent purchases - my old PSU blew and I needed a new system with a quick turnaround in early June - no time to wait for B550s or to properly investigate RAM etc. Storage: 1TB 7200rpm HDD - ~10 yrs old, forgotten name 1TB HDD/SSD hybrid - FireCuda 1 TB ST1000LX015 Current GPU: Asus ROG Strix r9 380x 4GB Displays - two 1080p basic options - one is a philips 221B from the v. early days of HD (2007/8?) and the other is an old Sharp Smart TV we replaced with a bigger model for the living room. Both are 60Hz standard, running off HDMI (I used a DVI-HDMI convertor) My aim is to futureproof the system as far as possible - I would like to play 1440p in future, but have no budget for that kind of monitor for now. In the meantime, I want a system that will enable me to keep gaming without too many compromises on 1080p for 5yrs or more before considering an upgrade. I am currently looking at the Gigabyte Windforce RX 5700XT 8GB for £350 on amazon however I'm not sure if this is overkill or will 1080p games begin to demand 8GB VRAM in the future? My alternative option would be an Nvidia1660S (the 6GB GDDR6 versions ~ £220 at first glance), and then using the money I save on a 1TB proper SSD (It turns out my hybrid SSD is a bit crummy (I bought it as a compromise when SSDs were still fairly prohibitive in price)) After spending ages trying to work out which GPU is best, I haven't the foggiest where to start on SSDs. Linus talks about NAND and other bits which kind of go over my head. Should I go for the 5700XT, or save on the GPU and upgrade the SSHD to something better? Is NVME worth it/affordable enough? I would want to go for 1TB storage again, as the other drives could be general bulk storage but I would like current projects/games to be able to take advantage of faster read/writes than an HDD. (I could compromise to 512GB if there were good balances to be found elsewhere) An additional query, though this maybe belongs in another forum - having never had the budget to become an audio-visual connoisseur, would people recommend a higher refresh rate 1080p monitor for smoothness or a 60-75Hz 1440p monitor for fidelity and detail? I am not fussed about super speed frames or advantages in online play, I am more interested in an enjoyable viewing and playing experience. (I have included this thought as it may impact on the choice of GPU recommended) Apologies if this is way too long-winded - it's my first ever forum post! Any help would be much appreciated. P.S. If you can magically recommend a monitor upgrade, SSD and decent GPU for less than £500 (I might be able to push the budget if a monitor were involved) that would be amazing! (but I imagine impossible)