Holiday Bonus Upgrades

Fatsuno · December 4, 2019

It's Holiday Bonus Season and I've got the itch to get my system up to date with current tech. I've been doing research, especially into the recent boom in AMD's 3rd Gen Ryzen and how well received they seem to be. However I ran into a problem...

First, here's a brief rundown of where I find myself currently. I'm a US-based, standard desk job employee/card game hobbyist/hope-to-get-into-game-design-ist and haven't really put a ton of effort into keeping my PC updated. Back when I was working at an antivirus company, I had pieced together and built my current machine to handle games like League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, and a spattering of digital card games. That was roughly 8 years ago. Around this time last year, I started upgrading, but the only thing I could feasibly upgrade with the age of my hardware, was my graphics card. I upgraded to a GTX 1080 from a GTX 860, which I had bought a month or two after release. To further complicate things, my current build uses an i7 3770, 3rd Generation "Ivy Bridge" and 16GB of DDR2 RAM. Like I said, it's been... a while.

I've also recently been noticing fans spinning up louder than usual and CPU temps reaching higher than normal temps. A mixture of dusty fans, poor circulation, and bad cable management is a huge part of all of the issues, but it's something tha has been considered in the process of planning this build. (Especially now that I know how to properly cable manage a computer thanks to handy videos produced by certain YouTubers.)

Enter the last couple days. I've been digging and doing research on parts, watching reviews and looking through builds to see what options I have available to me. The benefit of going "all-in" is that I can build from the ground up and really make my machine my own. I've come to the following conclusions:

3rd Gen Ryzen CPU
DDR4, 3600+ Speeds
Available Slots to Upgrade in the Future
M.2 SSD Storage

The current internal debate I'm having is choosing between the dozen or so options while staying within sane levels of reason.

I use my desktop primarily for gaming and a limited amount of streaming, but I don't play or stream many of the intense games that usually require workhorses. Despite it's programming, I don't think Magic: the Gathering Arena and Hearthstone Battlegrounds warrant a $2000 computer to run them. However, I do enjoy raiding with quality settings in Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft, and even jumping into the occasional up-scaled visual experience like Civilization VI or the upcoming Cyberpunk title. I want to make sure that my build can sustain those, while also keep it future ready for a few years to prevent another sudden rework like this one.

To summarize the aim of this build:

Streaming
Majority Low-intensity Gaming
Occasional High-intensity Gaming
Mid-distance Future Proofing

The Budget for this is moderate, especially since I don't think a Graphics Card is needed. By keeping the 1080, I can put in another $500 - $600 USD in bulking up the rest of the build. I'm definitely OK with putting in some more if it means drastic improvements in performance or further future proofing, but the absolute upper limit of my spending is $1000 USD. I am, after all, a measly desk employee at a state college.

I currently run two 1080p, 60hz monitors through HDMI, but definitely plan on moving to a central 144hz monitor in the near future as a "main" using both 1080p monitors as accompaniment.

Here are a couple general Part Picker builds I put together with some ideas, though I'll be the first to admit my knowledge of compatibility doesn't go much further than a couple google searches:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7VsmDx

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kFZBjp

These are rough drafts of builds I'd like to shoot toward, but suggestions are definitely welcome. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk and I hope I didn't break a dozen forum rules with my formatting.