Reccomended GPU for my CPU and motherboard?

[Seraaron]

Hi all,
First post here. I saw Linus say in a recent video that this is a good place to get advice on builds.

 

So just last week my GPU and SSD simultaneously kicked the bucket :( The graphics card was an 'Asus AMD Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II OC 4GB' bought new back in 2015. In the meantime, I've temporarily replaced it with an 'MSI NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 710 1GB' video card just so that I can use my 1080p monitors again; because my 9 year old motherboard, an 'Asus M4N68T-M-LE V2', only has a single 1400×1050p VGA output. Back in 2016 I upgraded the CPU for the best thing that would fit in the socket: a second-hand 'AMD Phenom II x6 1075t' that I picked up very cheap on ebay, but it's been very reliable so far. (Except that one of the six cores seems to have just randomly stopped working about a year ago now, so I guess it's a Phenom II x5 now, but the rest runs fine). All of this is slurping on a 'XFX 650W XXX (80+ Bronze)' PSU, and I've got 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, and have just replaced the dead 120GB Kingston SSD with a 240GB one. (I have a couple terabytes of HDD too, but the OS was installed on the SSD). In the process of changing the SSD I was inspired by some videos LTT made last year about gaming on linux, so I've also finally taken the plunge and decided to switch from Windows to Linux (Manjaro), and I'm really enjoying it so far!
 

Anyway, I'm going to be in the market soon for a replacement GPU; and I guess my question is... Are my motherboard and CPU likely to cause bottle-necking or other issues if I bought a modern mid-range GPU? And if not, what would you recommend? (So far I've been eyeing the 'GTX 2060 Super' and the 'Radeon RX 5700' since I have about a £350 budget). Or do you think it's time for me to finally bite the bullet and upgrade my motherboard and CPU at the same time and split my GPU budget between the three? (I guess I'd also need new RAM too though, if I switched to a DDR4 board).

 

I suppose I should also mention my workflow and gaming habits. My machine gets used for basically everything I do at the moment. Most of those 16GB of RAM get used while painting in Krita with lots of layers. I also do some light Blender work and video rendering, and occasional simulations / computations in Mathematica. The vast majority of my time spent on my PC is just browsing the web and watching videos though. Gaming-wise, practically non of the AAA games that have come out in the last couple of years have caught my eye let alone made me buy them full price (plus I have a PS4 for exclusive titles), so a lot of the games I've been playing on PC in the last few years have been older titles amped up on mods: like Skyrim, Dragon Age, and Crusader Kings 2, or indie games like Hollow Knight. The most recent AAA game I bought and played was Halo Reach, but that's technically an Xbox 360 port. Cyberpunk 2077 looks like it will be good, but it also looks like will be very graphically demanding (I originally bought the R9 290 to play Witcher 3, so I guess it's only appropriate that CD-projekt-Red are what's enticing me to upgrade again).

Another idea I've had is to split my components between two machines. My electricity bill is a concern after all. So maybe it would be worth building a work-rig and a gaming-rig separately?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for your time :)

[DailyProcrastinator]

You are probably overdue for a whole system upgrade, I'd consider the R5 2400G and a new B450 motherboard with new DDR4 RAM. Get a new GPU later when you can afford it. 

[PopsicleHustler]

As @JM21 said, you need to upgrade the entire system. Getting new GPU won't do anything good because your CPU will bottleneck the hell out of it.

[Metallus97]

22 minutes ago, PopsicleHustler said:

As @JM21 said, you need to upgrade the entire system. Getting new GPU won't do anything good because your CPU will bottleneck the hell out of it.

Yup!

 

Give us a budget and we can throw you something together

[Seraaron]

I'm reluctant to start over completely, partly because of budget constraints and partly because nothing in my case is really dysfunctional except the busted GPU. Does the idea about splitting parts and building two rigs sound better then?

Right now the budget I allowed myself to look for a GPU was £350 gbp (or ~$450 usd), but if I need to get multiple parts then that will obvious have to get split out. At a push, I could go up to £500 (or ~$650), but I'm also not in a huge rush and would be willing to wait for a possible mid-year price drop on mid-tier components whenever nvidia / amd / intel release their new stuff for 2020.

[Metallus97]

3 minutes ago, Seraaron said:

I'm reluctant to start over completely, partly because of budget constraints and partly because nothing in my case is really dysfunctional except the busted GPU. Does the idea about splitting parts and building two rigs sound better then?

Right now the budget I allowed myself to look for a GPU was £350 gbp (or ~$450 usd), but if I need to get multiple parts then that will obvious have to get split out. At a push, I could go up to £500 (or ~$650), but I'm also not in a huge rush and would be willing to wait for a possible mid-year price drop on mid-tier components whenever nvidia / amd / intel release their new stuff for 2020.

yeah but any modern mid range card will be bottlenecked like hell by the Phenom (good I loved mine. Was such a OC boss)

[LordMacrae]

4 minutes ago, Seraaron said:

I'm reluctant to start over completely, partly because of budget constraints and partly because nothing in my case is really dysfunctional except the busted GPU. Does the idea about splitting parts and building two rigs sound better then?

Right now the budget I allowed myself to look for a GPU was £350 gbp (or ~$450 usd), but if I need to get multiple parts then that will obvious have to get split out. At a push, I could go up to £500 (or ~$650), but I'm also not in a huge rush and would be willing to wait for a possible mid-year price drop on mid-tier components whenever nvidia / amd / intel release their new stuff for 2020.

If you really don't want to replace your entire system, how about a used GTX 1060 / RX 580? And then save up for an entire new system down the road? Anything much above that you'd not be able to get the most out of?

[Seraaron]

Fair enough... I'm not really up to speed on what bottlenecking actually is, it's just something I've heard about.

What would you recommend then on a £500 / $650 budget?

[PopsicleHustler]

14 minutes ago, Seraaron said:

Fair enough... I'm not really up to speed on what bottlenecking actually is, it's just something I've heard about.

What would you recommend then on a £500 / $650 budget?

This would be a great start. Then you can save up and get a GPU.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	£169.98 @ Aria PC
Motherboard	MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard	£89.99 @ Amazon UK
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	£67.28 @ CCL Computers
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£327.25
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-12 21:32 GMT+0000

 

[xg32]

10 minutes ago, Seraaron said:

Fair enough... I'm not really up to speed on what bottlenecking actually is, it's just something I've heard about.

What would you recommend then on a £500 / $650 budget?

definitely just upgrade the entire rig, if u replace just the gpu, something else WILL go wrong.

for that budget, i recommend something like this, use the old case if you want, but for something that old, even the usb ports can go wrong, find a decent psu/case combo

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor	$114.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Gigabyte B450M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$72.98 @ Amazon
Memory	G.Skill Flare X 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	$68.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6 GB SC ULTRA GAMING Video Card	$233.98 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$500.94
	Mail-in rebates	-$10.00
	Total	$490.94
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-12 16:32 EST-0500

you can downgrade the gpu according to ur budget, the lowest i'd go with is a rx 570.

[Seraaron]

Hm... I'll have to have a think. Thanks for the suggestions! And if anyone else has any more then feel free to keep posting below.

I remembered that I have an older 400W power supply back at my parents house still, I think, left over from when I upgraded my gpu the first time and had to get a higher wattage psu to support it. It's possible that I can pick it up the next time I got home and then use it with the GT 710 and the current cpu and motherboard: Use that as my general workstation and consume less electricity on the lower wattage psu. Then reserve the 650W psu for when I upgrade and build a new gaming rig?

[Metallus97]

14 hours ago, Seraaron said:

Hm... I'll have to have a think. Thanks for the suggestions! And if anyone else has any more then feel free to keep posting below.

I remembered that I have an older 400W power supply back at my parents house still, I think, left over from when I upgraded my gpu the first time and had to get a higher wattage psu to support it. It's possible that I can pick it up the next time I got home and then use it with the GT 710 and the current cpu and motherboard: Use that as my general workstation and consume less electricity on the lower wattage psu. Then reserve the 650W psu for when I upgrade and build a new gaming rig?

yeha but you wont be gaming on the GT710. And make sure the 400W is at least half decent. Also di dont think it will save much because I suspect the 400 to have poor effeienceiy 

[Seraaron]

2 minutes ago, Metallus97 said:

yeha but you wont be gaming on the GT710. And make sure the 400W is at least half decent. Also di dont think it will save much because I suspect the 400 to have poor effeienceiy 

That's what i'm saying, I'm thinking of making a 'gaming / rendering' rig and a 'browsing / streaming' rig separate. So the GT710 will be fine for the latter.

You're probably right about the 400W psu though. I'll have to check it out when i get home. It was part of the first pc i ever built and I didn't know much about power supply safety back then.

[Metallus97]

Just now, Seraaron said:

That's what i'm saying, I'm thinking of making a 'gaming / rendering' rig and a 'browsing / streaming' rig separate. So the GT710 will be fine for the latter.

You're probably right about the 400W psu though. I'll have to check it out when i get home. It was part of the first pc i ever built and I didn't know much about power supply safety back then.

alright, report back with the model  

[Sir0Tek]

5x core Phenom... worse than fx41x0 by now, I guess. And by any 4 core Ryzen out there too, of course.

Keeping it makes little sense to me, as even the mainboard has been entry level back in the days.

Gaming was possible due to the R9, I guess, but it will be easily overrun by a cheap rx470/rx570 by now.

Indeed, getting some decent up-to-date cpu and mainboard paired with a suitable gpu is better than trying to overload the existing one with a massive gpu.

 

[Stu_Bear]

This is 329 watts...it's at the upper range of what you want to spend, but it has a GOOD gpu that you won't out grow anytime soon.  

[Seraaron]

On 1/13/2020 at 1:03 PM, Metallus97 said:

alright, report back with the model  

It looks like it's a 400W NRP-VC503 by Xigmatek. It doesn't have any precious metal rating. So probably not worth risking...