What to Upgrade next?

[Neenan]

Hey all, my system is pretty solidly in the mid-tier category with an R5 1500x with a stock cooler, 8 gigs of single channel 2400 memory, and a used RX 480 but I was looking at what to upgrade next. I play various videogames ranging from JustCause 3 to Minecraft and do (amateur) video editing and music notation. I was thinking ram would be a solid choice because I can upgrade to dual channel and then move onto Zen 3 when that comes out but I've also considered grabbing a used 1070/1080 instead of the ram upgrade. I'm not completely sure which will improve my performance more atm.

 

(full specs should be in the signature btw)

[RAS_3885]

4 minutes ago, Neenan said:

Hey all, my system is pretty solidly in the mid-tier category with an R5 1500x with a stock cooler, 8 gigs of single channel 2400 memory, and a used RX 480 but I was looking at what to upgrade next. I play various videogames ranging from JustCause 3 to Minecraft and do (amateur) video editing and music notation. I was thinking ram would be a solid choice because I can upgrade to dual channel and then move onto Zen 3 when that comes out but I've also considered grabbing a used 1070/1080 instead of the ram upgrade. I'm not completely sure which will improve my performance more atm.

 

(full specs should be in the signature btw)

Dual channel RAM is a good call, especially if you end up going to a more recent Ryzen processor where RAM is much more important to performance. 2400 is on the slower side, so an overall upgrade to faster RAM would be best.

 

I'd only upgrade the graphics card (right now) if you're unhappy with the performance in the games you play.

[Kisai]

5 minutes ago, Neenan said:

 8 gigs of single channel 2400 memory,

The easiest upgrade you can make is to switch to dual channel. Add one, or add three more 8GB modules of the same speed and brand, or switch to a 2 or 4 module set for the best results.

 

Alternatively replace the CPU, and switch to faster memory to match with the newer CPU. There is no reason to not run 16GB in a system today.

[Neenan]

14 minutes ago, RAS_3885 said:

Dual channel RAM is a good call, especially if you end up going to a more recent Ryzen processor where RAM is much more important to performance. 2400 is on the slower side, so an overall upgrade to faster RAM would be best.

 

I'd only upgrade the graphics card (right now) if you're unhappy with the performance in the games you play.

Thanks for the tip on the graphics card, I wasn't completely sure if the bottleneck was in GPU for RAM performace but looking at task manager makes it pretty clear.

 

15 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The easiest upgrade you can make is to switch to dual channel. Add one, or add three more 8GB modules of the same speed and brand, or switch to a 2 or 4 module set for the best results.

 

Alternatively replace the CPU, and switch to faster memory to match with the newer CPU. There is no reason to not run 16GB in a system today.

Again, a good tip. At  the moment I can't upgrade the CPU and the RAM, though I wasn't looking at upgrading today anyway. I'll keep it in mind but I'd rather hold out for Zen 3 because I'll need to buy a new motherboard for that anyway.