Gaming on a (super tight) budget!!

[lordtaylor20]

Hey all

currently running:

AMD FX8350 black edition 

gigabyte 970A-DS3O

32gb generic RAM

ID-COOLING 280mm AIO

Crucial BX500 SSD

ROG STRIX GTX 1050 TI

NZXT H500i case (latest purchase, a birthday present to myself!)

 

on the tightest of budgets (kids are not the cheapest of pets!!) what can you guys suggest for my next upgrade?

i can run battlefield 1 on high settings at around 40fps currently!

[NotABigGamer]

4 minutes ago, lordtaylor20 said:

Hey all

currently running:

AMD FX8350 black edition 

gigabyte 970A-DS3O

32gb generic RAM

ID-COOLING 280mm AIO

Crucial BX500 SSD

ROG STRIX GTX 1050 TI

NZXT H500i case (latest purchase, a birthday present to myself!)

 

on the tightest of budgets (kids are not the cheapest of pets!!) what can you guys suggest for my next upgrade?

i can run battlefield 1 on high settings at around 40fps currently!

Looks pretty good for that budget!

[Amorphical]

Either upgrade the CPU or GPU.
I would suggest you do both, for starters you could upgrade the CPU because it is probably the biggest bottleneck.
Afterwards you could upgrade the GPU to a 1660 or 1060 3GB and sell your current one.
At least for now just lower the settings to medium, and probably the resolution to 1600x900.
That should do the trick.

[lordtaylor20]

2 minutes ago, Amorphical said:

Either upgrade the CPU or GPU.
I would suggest you do both, for starters you could upgrade the CPU because it is probably the biggest bottleneck.
Afterwards you could upgrade the GPU to a 1660 or 1060 3GB and sell your current one.
At least for now just lower the settings to medium, and probably the resolution to 1600x900.
That should do the trick.

looking into getting a 1660, decided i need a new monitor for christmas first, then new gpu in the new year

[Amorphical]

Just now, lordtaylor20 said:

looking into getting a 1660, decided i need a new monitor for christmas first, then new gpu in the new year

Then go with the 1660 Super if you could spare a couple of bucks here and there, it is going to be worth it.

[Zando_]

Just now, Amorphical said:

Then go with the 1660 Super if you could spare a couple of bucks here and there, it is going to be worth it.

1650 Super is an option too, from what I've seen it performs about on par with the RX 580. 

[lordtaylor20]

6 minutes ago, NotABigGamer said:

Looks pretty good for that budget!

thanks... even better, the gpu psu (corsair 750) and half the ram were all free.... payment for rebuilding people's ne computers!!!!

[Amorphical]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

1650 Super is an option too, from what I've seen it performs about on par with the RX 580. 

1660 super is actually great bunk for buck, it is much cheaper than 1660ti but has GDDR6 memory and the same performance.

[lordtaylor20]

my next purchases are 

ViewSonic VX2458-C-MHD curved gaming monitor and Seagate ST1000DX002 FireCuda 1 TB internal hybrid hard drive

just over £200 for the 2... that's my christmas budget maxed out!!!

 

then looking at gpu in the new year

 

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, Amorphical said:

1660 super is actually great bunk for buck, it is much cheaper than 1660ti but has GDDR6 memory and the same performance.

OP said a super tight budget:

 

Cheapest 1650 Super is $69 cheaper than the cheapest 1660 Super. Not only is that an excellent meme number (I say as I write this at 4:20pm), that's a marked drop in price for a card that will still push 1080p60-75fps just fine. Very few titles use over 4GB VRAM at 1080p as well, so that's not too much of a drop either. 

[K i a r a]

I actually had the exact same CPU and GPU. 

Upgrading the CPU to a Ryzen 5 1600 and GPU to a 1660 is a GREAT suggestion, I am currently waiting for my 1660TI from amazon!

Check for Cyber Monday Sales, or even Christmas sales! 

Goodluck! 

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, K i a r a said:

Upgrading the CPU to a Ryzen 5 1600 and GPU to a 1660 is a GREAT suggestion, I am currently waiting for my 1660TI from amazon!

Hell yeah, the 1660 Ti is pretty damn impressive. I have one in my current rig, easily slaps 1080p in every game I've tried with it. 
 

4 minutes ago, lordtaylor20 said:

my next purchases are 

ViewSonic VX2458-C-MHD curved gaming monitor and Seagate ST1000DX002 FireCuda 1 TB internal hybrid hard drive

just over £200 for the 2... that's my christmas budget maxed out!!!

Any reason for the FireCuda drive? If a normal spinning HDD is cheaper, that'd be the better value. SSHDs are usually a worse value, they don't have enough SSD to make a big difference for gaming, and the HDD part usually isn't as fast as just getting a straight HDD in the first place.

[lordtaylor20]

1 minute ago, K i a r a said:

I actually had the exact same CPU and GPU. 

Upgrading the CPU to a Ryzen 5 1600 and GPU to a 1660 is a GREAT suggestion, I am currently waiting for my 1660TI from amazon!

Check for Cyber Monday Sales, or even Christmas sales! 

Goodluck! 

runs most of my games fairly well (granted, i get a bit bored of them running slower than they should on high settings.... but they look awesome!!!!!)

[lordtaylor20]

4 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Hell yeah, the 1660 Ti is pretty damn impressive. I have one in my current rig, easily slaps 1080p in every game I've tried with it. 
 

Any reason for the FireCuda drive? If a normal spinning HDD is cheaper, that'd be the better value. SSHDs are usually a worse value, they don't have enough SSD to make a big difference for gaming, and the HDD part usually isn't as fast as just getting a straight HDD in the first place.

temp solution for running games, until finances get to a level where i can afford m.2 drives (will then also need to fork out for mobo cpu and ram at that point... but until then any speed increase is a plus point) unles linus can find it in his heart to build me a new rig!!!!!!   lol

 

this rig is going to be kept as my kid's first pc once i can afford the type of machine i would like (dreaming at the moment!!!!) 

[Roswell]

The processor is by far the bottleneck. In many games you may not see any improvement at all after a GPU upgrade.

 

Unfortunately the IPC of those FX chips hovers around Phenoms circa 2009. 

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, lordtaylor20 said:

temp solution for running games, until finances get to a level where i can afford m.2 drives (will then also need to fork out for mobo cpu and ram at that point... but until then any speed increase is a plus point) unles linus can find it in his heart to build me a new rig!!!!!!   lol

 

this rig is going to be kept as my kid's first pc once i can afford the type of machine i would like (dreaming at the moment!!!!) 

It won't be any faster for games than a normal HDD, the SSD cache isn't big enough. M.2 is just a form factor, the SATA M.2 drives are the same speed as a normal 2.5" SATA SSD, so no need to get M.2 unless those are cheaper. The NVMe M.2 drives are the ones faster than normal SSDs, they don't really offer a massive increase in game load times though (usually only a couple seconds over a normal SSD). I'd go for the normal HDD drives, SSHDs used to be a good stop-gap for OS drives in laptops and such, back when SSDs were very expensive. Prices have come down massively now, SSHDs are in a weird spot. Not as good at being an SSD as a proper SSD, worse at being an HDD than a normal HDD. If you can get a higher capacity HDD for the same price, defo get that one. You'll notice the extra space far more. 

[lordtaylor20]

2 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

The processor is by far the bottleneck. In many games you may not see any improvement at all after a GPU upgrade.

with funding being MY bottleneck atm, i've been trying to find ways to overclock (most forums say it's a waste of time with my mobo.. won't get much increase!)

 

[Elisis]

Which PSU is in that system?

[lordtaylor20]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

It won't be any faster for games than a normal HDD, the SSD cache isn't big enough. M.2 is just a form factor, the SATA M.2 drives are the same speed as a normal 2.5" SATA SSD, so no need to get M.2 unless those are cheaper. The NVMe M.2 drives are the ones faster than normal SSDs, they don't really offer a massive increase in game load times though (usually only a couple seconds over a normal SSD). I'd go for the normal HDD drives, SSHDs used to be a good stop-gap for OS drives in laptops and such, back when SSDs were very expensive. Prices have come down massively now, SSHDs are in a weird spot. Not as good at being an SSD as a proper SSD, worse at being an HDD than a normal HDD. If you can get a higher capacity HDD for the same price, defo get that one. You'll notice the extra space far more. 

fair point.. cheers

[lordtaylor20]

Just now, Elisis said:

Which PSU is in that system?

corsair cx750

last owner cut a few cables on it, so i'm going to need to replace that at some point!!!!!

[Roswell]

6 minutes ago, lordtaylor20 said:

with funding being MY bottleneck atm, i've been trying to find ways to overclock (most forums say it's a waste of time with my mobo.. won't get much increase!)

 

I understand, I'm just saying it might be better to hold on to the money until a new processor/board/memory is within reach. Other upgrades aren't going to really improve performance until you replace that chip.

 

You could also definitely mitigate a good chunk of the cost if you resell your existing stuff on eBay once you swap it out. 

[lordtaylor20]

I know i'm going to have to do a complete rebuild eventually... i want to be able to play battlefield and COD the way they were meant to be played!!!!!

yes, it's a cheap build (all i could afford at the time!) but what do you expect for £300?????????

planning to build my first ever completely brand new machine throughout next year (when funding starts getting better) might even experiment with a custom water loop...

but for this rig i need to do everything as cheap as poss!

 

[Zando_]

8 minutes ago, lordtaylor20 said:

I know i'm going to have to do a complete rebuild eventually... i want to be able to play battlefield and COD the way they were meant to be played!!!!!

yes, it's a cheap build (all i could afford at the time!) but what do you expect for £300?????????

planning to build my first ever completely brand new machine throughout next year (when funding starts getting better) might even experiment with a custom water loop...

but for this rig i need to do everything as cheap as poss!

The way I look at it, you've got to upgrade the GPU at some point anyways, which order you upgrade the CPU or GPU in really doesn't matter. If you can afford to get the GPU but not the CPU/mobo combo, then do that first and save for the CPU. 1650 Super or probably the RX 5500 (supposed to be AIB ones soon-ish) would be good on the lowest end, 1660 Super/1660 Ti are excellent for 1080p or 1440p60, anything higher is just more icing on the cake. 

[lordtaylor20]

5 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

I understand, I'm just saying it might be better to hold on to the money until a new processor/board/memory is within reach. Other upgrades aren't going to really improve performance until you replace that chip.

 

You could also definitely mitigate a good chunk of the cost if you resell your existing stuff on eBay once you swap it out. 

full rebuild is going to have to be bought a piece at a time, with a couple of months between parts (to save up again! lol) the kinda specs i'm looking towards is gonna cost me around 1.5 to 2 grand! once i'm out of options for current machine, it will become my son's first gaming rig. i realise that there's not much i can do with an AM3+ board... once i've got every ounce of speed and quality out of this machine (with small upgrades and overclocks) i will start looking at a fresh build

[lordtaylor20]

3 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

The way I look at it, you've got to upgrade the GPU at some point anyways, which order you upgrade the CPU or GPU in really doesn't matter. If you can afford to get the GPU but not the CPU/mobo combo, then do that first and save for the CPU. 1650 Super or probably the RX 5500 (supposed to be AIB ones soon-ish) would be good on the lowest end, 1660 Super/1660 Ti are excellent for 1080p or 1440p60, anything higher is just more icing on the cake. 

i'm thinking 1660 super (hopefully in january, if my latest pet doesn't grow out of his clothes!!!!   lol)

might be all i can do to this build, besides overclocking the nuts out of the cpu!!!!