budget Upgrade or Wait?

[p4ck3tl055]

FIRST OF ALL:  I'm not looking to start a flame war of red vs blue here.  I just want honest feedback.

 

I currently have a machine containing the following:

• Intel Core i7-6700k
• 32GB Corsair DDR4-2400 RAM (4x8GB)
• Asus Maximus VIII Ranger Mobo
• Asus nVidia RTX 2070 ROG Strix
• 500GB WD Black nVME M.2
• 2x 500GB Samsung Evo SATA SSD
• 2x 4TB WD Black 7200 SATA Drives
• Cooler Master Nepton 140XL AIO Cooler
• Corsair RM 1000i PSU

My main use for the computer is gaming* and video editing.  But I also do "normal" stuff - Office documents, email, music and web stuff.  ("Gaming is everything from modded Skyrim to Witcher 3 to ESO to Division 2 to Call of Duty.  I'm almost always on Discord and use OBS to capture the whole thing.)  The machine is about three and a half years old and is working fine.  But I've got the urge to upgrade it.  Unfortunately I've only got about $500 to do so.  With all the gains AMD has been making lately and my limited budget, I'm thinking now is the time to use Ryzen.  So I'm been looking around and I've come up with the following for my $500 budget (before taxes and shipping):

• AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus Mobo
• 32GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3200 32GB CL16 (2x16GB)  (Yes, I know it's overkill for gaming, but i routinely use 24GB+ when editing video)

 

I would reuse everything from the existing system except the CPU, MOBO and RAM.  I would Ebay what I could of those parts to recoup some of the upgrade costs.

 

What I'm concerned about is that I really won't notice a difference (except what the faster memory and the additional cores/threads would give me in rendering).  If I were to win the silicon lottery and get a great over-clocker, maybe, but i'll not count that until I get there.

 

So my questions are:

• Should I upgrade now or save the money for a bigger bang later on?
• If the answer is to upgrade, is the hardware I've chosen the way to go?
• If not, what would you recommend?

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by p4ck3tl055
grammar

[boggy77]

there will be a difference with the 3600, but it's up to you whether if that difference is worth 500$.

I would instead get a 3700x on a b450 board. should be the same price, but 8c/16t would make a bigger difference, especially when video editing.

in terms of overall gaming, if you are playing at 1080p and trying to reach 144fps and your cpu utilisation is 100%, then yes, it's worth upgrading.

if you play at 1440p 60fps and your gpu is at 100% and cpu at 50%, you won't see a difference.

[Statik]

1 hour ago, p4ck3tl055 said:

• Should I upgrade now or save the money for a bigger bang later on?

 

I would save. Your specs seem pretty solid, and new released will be coming out this year, so you're better off just saving your money until you can do a worthwhile upgrade.

 

Side note, if you do end up deciding to upgrade anyways, don't get the X570 Gaming Plus. It's a dogshit mobo. I'd look around, there's plenty of better options depending on your budget.

[svmlegacy]

6 minutes ago, p4ck3tl055 said:

The machine is about three and a half years old and is working fine.  But I've got the urge to upgrade it.

The machine seems to be doing everything you ask of it. By definition, you do not need to upgrade.

 

You can upgrade, and it is your choice. Justify it by saying you want to. It comes down to whether or not the $500 is worth fulfilling the want, to you.

[Mister Woof]

just overclock what you got imo. nothing stands out as being terrible. i7-6700k is still quite capable, as is the 2070.

 

$500 burning a hole in your pocket? Get a kickass display, or get a nice cooling setup to help you overclock. Both you can re-use for next time.