Upgrading after years of neglect

[ZinneD]

Hello everyone! 

 

Since I've been out of the loop regarding PC hardware for quite a while. Well, to be frank, never been very much in the loop I've considered researching on my own but wound up taking the easier road and consulting ya'll.

As I'm currently mostly gaming on my rig, nothing too demanding, think Overwatch on medium-medium high-settings and Doom Eternal on low-medium.

 

My current build holds up to the demands I have (which are not very high) but I would love to upgrade it a bit.

 

I live in Sweden, for those that are interested.

Any upgrades within the £50-£150 range is preferred. I'm thinking a max budget of about £500 for the upgrade, though I am looking to get away as cheap as possible with good sustainability.

 

Any and all  recommendations and/or tips are very welcome however.

The biggest problem I have (surprise, surprise) is with the extremely loud CPU-fan. And yes, it's the stock one.

 

The plan is to run with two monitors, currently I'm using one but that is subject to swift change.

My current rig:

Case: BQT BGW05 be quiet! Silent Base 600

Motherboard: ASUS AM3+ M5A97 R2.0

CPU: AMD FX-8350 Black Edition, Socket-AM3+

Graphics card: Nvidia Gforce GTX 1060 3GB

RAM: HyperX Fury DDR3 1600MHz 8GB The other  4GB ram is 2x Crucial 2GB PC10600 DDR3

SSD: Kingston 120GB with  a 1TB HDD  (not looking to upgrade these if not absolutely necessary)

Power supply:  Evga 750 BQ Bronze

 

Edit: Added the lost 4gb ram and power supply

[Djole123]

A good short term option would be to get yourself an AIO water cooler and overclock the 8350 as much as you can. You can also try to OC the GPU.

 

A long term option would be to swap the AM3+ platform and get the AM4 Ryzen MoBo, CPU and DDR4 RAM. Perhaps a Ryzen 3 could do the trick for you.

[Dedayog]

5 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

A good short term option would be to get yourself an AIO water cooler and overclock the 8350 as much as you can. You can also try to OC the GPU.

 

A long term option would be to swap the AM3+ platform and get the AM4 Ryzen MoBo, CPU and DDR4 RAM. Perhaps a Ryzen 3 could do the trick for you.

An AIO for that chip is not a good option, as it won't be useful on the Ryzen platform and you're blowing $100+ for lower temps, cuz that 8350 won't OC for much, the performance won't be there.

 

Save up for proper Ryzen when you can is my opinion.

[Bombastinator]

I kind of want to know what’s that missing 4gb is.  There’s a lot of potential performance locked up there.  The 1060 is definitely long in the tooth but gpu pricing is a major unknown atm with navi21/ampere theoretically around the next corner. 
 

my first move would be solving that missing memory problem as it would likely produce more frames and cost nothing.

[ZinneD]

11 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I kind of want to know what’s that missing 4gb is.  There’s a lot of potential performance locked up there.  The 1060 is definitely long in the tooth but gpu pricing is a major unknown atm with navi21/ampere theoretically around the next corner. 
 

my first move would be solving that missing memory problem as it would likely produce more frames and cost nothing.

The 4GB ram is 2x Crucial 2GB PC10600 DDR3
Worth mentioning my power supply as well, as I forgot that one: Evga 750 BQ Bronze

 

Updating original post as well

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, ZinneD said:

The 4GB ram is 2x Crucial 2GB PC10600 DDR3
Worth mentioning my power supply as well, as I forgot that one: Evga 750 BQ Bronze

 

Updating original post as well

Is it different than the other ram you have?  If so in what way?

[ZinneD]

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Is it different than the other ram you have?  If so in what way?

Except that they're different brands and that the hyperXs look fancier

 

                 Crucial         HyperX

Speed:      1333             1600

Memory:  2gb            4gb

 

Both seem to work within my rig tho.

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, ZinneD said:

Except that they're different brands and that the hyperXs look fancier

 

                 Crucial         HyperX

Speed:      1333             1600

Memory:  2gb            4gb

 

Both seem to work within my rig tho.

Different size AND different speed.  They don’t just have to work in the machine they have to work with each other as well.  It might possibly maybe work to turn down the hyperX to 1333 but no promises.  It’s real possible the memory just isn’t compatible with each other.  I don’t know much about old AMD stuff. 

[ZinneD]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Different size AND different speed.  They don’t just have to work in the machine they have to work with each other as well.  It might possibly maybe work to turn down the hyperX to 1333 but no promises.  It’s real possible the memory just isn’t compatible with each other.  I don’t know much about old AMD stuff. 

In that case, it would be better to just remove the crucial RAMs I suppose

[ZinneD]

1 hour ago, jstudrawa said:

An AIO for that chip is not a good option, as it won't be useful on the Ryzen platform and you're blowing $100+ for lower temps, cuz that 8350 won't OC for much, the performance won't be there.

 

Save up for proper Ryzen when you can is my opinion.

Would you  have any tips on where to start when going "proper ryzen"?

[Dedayog]

52 minutes ago, ZinneD said:

Would you  have any tips on where to start when going "proper ryzen"?

When you want to pull the trigger on a 1600af or 2600, B450 motherboard, and at least 8GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM.

 

Nothing within $50-$150 will do anything for you.  You mention $500, but it didn't seem like you wanted a full upgrade yet?

[ZinneD]

1 hour ago, jstudrawa said:

When you want to pull the trigger on a 1600af or 2600, B450 motherboard, and at least 8GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM.

 

Nothing within $50-$150 will do anything for you.  You mention $500, but it didn't seem like you wanted a full upgrade yet?

Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. Not a full  upgrade yet in the sense, I'm not ready to buy $3500 worth of parts in one-go. The thought process I had was begin with a minor  upgrade that let's me continue along and then progressively add more (and better) parts.

 

The problem, I realize is the fact that no upgrade I can make with my current platform is substantial enough (and reasonably priced).  So, I have to re-think my approach. 

 

I mean, if  I can re-use some of the not-terrible parts in my current build and use them as a sort of bridge in between two builds that would be perfect. Meaning I won't have to put out a huge amount of cash straight off the bat. 

[Bombastinator]

The cheapest possible extension of what you’ve got (which I don’t really recommend, I think an actual upgrade is a much better use of funds) would be to get another pair of 4g sticks of that Hynix stuff.  That might (maybe)  be worth doing for $40.  It might be more though because such memory is very old in which case it just isn’t worth it.  Only if the stuff is dirt cheap might it be worth buying.  Paying high prices for the stuff just isn’t worth it.  That much memory would at least make sure you aren’t memory stuck doing things.  Some stuff may get much faster because it will end disk caching.  The 1060 kinda needs an update too, but I would personally be tempted to hang onto it until Navi/ampere drop, because prices will change.  The cpu motherboard IS eventually going to have to be updated to something like what @jstudrawa was talking about.  That might be done for near $500.  Which means that any money you put into the am3 system (i.e. that  memory) is more or less money thrown into a hole never to be seen again.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, ZinneD said:

Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. Not a full  upgrade yet in the sense, I'm not ready to buy $3500 worth of parts in one-go. The thought process I had was begin with a minor  upgrade that let's me continue along and then progressively add more (and better) parts.

 

The problem, I realize is the fact that no upgrade I can make with my current platform is substantial enough (and reasonably priced).  So, I have to re-think my approach. 

 

I mean, if  I can re-use some of the not-terrible parts in my current build and use them as a sort of bridge in between two builds that would be perfect. Meaning I won't have to put out a huge amount of cash straight off the bat. 

I would say the case and storage is the only worth saving stuff.  The PSU wasn’t bad once, the problem is they age. The cpu/motherboard/memory all have to go at once, and the gpu while working is well under gaming standard at this point

[ZinneD]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

I would say the case and storage is the only worth saving stuff.  The PSU wasn’t bad once, the problem is they age. The cpu/motherboard/memory all have to go at once, and the gpu while working is well under gaming standard at this point

Well, let's  focus on CPU, MB and Memory  for now, 

I checked a B450-E,  16GB DDR4 3200mhz, and a Ryzen  3600

 

That totalled out at 4938 SEK (swedish) that's roughly $495. I could go for the B450-I which would add it up to $505. 

 

Seems well within my range, seeing as I just went onto the first best swedish site and clicked the stuff without trying to find better pricing.

[Dedayog]

6 minutes ago, ZinneD said:

Well, let's  focus on CPU, MB and Memory  for now, 

I checked a B450-E,  16GB DDR4 3200mhz, and a Ryzen  3600

 

That totalled out at 4938 SEK (swedish) that's roughly $495. I could go for the B450-I which would add it up to $505. 

 

Seems well within my range, seeing as I just went onto the first best swedish site and clicked the stuff without trying to find better pricing.

That's definitely how I'd go about it. With AMD, you don't have to look at a $3500 system to have a serious machine.  Get the 3600 now and then upgrade your GPU in the future, if you can drop the $500 now.

[ZinneD]

4 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

That's definitely how I'd go about it. With AMD, you don't have to look at a $3500 system to have a serious machine.  Get the 3600 now and then upgrade your GPU in the future, if you can drop the $500 now.

Aye, seems like that's well within what I asked for,  in that $500-range and a more "upgrade-able" system, so to speak.

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, ZinneD said:

Well, let's  focus on CPU, MB and Memory  for now, 

I checked a B450-E,  16GB DDR4 3200mhz, and a Ryzen  3600

 

That totalled out at 4938 SEK (swedish) that's roughly $495. I could go for the B450-I which would add it up to $505. 

 

Seems well within my range, seeing as I just went onto the first best swedish site and clicked the stuff without trying to find better pricing.

I hauled out some PcPartPicker.com in Sweden and made this.  It’s cut sort of to the bone.  Things that might make more sense is another 500kr for a closer to top like b450 motherboard, going to 3600mhz cas16 memory, and possibly even bumping the cpu to a 3700x and dumping the cooler.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  (kr2190.00 @ CDON SE) 
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P 53.38 CFM CPU Cooler  (kr319.00 @ CDON SE) 
Motherboard: ASRock B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (kr1009.28 @ CDON SE) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  (kr1212.00 @ Dustin Home) 
Total: kr4730.28
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-29 20:36 CEST+0200

[ZinneD]

23 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I hauled out some PcPartPicker.com in Sweden and made this.  It’s cut sort of to the bone.  Things that might make more sense is another 500kr for a closer to top like b450 motherboard, going to 3600mhz cas16 memory, and possibly even bumping the cpu to a 3700x and dumping the cooler.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  (kr2190.00 @ CDON SE) 
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master MasterAir MA610P 53.38 CFM CPU Cooler  (kr319.00 @ CDON SE) 
Motherboard: ASRock B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (kr1009.28 @ CDON SE) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  (kr1212.00 @ Dustin Home) 
Total: kr4730.28
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-29 20:36 CEST+0200

Yeah, that's probably what I'll run with. Dropping the cooler and bumping up the CPU, most likely. 

[Bombastinator]

15 minutes ago, ZinneD said:

Yeah, that's probably what I'll run with. Dropping the cooler and bumping up the CPU, most likely. 

Might need to up the motherboard to do the cpu safely.  They were sort of listed by bang buck.  Memory, motherboard then cpu.

[ZinneD]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Might need to up the motherboard to do the cpu safely.  They were sort of listed by bang buck.  Memory, motherboard then cpu.

Yeah, now I've got a starting point. Thanks for all your help!