Processor / SDD upgrade? (EXTREME NEWBIE)

[galdirvostet]

Budget (including currency): no real limit, just looking for suggestions and will do my own price matching / comparison.

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Escape from Tarkov, Dark Souls series / similar games, retro games, really all kinds of stuff.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Current specs:

550W power supply

ASUS Prime B250M-C

1TB HDD

Intel i3 6100 3.7 GHZ

16 GB DDR4 2133 MHZ RAM  4x4GB Corsair Vengeance LPX

MSI GeForce GTX 1050ti 4GB

 

I prefer to game at 1080p with 60 FPS or better.  I run Tarkov on mediumish settings perfectly fine with my current setup but I know performance could be even better especially with better processor and SSD.  That is probably the most demanding game I currently play.

 

Well, thanks in advance for reading this to anyone who decides to, and thanks even more for replying if you decide to!  As stated in the title I am an extreme noob when it comes to the world of PC upgrades so I apologize in advance for any painfully stupid questions that I am asking.  I recently got big into PC gaming and the LTT YouTube channel was a big part of making me completely obsessed, previously I had pretty much exclusively played consoles.

 

I recently upgraded both my RAM and my GPU to what I listed above, previously I had one single 8GB ram stick and shit Intel integrated graphics.  After seeing what simple upgrades to my PC can do of course I am hungry for more and to make my system even better.  I have tried to find specific tutorials on processor removal / installation for my motherboard online but I could not find anything.  When I see the guys on LTT replace CPUs they make it look super easy, but the idea of thermal paste and whatnot is very intimidating to me as I have never done anything like that before in my life.  I have seen brief lists of compatible processors with my motherboard and I think the farthest up I could go is the Intel i7, but I am not sure, please correct me if I am wrong.  I am not sure what all goes into swapping out a processor or if it is even worth it for someone with such negligible experience as myself.  Perhaps an SSD upgrade is simpler?  Not really sure where to start looking for a good one for my PC, I did a brief search and just got kind of lost searching. Well I feel as if this post is getting pretty long now so feel free for anyone reading this to please give me some tips and pointers.  Again sorry if this is super dumb questions.

 

[Statik]

I kind of understand where you're coming from, but you're not really explaining what you're looking for, or what you're trying to get out of this. Sure you could grab an SSD. They're spectacular for loading times, and making games load quicker, but they're not going to give you an FPS boost.

 

IMHO you're PC is dated to the point that upgrading a piece of two is simply not worth the money. And decent CPU upgrade will require a new Motherboard, so then you're on a whole new platform that will most likely bottleneck a 1050ti, and at that point you'll be almost limited by your ram, and if you're buying a whole new PC you might as well spend $75 on good ram.

 

It seems like your specs would probably run retro games/DS fine, but as an avid Tarkov player, I know your probably struggling on that, and that's the only real way to get good performance on bigger, harder to run titles.

[Vishera]

You will have to upgrade almost everything at this point,

a dual-core in 2020 won't cut it,and your slow RAM will bottleneck new CPUs.

Depending on the budget but you could start with:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	$172.39 @ Newegg
Motherboard	MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard	$114.99 @ Best Buy
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	$83.99 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$371.37
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-07 01:07 EDT-0400

 

[Perrin]

You'll need a good bit of upgrades to get more performance. A SSD won't improve gaming much at all, mostly just make the games load faster. Focus on getting a processor and use your SSD money to put towards a motherboard for you CPU

[galdirvostet]

Thank you for the replies so fast guys, yeah I know ideally I need to just get a whole new system and I plan to in a year or two and spend a lot on it, but I am just getting my toes wet and sort of learning the ropes with this machine so to speak.  My main concern is what is the best processor my motherboard can handle, and how hard would it be for me to install it myself.  If it is like $200-$300 for a new processor maybe that would be great.  I think I saw something online saying that an Intel i7 is like $330 and that is definitely within reason for me at this point.  I just want to get the most out of what I have for the time being, I know it's not totally ideal and I'm not going to be maxing out new games at the highest resolution or anything like that.

[SavageNeo]

this for 5+ years:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$294.14 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition 42 CFM CPU Cooler	$38.99 @ B&H
Motherboard	MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard	$114.99 @ Best Buy
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	$83.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Silicon Power 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$134.99 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$667.10
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-07 02:00 EDT-0400

 

 

 

 

 

this for 3+ years:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	$172.39 @ Newegg
Motherboard	MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard	$114.99 @ Best Buy
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	$83.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Silicon Power 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$134.99 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$506.36
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-07 02:00 EDT-0400

go for the ryzen 5 3600 build and then save money for new gpu. something like:

rx 5700/5700 XT would do nice