Help my friend to upgrade his pc

[SavageNeo]

Budget (including currency): 450 euros

Country: Finland

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: games like apex and WOT

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): he has prebuilt system and phreripherals.

So, my friend needs help upgrading his pc. His dad is trying to help but not by much.

 

His system: 

i5 8400

lenovo motherboard

2x8 gb 2666mhz ram (dont know the cl)

1060 3gb

lenovos 80+ 280w psu

1+1tb HDD and 250gig ssd

 

I think he should get a new case, psu and gpu like this: 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Video Card	PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB Red Dragon Video Card	€319.00 @ Jimm's
Case	Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case	€49.80 @ Jimm's
Power Supply	be quiet! System Power 9 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	€61.90 @ Jimm's
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€430.70
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-07 17:36 CEST+0200

 

 

 

 

 

But his dad is odd.

 

His dad said the following things:

-We need to buy a new motherboard since it wont fit the case

The motherboard is ATX and it will fit in that case.

- We need atleast 700w psu.

That is not true his new system will go nice with even 400w psu.

And now the most absurd thing:

- We need a new windows since we are buying a new motherboard. And we wont buy it from other than official microsoft site. (125 euros)

 

 

I almost gave up. His dad do not trust me. So my friend will only get: new motherboard, case and total overkill 700w PSU. He cant afford 5600 XT because of his budget

His dad told me that we need other people's opinions about this PC upgrade because he wont trust me.

 

Can you guys give your opinions about this?

[Statik]

You do not need a 700W PSU.  My 3800x + 2080S could EASILY run on a 600W. You would be PLENTY fine with a 500W bronze. Windows has nothing to do with the motherboard. As long as you have windows installed on a hard drive, or have the key that came with the copy of windows, you can put it on any PC that you want. DO NOT BUY ANOTHER WINDOWS.

 

As well, if you do, spending the $100+ is actually insane. There are PLENTY of 100% legit, safe, LEGAL sites that sell windows KEYS for $10-30. Buying windows for $100 is a scam to take advantage of people that have no idea what they're doing.

 

He is correct about the motherboard + case issue. The case you have selected is a MicroATX case, so you're either going to need an ATX case, or a microATX board. Honestly I'd suggest getting rid of the probably horrific excuse for a lenovo mobo.

[BobVonBob]

Well you're wrong about the motherboard, that case only fits mATX, not full size boards. You'd need to pick out a different case to put the current motherboard in it.

 

500W PSU is more than enough for an i5-8400 and a 5600 XT.

 

Last one is slightly trickier, if it's a retail license of Windows 10, you just need to link the license to a Microsoft account and you can transfer it totally fine no matter how much you change your hardware. If it's an OEM license it is technically locked to the motherboard, but I believe you can generally still use the key anyway. However if you get a different case so you don't need to change the motherboard this isn't an issue.

[BobVonBob]

Double post? Weird.

Edited May 7, 2020 by BobVonBob

[SavageNeo]

changed the case: 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Video Card	PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB Red Dragon Video Card	€319.00 @ Jimm's
Case	Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case	€49.80 @ Jimm's
Power Supply	be quiet! System Power 9 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	€61.90 @ Jimm's
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€430.70
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-07 17:47 CEST+0200

 

 

2 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

500W PSU is more than enough for an i5-8400 and a 5600 XT.

only if his dad would know this...

3 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

ast one is slightly trickier, if it's a retail license of Windows 10, you just need to link the license to a Microsoft account and you can transfer it totally fine no matter how much you change your hardware. If it's an OEM license it is technically locked to the motherboard, but I believe you can generally still use the key anyway. However if you get a different case so you don't need to change the motherboard this isn't an issue.

i had prebuilt too. i transferred my windows to a new pc just fine

[BobVonBob]

4 minutes ago, SavageNeo said:

changed the case: 

That's the same case.

[SavageNeo]

3 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

That's the same case.

bruh

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Video Card	PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB Red Dragon Video Card	€319.00 @ Jimm's
Case	Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case	€55.90 @ Jimm's
Power Supply	be quiet! System Power 9 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	€61.90 @ Jimm's
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€436.80
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-07 17:57 CEST+0200

 

[SwiftGTi]

Hi There,

 

Lenovo has done strange things in the past. So, is the 1060 an upgrade or was it from the original Lenovo build? As Lenovo likes to run whitelists into their BIOS to prevent you from doing your own thing, or at least they used to do that. So, I would budget for a Motherboard upgrade, but try to move the motherboard into an appropriately sized case first.

 

As for the power supply, it all depends on your rails and it's efficiency. But, if it's a good one and has a strong 12VDC rail, you should have more than enough power (as a reminder, power = voltage x current).

 

Almost everybody tends to forget that the 5600XT is actually a PCIe gen4 x8 card. So, in order to take full advantage of that little card, you actually need an AMD system with gen4 support.

 

As for Windows, I won't get into the nitty gritty bits of how it does it's bindings. But, usually, you can move a licence by calling their support and telling them that you had a hardware failure or something like that. And they'll let you move your licence. I've done it multiple times and never had any issues. But you will have to call them up.

[BobVonBob]

2 minutes ago, SavageNeo said:

bruh

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Video Card	PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB Red Dragon Video Card	€319.00 @ Jimm's
Case	Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case	€55.90 @ Jimm's
Power Supply	be quiet! System Power 9 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	€61.90 @ Jimm's
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€436.80
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-07 17:57 CEST+0200

 

 

Check your last post, it was the same case. New case works fine though.

 

11 minutes ago, SavageNeo said:

Case Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case €49.80 @ Jimm's

 

[SavageNeo]

2 minutes ago, SwiftGTi said:

. So, is the 1060 an upgrade or was it from the original Lenovo build

it was original

2 minutes ago, SwiftGTi said:

Almost everybody tends to forget that the 5600XT is actually a PCIe gen4 x8 card. So, in order to take full advantage of that little card, you actually need an AMD system with gen4 support.

not true. nothin uses the whole pci e gen 4.

my 5700XT runs as fine with pci e 3 and 4.

 

 

[SwiftGTi]

4 minutes ago, SavageNeo said:

it was original

not true. nothin uses the whole pci e gen 4.

my 5700XT runs as fine with pci e 3 and 4.

 

 

Your are mixing two different animals here. The 5700XT is an x16 card, opposed to the 5600xt that is x8.

 

Who said something about the whole gen4 bandwith? The 5600XT will work on PCIe gen3, but it will loose some performance in some games. I can't remember who bothered to actually test this, but I do remember a couple of channels, YouTube channels, being disappointed by the 5600XT performances at launch and retesting it on a gen4 system, slot, and getting better, or expected I should say, results. This comes from the fact that the 5600XT uses an x8 link, not a x16 link. So, the gen4 speed helps here, but we're years away from saturation of the bus. Especially since it's only x8, not even x16.

 

Hope I clarified my statement. You have the right to not agree. And the performance gain might not justify the upgrade necessary to take full advantage of the card. But there's a gain to be made.