Upgrade Path

[Jay2982]

Budget (including currency): Maybe $100-$250

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Single player AAA games, light DAW use (amp simulation), Elder Scrolls 6 whenever that happens,

Other details

 

So I just "built" a PC, that was cobbled together.  Basically the guts of a prebuilt in a new Phanteks P300 case, new board.

450w Corsair CX450M

16gb DDR4 (Crucial 3000 mhz)

Asus B550M-A wifi

Ryzen 5 3500 (counting it as 65 watts) 6 cores, 6 threads, cooled with  an Arctic Freezer 7x

OEM Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4gb

NVME SSD + 2 HDDs

4 fans total (three rated at 0.10 amps or less), no RGB

and my old Monitor 20" LED 1600x900 60hz, I tend to use Nvidias "Dynamic Super Resolution" to get like 1200p and still at ~60fps.

 

But I'm kind of wondering what my upgrade path will be, for two reasons :

 

1.  Eventually I will want ray tracing support, while keeping the same PSU.  PSU is rated at 37.4A and 448W on the 12v rail, so I guess Corsair rates them very conservatively.  So that probably limits me to a 220w card?  Will be waiting to see if AMD can improve their lineup...

 

2.  If I upgrade the CPU I can use the old 3500 in the prebuilt system (to be given to family).  But I think the existing processor is fast and the bottleneck is probably going to be GPU

 

3. My monitor is old and 900P, but 1080P is not a big jump over 900.  But I could look for something like 1080P / 144hz or maybe a higher resolution 1440p.  I don't need a massive frame rate, just a good picture.  I tried borrowing a 1080p monitor at 60hz and didn't notice a difference in quality.

 

Looking for input, thanks.

 

 

[Downkey]

21 minutes ago, Jay2982 said:

Budget (including currency): Maybe $100-$250

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Single player AAA games, light DAW use (amp simulation), Elder Scrolls 6 whenever that happens,

Other details

 

So I just "built" a PC, that was cobbled together.  Basically the guts of a prebuilt in a new Phanteks P300 case, new board.

450w Corsair CX450M

16gb DDR4 (Crucial 3000 mhz)

Asus B550M-A wifi

Ryzen 5 3500 (counting it as 65 watts) 6 cores, 6 threads, cooled with  an Arctic Freezer 7x

OEM Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4gb

NVME SSD + 2 HDDs

4 fans total (three rated at 0.10 amps or less), no RGB

and my old Monitor 20" LED 1600x900 60hz, I tend to use Nvidias "Dynamic Super Resolution" to get like 1200p and still at ~60fps.

 

But I'm kind of wondering what my upgrade path will be, for two reasons :

 

1.  Eventually I will want ray tracing support, while keeping the same PSU.  PSU is rated at 37.4A and 448W on the 12v rail, so I guess Corsair rates them very conservatively.  So that probably limits me to a 220w card?  Will be waiting to see if AMD can improve their lineup...

 

2.  If I upgrade the CPU I can use the old 3500 in the prebuilt system (to be given to family).  But I think the existing processor is fast and the bottleneck is probably going to be GPU

 

3. My monitor is old and 900P, but 1080P is not a big jump over 900.  But I could look for something like 1080P / 144hz or maybe a higher resolution 1440p.  I don't need a massive frame rate, just a good picture.  I tried borrowing a 1080p monitor at 60hz and didn't notice a difference in quality.

 

Looking for input, thanks.

 

 

If you REALLY want an RTX card, your probably going to want to upgrade your PSU. I’m not sure how watts the 3050 will consume, but you would probably want to upgrade that anyway.

[Jay2982]

11 minutes ago, Downkey said:

If you REALLY want an RTX card, your probably going to want to upgrade your PSU. I’m not sure how watts the 3050 will consume, but you would probably want to upgrade that anyway.

3050 will be interesting, as will AMD 6800 derivatives (if they make any lower cost / lower power).  Or maybe used RTX 2060 / 2070, unless AMD can come up with something to compete.

 

My 2013 system was a AMD FX4170 125w  + AMD 7870 175w and it heated up the room too much.  So that's also a factor.   So doing the math, probably trying to stay under ~240w TDP GPU.

 

[YT_DomDaBomb20]

13 minutes ago, Jay2982 said:

3050 will be interesting, as will AMD 6800 derivatives (if they make any lower cost / lower power).  Or maybe used RTX 2060 / 2070, unless AMD can come up with something to compete.

 

My 2013 system was a AMD FX4170 125w  + AMD 7870 175w and it heated up the room too much.  So that's also a factor.   So doing the math, probably trying to stay under ~240w TDP GPU.

 

also, just putting it out there, although they arent great, some gtx cards can do ray tracing, so if power is a problem i think the lowest card is the 1060 6gb, but youll want at least a 1660 ti/ 1070 to get more than 20-30 fps

[Jay2982]

4 minutes ago, YT_DomDaBomb20 said:

also, just putting it out there, although they arent great, some gtx cards can do ray tracing, so if power is a problem i think the lowest card is the 1060 6gb, but youll want at least a 1660 ti/ 1070 to get more than 20-30 fps

Thanks, I forgot about some GTXs having it.  Kinda lame they disabled it on the 1650s, but I guess it is what it is.

[YT_DomDaBomb20]

17 hours ago, Jay2982 said:

Thanks, I forgot about some GTXs having it.  Kinda lame they disabled it on the 1650s, but I guess it is what it is.

i think it was a vram problem, looking back, not one gpu with less than 6gb of ram can do it which is a shame, because a 1650s is basically a 1060