Experienced, but clueless

[JustDalyn]

Budget (including currency): ~$1200 USD

Country: United States

I was planning on building a completely new system this spring (March or April), but with the current shortages am I better off trying to wait out the inflated prices, or build/upgrade from have/will have?  I've recently started to have some performance issues in games with my current PC. I’ve turned down the settings to make things "playable" at 1080p and it’s ok for now, but it seems like every update my framerate just gets worse. It is almost a 12-year-old platform at this point so it makes complete sense. A friend recently was getting rid of a bunch of stuff and shipped me a few motherboards and processors which I have listed below. 

I’ve compared benchmarks of my current hardware to what is in the mail, and also modern hardware, and I have no idea how much of a tangible difference there is between a CPU Mark score of 1909 and 17871

 

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

• Gaming: Rocket League, Path of Exile, Satisfactory, and hopefully some more modern titles.
• Graphic design and light video editing.

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): 

I am currently running:

• Processor: AMD Athlon II x4 620
• Motherboard: ASUS M4A88T-M
• Ram: 4x4Gb Crucial 1866MHz DDR3
• Graphics: EVGA Nvidia GTX 970
• 1Tb SATA SSD

Will have:

• AMD 9590 and Asus Crosshair V Formula (This board was water-cooled at one point. They put waterblocks on the northbridge, southbridge, and MOSFETs so the stock ones are missing. It was refit with scavenged heatsinks)
• Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 and he wasn’t sure if it was an I7- 920 or 950
• ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0 AM3+ plus a “most likely some quad-core”
• Random assorted DDR3 (at least 2x 8Gb)

I currently use two ASUS 27” 1080p 60Hz monitors, wired keyboard /mouse, and wireless Xbox controller, I will upgrade to 144Hz monitor soon(maybe 1440p). Is it possible to run 2 monitors at different resolutions/refresh rates?

 

The original plan was to go ahead and build a new pc trying to stay around $1200, I can be a little flexible if the value is there. I guess my biggest questions are: Would it be enough of a tangible performance increase to justify spending the money now or should I just try use what my friend sent me to upgrade what I have? If it is worth it, does my build look like it is using the budget to the fullest? My main priority is getting the highest quality, highest performing, and most reliable hardware I can for the money. I've always had to buy second hand, and I've never had a budget this big. I've gotten so much out of my current PC compared to what I've spent so I'm worried that now that I have the opportunity to "do it right" that it will somehow be lessened by the increased prices.

 

PCPartPicker Part List I will probably do most of my shopping at my local Microcenter or Newegg.com

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($194.99 @ Newegg) 
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Slim CPU Cooler  ($64.98 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE AX V2 ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($189.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($75.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($139.99 @ Amazon) 
Case: be quiet! Pure Base 500 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($84.90 @ B&H) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($117.00 @ Amazon) 
Case Fan: be quiet! Pure Wings 2 51.4 CFM 120 mm Fan  ($16.20 @ Amazon) 
Total: $884.04
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-04 16:49 EST-0500

 

 

 

 

[Downkey]

1 hour ago, JustDalyn said:

Budget (including currency): ~$1200 USD

Country: United States

I was planning on building a completely new system this spring (March or April), but with the current shortages am I better off trying to wait out the inflated prices, or build/upgrade from have/will have?  I've recently started to have some performance issues in games with my current PC. I’ve turned down the settings to make things "playable" at 1080p and it’s ok for now, but it seems like every update my framerate just gets worse. It is almost a 12-year-old platform at this point so it makes complete sense. A friend recently was getting rid of a bunch of stuff and shipped me a few motherboards and processors which I have listed below. 

I’ve compared benchmarks of my current hardware to what is in the mail, and also modern hardware, and I have no idea how much of a tangible difference there is between a CPU Mark score of 1909 and 17871

 

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

• Gaming: Rocket League, Path of Exile, Satisfactory, and hopefully some more modern titles.
• Graphic design and light video editing.

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): 

I am currently running:

• Processor: AMD Athlon II x4 620
• Motherboard: ASUS M4A88T-M
• Ram: 4x4Gb Crucial 1866MHz DDR3
• Graphics: EVGA Nvidia GTX 970
• 1Tb SATA SSD

Will have:

• AMD 9590 and Asus Crosshair V Formula (This board was water-cooled at one point. They put waterblocks on the northbridge, southbridge, and MOSFETs so the stock ones are missing. It was refit with scavenged heatsinks)
• Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 and he wasn’t sure if it was an I7- 920 or 950
• ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0 AM3+ plus a “most likely some quad-core”
• Random assorted DDR3 (at least 2x 8Gb)

I currently use two ASUS 27” 1080p 60Hz monitors, wired keyboard /mouse, and wireless Xbox controller, I will upgrade to 144Hz monitor soon(maybe 1440p). Is it possible to run 2 monitors at different resolutions/refresh rates?

 

The original plan was to go ahead and build a new pc trying to stay around $1200, I can be a little flexible if the value is there. I guess my biggest questions are: Would it be enough of a tangible performance increase to justify spending the money now or should I just try use what my friend sent me to upgrade what I have? If it is worth it, does my build look like it is using the budget to the fullest? My main priority is getting the highest quality, highest performing, and most reliable hardware I can for the money. I've always had to buy second hand, and I've never had a budget this big. I've gotten so much out of my current PC compared to what I've spent so I'm worried that now that I have the opportunity to "do it right" that it will somehow be lessened by the increased prices.

 

PCPartPicker Part List I will probably do most of my shopping at my local Microcenter or Newegg.com

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($194.99 @ Newegg) 
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Slim CPU Cooler  ($64.98 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE AX V2 ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($189.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($75.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($139.99 @ Amazon) 
Case: be quiet! Pure Base 500 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($84.90 @ B&H) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($117.00 @ Amazon) 
Case Fan: be quiet! Pure Wings 2 51.4 CFM 120 mm Fan  ($16.20 @ Amazon) 
Total: $884.04
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-04 16:49 EST-0500

 

 

 

 

Change the case to a 500DX. If you can’t afford it go with a Meshify C

[JustDalyn]

14 hours ago, Downkey said:

Change the case to a 500DX. If you can’t afford it go with a Meshify C

Is it just for the better front I/O? Why a Meshify C?

[Downkey]

22 minutes ago, JustDalyn said:

Is it just for the better front I/O? Why a Meshify C?

no its because of the mesh front pannels. Your air cooling and if you have a non mesh front pannel your temps will be realllly high

[JustDalyn]

bump

[Guest]

I don't know if it's worth paying $140 for the 970 Evo versus say a $100 WD SN550 or an ADATA SX6000 Pro

I have the WD SN550 in my gaming rig and I have a 970 Evo Plus in my work laptop. I know they're different use cases and other components are diferent but I do use various CAD software on both and I can't really notice any difference where you'd maybe expect difference like say if you had a pc with an HDD versus an NVMe you'd expect to see exaggerated differences loading Solidworks or exporting a model or something but on the SN550 and 970 Evo Plus there's no noticeable difference

Not sure it's worth the extra $40 but maybe other people think it is???

[JustDalyn]

3 minutes ago, Shabba said:

I don't know if it's worth paying $140 for the 970 Evo versus say a $100 WD SN550 or an ADATA SX6000 Pro

I have the WD SN550 in my gaming rig and I have a 970 Evo Plus in my work laptop. I know they're different use cases and other components are diferent but I do use various CAD software on both and I can't really notice any difference where you'd maybe expect difference like say if you had a pc with an HDD versus an NVMe you'd expect to see exaggerated differences loading Solidworks or exporting a model or something but on the SN550 and 970 Evo Plus there's no noticeable difference

Not sure it's worth the extra $40 but maybe other people think it is???

I choose it as kind of an upper limit nvme storage is all new to me, but if I can save the $40 I'm down.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, JustDalyn said:

I choose it as kind of an upper limit nvme storage is all new to me, but if I can save the $40 I'm down.

Yeah, I totally get that on paper the samsung it faster and not all ssds are equal just because the capacity is the same but in this case why not save the $40 and upgrade some other component like faster ram or a dual fan AIO cooler for the CPU?

 

Oh and regarding running 2 monitors a different resolutions, yes that's no problem.