Looking for a 'bang for the buck' upgrade

[el_murdoque]

Hi experts. 

I'm looking to upgrade my system. My tactic is to tag along a few years behind, so upgrades are as cheap as possible. 

 

My MoBo is an Asus P8Z777-M pro with an i7 3770 CPU. 

AFAIK, this is pretty much end of the line. That socket supports the i7 3770k as the only upgrade option, but I'm not willing to drop cash into that, so a new MoBo is due. 

 

My case is pretty decent and pretty big, there is room for full size boards. 

My PSU is a BeQuiet dark power 1000W, GPU is a 1660 Super (I won't touch that in the present market situation). 

My RAM is two 8gig sticks of Kingston DDR3 1333mhz 

Storage is a couple of SATA SSD drives (nothing exceptional)

The only other card in my system is a Soundblaster Audigy. 

 

If possible, I'd like to upgrade only MoBo/CPU and keep using all the other components, so I can upgrade to faster RAM and a M.2 drive in the future. 

 

I have no clue if that's possible with the RAM, though. 

Also, upgrading from 8 years old hardware to hardware that's a couple of years old will put me right in that era where AMD outpaced Intel, but I have no clue when that happened. 

I'm not afraid to buy a complete PC and Frankenstein a system - in a best case scenario I'd get two working machines out of such a deal. 

But focusing on the MoBo/CPU - what should I look for in terms of bang for the buck, performance and upgrade path that will set a good foundation? 

 

[Stockholmes]

I think you might need new RAM too if you want to upgrade to anything recent. DDR3 is pretty ancient at this point . A good bang for the buck CPU could be for example an intel 11400, you didn't mention your budget though? I don't know if buying a couple of years old hardware is actually cost efficient, if you're buying new.

[Chris Pratt]

16 minutes ago, Stockholmes said:

I think you might need new RAM too if you want to upgrade to anything recent. DDR3 is pretty ancient at this point . A good bang for the buck CPU could be for example an intel 11400, you didn't mention your budget though? I don't know if buying a couple of years old hardware is actually cost efficient, if you're buying new.

Just to add some context. The 11400 is under $200. It's hard to find a new CPU any cheaper than that one is going to be, but yeah, you'll need DDR4 RAM for that.

[el_murdoque]

I've not mentioned a budget because I'm not sure on that. 

I usually spend around €300 on used stuff. 

The last upgrades were the 3770 and board a couple of years back. I bought a whole rig, a discarded server unit in a big tower which cost me 280.

I built a second machine out of the leftovers and sold it for 200.  

 

I am not looking for 11th gen Intel, but rather something that's 2018 - give or take. 

 

 

[Mister Woof]

9 minutes ago, el_murdoque said:

I've not mentioned a budget because I'm not sure on that. 

I usually spend around €300 on used stuff. 

The last upgrades were the 3770 and board a couple of years back. I bought a whole rig, a discarded server unit in a big tower which cost me 280.

I built a second machine out of the leftovers and sold it for 200.  

 

I am not looking for 11th gen Intel, but rather something that's 2018 - give or take. 

 

 

I can't speak for your market, but stuff a couple years old tends to be more expensive than discounted current or last gen stuff.

 

Right now a Ryzen 5 1600 is around $150 used, the Ryzen 5 2600 is around $170 used, and the Ryzen 5 3600 is around $200 used. Similarly with older Intel parts such as the 8700/9700, they are too expensive.

 

You can get a brand new 10400F for around $150 and it will pretty much destroy the 1600 and 2600 at everything, and be slightly faster than the 3600 at gaming and slightly slower at everything else.

 

For $180, you can get a 11400F which will be better than anything AMD sells for under $300.

 

But that's here; I don't know your prices.