Help upgrading kid's PC.

[bblldave]

Hi Guys,

I need some help. I do not know much about PCs but my kids would like to have their PC upgraded. Here is the current stats:

Brand: cyberpowerpc
Model: c series
CPU: amd ryzen 3 2300x 3.5ghz
Memory: 8gb ram
GPU: radeon rx 570 series
motherboard: MSI a320m-hdvr4.0

The computer lags when they play fortnite, but works fine when they play roblox. It also seems to be very slow when trying to multi-task. Can anyone recommend some upgrades which would allow them to play fortnite comfortably and possibly some other higher end games?

 

[IkeaGnome]

5 minutes ago, bblldave said:

Memory: 8gb ram

Do you know if this is 1 stick of 8gb or 2 of 4? If it's 1 of 8 that would be a cheap upgrade that will help a lot.

 

[bblldave]

It looks like it is only 1 stick with 2 slots. Should I get another 8GB stick?

[curiousmind34]

What is their storage? If they don't have any ssd at all you should get one, decent 500gb ssds cost roughly $50. If they already have an ssd with enough storage, you don't need to upgrade it.

 

The motherboard has two ram slots, if one of them is empty you can get another 8gb stick of ram, this will improve multitasking performance 

The CPU and GPU should be fine enough, and are a bit harder to replace. I would not upgrade those immediately, I would reccomend only doing that after you evaluate the performance with the extra ram.

[curiousmind34]

https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-8gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820232419?Item=N82E16820232419&nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=AFC-RAN-COM&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_source=afc-PCPartPicker&AFFID=2558510&AFFNAME=PCPartPicker&ACRID=1&ASID=https%3a%2f%2fpcpartpicker.com%2f&ranMID=44583&ranEAID=2558510&ranSiteID=8BacdVP0GFs-5W8aPdnLjhUHeyh6PcbL0g

 

here is a link to a 3000 mhz 1x8 kit of ram, it should probably speed up the pc a good bit while multitasking/gaming.

Also worth mentioning is to clear out non-necesary background tasks. Especially on a 4 core CPU like the 2300x, they can hamper the performance of games significantly.

[bblldave]

Awesome advise guys. Do you know of any good tutorials to teach me how to clear out the non-necessary background tasks? 

[bblldave]

Also they do have a 250GB ssd and a 1TB Hdd.

[OrangeSunshine]

18 minutes ago, bblldave said:

Awesome advise guys. Do you know of any good tutorials to teach me how to clear out the non-necessary background tasks? 

Ctrl+shift+escape should bring up task manager. Go to processes and close things that may be taking up resources by right clicking and selecting "end process." It is generally a good Idea to leave windows processes (or things that you don't know what they do) running so you don't cause a system crash. However, apps like microsoft office and adobe cc that are only need when being actively used can be ended while gaming.

 

I second the notion that a second ram stick with similar specs should show a nice improvement in performance.  That would be the first thing I try. 

[curiousmind34]

20 minutes ago, bblldave said:

Awesome advise guys. Do you know of any good tutorials to teach me how to clear out the non-necessary background tasks? 

Theoretically the perfect method to do it is to reset windows, but that is very time consuming and doesn't provide that much benefit.

Since somebody already described how to end existing tasks, I will type up how to disable unwanted apps from running in the first place.

 

1) open task manager

 

2) open the Startup tab (if you don't see it you might have to click "More details")

You will likely see several unnecesary tasks that appear as "Enabled". For this example I am going to choose to disable cortana. Just right click where it says "Enabled" and click "Disable". Do this for as many times as you need for different programs. Then just restart the computer and those programs will no longer run in the background. Don't disable stuff that you don't understand.

 

14 minutes ago, bblldave said:

Also they do have a 250GB ssd and a 1TB Hdd.

That should be adequate, just make sure to install frequently used programs to the ssd so they load faster

[bblldave]

Just now, OrangeSunshine said:

Ctrl+shift+escape should bring up task manager. Go to apps and programs and close things that my be taking up resources my right clicking and selecting "end process." It is generally a good Idea to leave windows processes (or things that you don't know what they do) running so you don't cause the system to crash. However, apps like microsoft office and adobe cc that are only need when being actively used can be ended while gaming. 

Thanks a lot. I will check that out as well. I appreciate the advise. I apologize if these are simple questions, but like I said I do not know much about computers.

[IkeaGnome]

3 minutes ago, bblldave said:

Awesome advise guys. Do you know of any good tutorials to teach me how to clear out the non-necessary background tasks? 

Task manager is your friend here. You can open it, click More details in the bottom left. Then you'll get a new looking Task Manager. If you click where it says "CPU" in the top middle, you can sort by what is using the most CPU. If it's not nessecary, you can "End Task". If you leave task manager's more details in the default view, it will tell you which are background processes, but it won't be sorted by usage. This is what "More Details" and sorted by CPU usage looks like. If you wanted to go through and close some of that stuff out, we could help figure out what are necessary for the computer to run and what isn't.

Spoiler

The other option you have is removing programs from start up. 

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2944-add-delete-enable-disable-startup-items-windows-10-a.html

Option 1 is the easiest of these.