Gaming PC upgrade recommendations

[jgmaster]

Budget (including currency): £300

Country: United Kingdom

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Fortnite, Valorant, 
Current parts: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/YkMYd9
Other details: Currently playing on 24" 1080p at 144hz, and for me fps matters more than looks so willing to lower graphics settings on games.

I bought this PC 4 years ago and I'm now looking at an upgrade. My current thoughts are a CPU upgrade so I was considering the Ryzen 5 5600x and getting a cheap B550. I'd also considered going Ryzen 3600 and avoiding the mobo upgrade, however I think the 5600x will be better when I look to upgrade my GPU. What are people's thoughts?

I'm interested in hearing any other recommendations that give good performance to cost improvements?

 

 

[Queen Chrysalis]

What games are having issues?  A 1070 should  pair pretty well with a 1600, so a CPU upgrade alone isn't gonna do anything.  If you wanted a new GPU too, you could get a 5600 non-x and keep that motherboard.  All the ASUS b350 support ryzen 5000 now.  The best value GPU upgrade atm form a 1070 are gonna be a 3070ti or 6800xt depending on what you play.

[jgmaster]

The games listed sometimes hitch or have noticeable fps drops from time to time. Nothing major, but enough that I'm wanting to think about my upgrade path. I didn't realise that the b350 supported the 5000 series now so that's an expense saved. I was planning on getting a 3060ti later in the year in the hope that the prices drop when the 40 series are released. I thought a 3070ti might be a problem with my 550w psu and 3060ti seems to have a reasonable price to performance ratio. The 5600 is a significant single core boost over the 1600, so even if it does mean the 1070 bottlenecks, do you think it is still worthwhile getting it now and then saving for the GPU upgrade later in the year.

[Queen Chrysalis]

1 hour ago, jgmaster said:

The games listed sometimes hitch or have noticeable fps drops from time to time. Nothing major, but enough that I'm wanting to think about my upgrade path. I didn't realise that the b350 supported the 5000 series now so that's an expense saved. I was planning on getting a 3060ti later in the year in the hope that the prices drop when the 40 series are released. I thought a 3070ti might be a problem with my 550w psu and 3060ti seems to have a reasonable price to performance ratio. The 5600 is a significant single core boost over the 1600, so even if it does mean the 1070 bottlenecks, do you think it is still worthwhile getting it now and then saving for the GPU upgrade later in the year.

You may just wanna bite the bullet on a new PSU when the time comes for a GPU.  All the new ones want a lot of power.  The 3060ti is never gonna be a thing at price (IDK how many nVidia is even making).  You'd be better off getting a 6700xt or going up to a 3070ti.  A 6600xt may be fine with your PSU, in that case you'd probably wanna do the CPU and GPU right now, as this is probably your last opportunity to get ~$230 for it on eBay, when new GPUs come out this winter. 

 

If you live near a microcenter you can actually get a 5600 for $150, (you'd also get $20 off a mobo so you could just get the cheapest AM4 board they have and pair it with the 1600 to sell, OR get a newer board to use and sell your b350 with the 116000 for an easier sale)  They also have a lot of open box GPU that scalpers just ended up returning so they're effectively new with a discount.  You could get a 6600XT for as low as like $330 and sell your 1070 for about $230, so an upgrade cost of only like $100 for a much more stable framerate.  

 

And a 6600xt and a 5600 non-x would be totally fine on a 550w PSU, and would be a decent fps improvement with much better 1% lows.  Or if you got a new PSU the 6800xt's and 3070ti's are showing up there open box for as low as like $630 if you wanted to do a full upgrade now.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

I think youll benifit more from just overclocking your cpu and gpu, save up more money for an actual upgrade, though if you dont have a cpu cooler a cheap 20-40£ 4-6 heatpipe (dual) tower will suffice

 

Cpu wise ive only seen 1st gen do 3.9-4.1g max so youll need to run 1.4-1.55v depending on cooling and how fast you wanna run the cpu, i suggest 3.9ghz just so it isnt too inefficient but do as you wish, intel 14nm spec is 1.52v max so id assume if these zen cpus are on the same process theyd have the same volt tolerance, even if you slightly degrade it you are gonna upgrade the thing anyway so not like it matters

[Queen Chrysalis]

On 5/22/2022 at 8:30 PM, Somerandomtechyboi said:

I think youll benifit more from just overclocking your cpu and gpu, save up more money for an actual upgrade, though if you dont have a cpu cooler a cheap 20-40£ 4-6 heatpipe (dual) tower will suffice

 

Cpu wise ive only seen 1st gen do 3.9-4.1g max so youll need to run 1.4-1.55v depending on cooling and how fast you wanna run the cpu, i suggest 3.9ghz just so it isnt too inefficient but do as you wish, intel 14nm spec is 1.52v max so id assume if these zen cpus are on the same process theyd have the same volt tolerance, even if you slightly degrade it you are gonna upgrade the thing anyway so not like it matters

The 1600 I have can do 4.1 on 1.45v, but when I export in vegas it'll crash so I just run it at 3.8 at 1.4v.  My friend's 1700 can do 4.0 on 1.45v but again, might crash on export.  He's a professional filmographer/editor so he just runs it stock and lets it boost when it can to avoid crashing when exporting in resolve.

 

As far as gaming goes, with the stock cooler you could try 3.9 at 1.3875v and see if it works, if not just keep scaling back until you get something stable.