Upgrade for friends pc

[Guest]

my friend has a crap pc so he saved up some money to upgrade it and we came up with this parts list that has the things he needs to upgrade most.

 

Budget (including currency): 400-450 usd

Country: usa

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

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): 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/GrNTPX

 

his current system:

i5 4460

8gb ddr3 2x4

crappy power supply

gt 720 2gb ddr3

windows 10

1tb hdd

1080p 60hz asus monitor

its a lenovo prebuilt made in 2014-2015

fortunately everything is standard like motherboard size and power supply connectors.

[MrMase]

Can you provide details on crappy power supply as that limits our ability to advise on if a new one is needed before recommending GPU upgrade.

Based on the above though I would look to add a Crucial MX 500 256GB SSD for a boot drive to start as reserving the bulk of the budget for other parts

[emosun]

Seems ok. You dont have anything that cant be moved to a newer system later on the list so thats good.

 

As an alternate. Get a used cheaper gpu and get them more ram

[Ryuikko]

Imo I'd go cpu upgrade instead of gpu upgrade.

If you go gpu upgrade, your system would most likely be massively limited by what might be pcie gen 2 or 3 16x slot making the upgrade rather useless. Either direction you'd probably be bottlenecked in someway, but I'd rather be gpu bottlenecked then cpu

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8yjKcb

The psu could probably be downgraded to a 650 depending on what gpu they could upgrade later

[MrMase]

Ryuikko is not wrong on the PCIe side being a potential bottleneck however is PCIe Gen3 then would look at SSD, GPU and PSU.

[Ryuikko]

Another alternative could be last gen or used  ryzen or intel bundle with mobo ram since cpus have a pretty low failure rate iirc, gpus can also be found cheap rn from crypto crash, or from what I've seen at least. Depends what specific model of psu that the pre-built has, but an upgrade o f that might be needed as well, a semi modular or non modular 650 gold would probably be fine.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, MrMase said:

Can you provide details on crappy power supply as that limits our ability to advise on if a new one is needed before recommending GPU upgrade.

Based on the above though I would look to add a Crucial MX 500 256GB SSD for a boot drive to start as reserving the bulk of the budget for other parts

its a 280 watt psu from a brand ive never heard of

[MrMase]

Just now, rippy4500 said:

its a 280 watt psu from a brand ive never heard of

New PSU definately required for any kind of CPU / GPU upgrade then.

At this stage I would give serious consideration to Ryuikko's suggestions for replacing the bulk of parts and focus on GPU later.

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Ryuikko said:

Imo I'd go cpu upgrade instead of gpu upgrade.

If you go gpu upgrade, your system would most likely be massively limited by what might be pcie gen 2 or 3 16x slot making the upgrade rather useless. Either direction you'd probably be bottlenecked in someway, but I'd rather be gpu bottlenecked then cpu

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8yjKcb

The psu could probably be downgraded to a 650 depending on what gpu they could upgrade later

why cpu upgrade? he has a gt 720, one of the games he plays gets about 15fps or less at 1080p lowest settings, its super gpu bound and the i5 4460 can handle 60fps no problem unless he has tons of junk running in the background.

 

if they upgrade cpu i have an r5 2600 and 8gb of 2x4 2666mhz ram that im not using, he would just need a board for that, it would be a great upgrade over the 4460.

[Ryuikko]

2 minutes ago, rippy4500 said:

r5 2600 and 8gb of 2x4 2666mhz ram that im not using, he would just need a board for that, it would be a great

Yes that would make things slighty easier.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/smyRzf

You could probably be find a cheaper board but iirc this one has bios flashback which would be useful to get the system working.

[MrMase]

12 minutes ago, Ryuikko said:

Yes that would make things slighty easier.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/smyRzf

You could probably be find a cheaper board but iirc this one has bios flashback which would be useful to get the system working.

Given this is then an AMD Build I would recommend avoiding Corsair memory from posts seen earlier today (also my own bias from past experience with them). Crucial or G.Skill would be better but would recommend selecting off the Motherboards approved parts list.

[Ryuikko]

16 minutes ago, MrMase said:

Given this is then an AMD Build I would recommend avoiding Corsair memory from posts seen earlier today

I put in the ram for reference as I have no idea what kit op has currently and it was the first for me that came up when I searched "2x4 2666" on newegg

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, Ryuikko said:

I put in the ram for reference as I have no idea what kit op has currently and it was the first for me that came up when I searched "2x4 2666" on newegg

crucial ballistix ram, i ran this kit for a while and got it to 3000mhz with that 2600, probably could go further but i didnt push for more than that.

[MrMase]

3 minutes ago, rippy4500 said:

crucial ballistix ram, i ran this kit for a while and got it to 3000mhz with that 2600, probably could go further but i didnt push for more than that.

If its worked then that is fine, I would probably leave set to which ever XMP / DOCP profile is available

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, MrMase said:

If its worked then that is fine, I would probably leave set to which ever XMP / DOCP profile is available

all he would need is a board then, the board i have i got for around 70 dollars. gigabyte b450m ds3h, theres probably better boards out there but i think its a good budget option since i havent had any major issues with it.

[MrMase]

Just now, rippy4500 said:

all he would need is a board then, the board i have i got for around 70 dollars. gigabyte b450m ds3h, theres probably better boards out there but i think its a good budget option since i havent had any major issues with it.

I'd recommend a higher PSU with the board, to account for GPU upgrade as you go something like a Corsair RM750X