PC upgrade for friend

[Avocheeseado]

Budget (including currency): £200-400

Country: UK

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

 

My friend has a pre built PC (that he bought about 3 years ago) which is far from powerful. He wants to upgrade it as it really struggles in games, so I suggested he gets a new GPU and CPU to catch up.

This is what I believe his current system to be like: (I just put down any old PSU as not sure what he has exactly)

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/PD49wc

 

I have suggested another stick of 8GB RAM, and this RX 6600 GPU: PowerColor Fighter 

But this will obviously bottleneck his CPU... so which CPU would anyone recommend that would fit in the A320 mobo? Or would it be worth getting a whole new mobo too? Thanks a lot for any help

 

[Ryuikko]

All am4 cpus can fit the a320 board, its more of a question of thermal throttling the mobo. Using the stock cooler might help a little bit since the fan is blowing upwards, but you'd probably have to look at reviews of what that specific board can handle.  Imo the priority should be 

1. Cpu upgrade, with perhaps a needed mobo upgrade as well. 

2. Dual channel memory

3. Anything besides a hdd

4. Dgpu, with this budget at least

[Avocheeseado]

On 8/4/2022 at 8:10 PM, Ryuikko said:

All am4 cpus can fit the a320 board, its more of a question of thermal throttling the mobo. Using the stock cooler might help a little bit since the fan is blowing upwards, but you'd probably have to look at reviews of what that specific board can handle.  Imo the priority should be 

1. Cpu upgrade, with perhaps a needed mobo upgrade as well. 

2. Dual channel memory

3. Anything besides a hdd

4. Dgpu, with this budget at least

How does this look? I am unfamiliar with Ryzen 4000 series and what boards support it as it seems to be a new addition to the consumer market

- I am also not sure if his current mobo can support this cpu so have added a new board just in case

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/qwmKsL

[venomtail]

Extremely small budget. Multiple routes he could go down with, such as investing into hardware now that can handle bigger and better CPU, RAM and GPU later down the line or get something now.

Not the best value for money with hopefully decent mobo that can handle more powerful stuff and still £12 over budget:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  (£114.99 @ AWD-IT)
Motherboard: MSI B450M MORTAR MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£61.46 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£55.99 @ Corsair UK)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 6500 XT 4 GB PULSE Video Card  (£179.89 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Total: £412.33
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-08-06 18:04 BST+0100

[Ryuikko]

If you're getting a new board, I'd go with something like this

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/QVpJpH

The 12100f will destroy the 4100 in pretty much everything you throw at it, as well as a board swap to match the cpu

[Avocheeseado]

15 hours ago, venomtail said:

Extremely small budget. Multiple routes he could go down with, such as investing into hardware now that can handle bigger and better CPU, RAM and GPU later down the line or get something now.

Not the best value for money with hopefully decent mobo that can handle more powerful stuff and still £12 over budget:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  (£114.99 @ AWD-IT)
Motherboard: MSI B450M MORTAR MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£61.46 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£55.99 @ Corsair UK)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 6500 XT 4 GB PULSE Video Card  (£179.89 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Total: £412.33
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-08-06 18:04 BST+0100

 

15 hours ago, Ryuikko said:

If you're getting a new board, I'd go with something like this

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/QVpJpH

The 12100f will destroy the 4100 in pretty much everything you throw at it, as well as a board swap to match the cpu

His current motherboard will be able to be BIOS updated to support 4000 or 5000 series AMD chips, so it might be worth doing that rather than getting a new motherboard (adding to the cost). 

Although yes, if we did go down the route of a new mobo, intel would be better at this price.

[venomtail]

5 hours ago, Avocheeseado said:

 

His current motherboard will be able to be BIOS updated to support 4000 or 5000 series AMD chips, so it might be worth doing that rather than getting a new motherboard (adding to the cost). 

Although yes, if we did go down the route of a new mobo, intel would be better at this price.

Sure weather his board can support Zen 3 is only half the question. Even if he can, I have doubt a 320 board won't cook itself alive and throttle a more powerful 5000 series CPU the second it's turned on.