Upgrade advice needed

[MoneyMonkey]

Hi all,

   Hoping I can get some advice on the best option for upgrading my pc which I built a few years ago now. 
 

Currently I have a Ryzen 2600 on an MSI B450M Mortar motherboard with 16Gb of 2933 ram, a 750W PSU and a GTX 1080 which I luckily got second hand. 

 

Should I get a new motherboard and Ryzen 7000 series cpu while leaving the gpu as is, or spread the budget around and do smaller upgrades to the cpu, gpu and ram. 
 

I can get a RTX 2080ti second hand for around £300 if I part exchange my GTX 1080, which would leave me enough to upgrade to a Ryzen 5600X cpu and better ram, leaving the motherboard as is. This is what I’m thinking might be best, but not sure if it might come back to haunt me later when I next want to upgrade. 
 

Any advice would be appreciated. 

 

Budget (including currency): £500 (GBP)

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: AAA games, including Hogwarts Legacy when it releases 

 

[Amir F. Rad]

25 minutes ago, MoneyMonkey said:

Hi all,

   Hoping I can get some advice on the best option for upgrading my pc which I built a few years ago now. 
 

Currently I have a Ryzen 2600 on an MSI B450M Mortar motherboard with 16Gb of 2933 ram, a 750W PSU and a GTX 1080 which I luckily got second hand. 

 

Should I get a new motherboard and Ryzen 7000 series cpu while leaving the gpu as is, or spread the budget around and do smaller upgrades to the cpu, gpu and ram. 
 

I can get a RTX 2080ti second hand for around £300 if I part exchange my GTX 1080, which would leave me enough to upgrade to a Ryzen 5600X cpu and better ram, leaving the motherboard as is. This is what I’m thinking might be best, but not sure if it might come back to haunt me later when I next want to upgrade. 
 

Any advice would be appreciated. 

 

Budget (including currency): £500 (GBP)

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: AAA games, including Hogwarts Legacy when it releases 

 

there are many cheap intel options on 12th gen i got a ddr4 msi b660 motherboard very cheap and i think on single core performance intel beats amd if i was in your shoes i would sold everything and bought a motherboard with 12600k and good ram and over the time complite it more like one month i would bought a ram next month another ram stick next month nvme m.2 ssd after that a case after that a good psu , with a motherbard and one stick of ram in any speed but same socket and cpu and an old psu and any old sata hard drive basically you can start to using your pc and over time add diffrent parts 

[jamie.three]

1 hour ago, MoneyMonkey said:

I can get a RTX 2080ti second hand for around £300 if I part exchange my GTX 1080, which would leave me enough to upgrade to a Ryzen 5600X cpu and better ram, leaving the motherboard as is. This is what I’m thinking might be best, but not sure if it might come back to haunt me later when I next want to upgrade. 

Id say that this is your best option. 5600X with a 2080ti should be well ballenced for most games at 1080p or 1440p. Its also probably not worth upgrading to any less than DDR4 3600 Cl 16 RAM since 3200 isnt much of an improvment over 2933. Since your next upgrade will prtobably be DDR5 rather than DDR4, it might not be worth getting a RAM upgrade at all if you go down this route. Its true that Zen 3 really benifits from fast RAM but 2933 really isnt that bad compared to 2133 etc. so youd probably see more of a difference spending that extra money elsewhere (or just saving it)

 

1 hour ago, MoneyMonkey said:

Should I get a new motherboard and Ryzen 7000 series cpu while leaving the gpu as is

A much newer CPU like a 7600X will probably be overkill (especially at 1440p or higher) without a GPU upgrade as well. If you are planning a GPU upgrade fairly soon down the line as well then you may as well wait until then to upgrade your CPU as well, by which time AMD will probably have released some 7000x3D CPUs which are probably going to be a lot better for gaming, or at the least prices of AM5 motherboards, CPUs and DDR5 RAM might have come down a bit as they become more mainstream. Right now if you do want to go for a CPU and motherboard upgrade then Intel 13th Gen is currently both faster and cheaper.

[MoneyMonkey]

8 hours ago, Amir F. Rad said:

there are many cheap intel options on 12th gen i got a ddr4 msi b660 motherboard very cheap and i think on single core performance intel beats amd if i was in your shoes i would sold everything and bought a motherboard with 12600k and good ram and over the time complite it more like one month i would bought a ram next month another ram stick next month nvme m.2 ssd after that a case after that a good psu , with a motherbard and one stick of ram in any speed but same socket and cpu and an old psu and any old sata hard drive basically you can start to using your pc and over time add diffrent parts 

I must admit I hadn’t even thought of switching to intel, so this is definitely another option. Unfortunately this’ll be my only upgrade for a while, so think I might need something more balanced. 

[MoneyMonkey]

7 hours ago, jamie.three said:

Id say that this is your best option. 5600X with a 2080ti should be well ballenced for most games at 1080p or 1440p. Its also probably not worth upgrading to any less than DDR4 3600 Cl 16 RAM since 3200 isnt much of an improvment over 2933. Since your next upgrade will prtobably be DDR5 rather than DDR4, it might not be worth getting a RAM upgrade at all if you go down this route. Its true that Zen 3 really benifits from fast RAM but 2933 really isnt that bad compared to 2133 etc. so youd probably see more of a difference spending that extra money elsewhere (or just saving it)

 

A much newer CPU like a 7600X will probably be overkill (especially at 1440p or higher) without a GPU upgrade as well. If you are planning a GPU upgrade fairly soon down the line as well then you may as well wait until then to upgrade your CPU as well, by which time AMD will probably have released some 7000x3D CPUs which are probably going to be a lot better for gaming, or at the least prices of AM5 motherboards, CPUs and DDR5 RAM might have come down a bit as they become more mainstream. Right now if you do want to go for a CPU and motherboard upgrade then Intel 13th Gen is currently both faster and cheaper.

I agree that balance is important and a switch to AM5 with a 7000 series cpu might be good, but only if I can swing a gpu upgrade soon down the line as well. 
 

this’ll be my only upgrade opportunity for a while, so think something balanced is the best option. And 3600 CL16 is what I was thinking for the ram upgrade. Like you said, anything less probably isn’t worthwhile to upgrade to now. 

[Amir F. Rad]

23 hours ago, MoneyMonkey said:

I agree that balance is important and a switch to AM5 with a 7000 series cpu might be good, but only if I can swing a gpu upgrade soon down the line as well. 
 

this’ll be my only upgrade opportunity for a while, so think something balanced is the best option. And 3600 CL16 is what I was thinking for the ram upgrade. Like you said, anything less probably isn’t worthwhile to upgrade to now. 

i was facing a similar situation like yours, am5 socket is only available on ddr5 but lga1700 is available on ddr4 and ddr5 so with intel you can get everything much cheaper while i was deciding for what cpu annd ram to use someone in here told me to get 12400 and 3600 cl16 or less ram and i really think this is the best option posible for me and i think it is a good choice for you too even with your 2080, but in the other hand am5 i think is in the start of its use in amd cpus and if you can efford it, this is the best choice posible i couldnt effort am5 on ddr5 also i had lga1700 motherboard already but if you can get a proper motherboard with am5 socket and get 2080, for next one or two years you gonna have a good system and anytime you could save enough you can buy a better graphic and a newer cpu after one or two years, also consider even geting a lower cpu but better gpu because in 6 months there is gonna be even a worst shortage in gpu so better to get higher gpu