Non tech friend is looking for a GPU

[doyleoliver]

A friend is after some advice for her sons PC, he got his PC a couple of years ago during the GPU shortage so he could not get a GPU. 

She is now looking for an upgrade to his system for his forthcoming birthday but not looking to spend too much. I don't know loads about the system, but from the photos I have been sent I have found out the basic specs.

 

I have been looking at the MSI GeForce RTX 3060 to add to his system and maybe adding a SSD.

I mainly for in corp IT so not sure what to recommend for a GPU, does this sound like a good recommendation or is there other options?

They are open to buying second hand.

 

Cheers for any advice.

 

Budget (including currency): £200-300

Country: UK

Existing system details:

ASRock H110M-HDV

Intel Core i5-6400 2.7 GHz

16gb RAM

 

[Jurrunio]

for buying new, 6650XT or 3060 12GB or 3060Ti, whichever is the cheapest. All will be bottlenecked by the CPU pretty hard but slower GPUs are worse in value. For used the 6600 is also an option but it's also noticeably slower.

 

Also watch out for the power supply.

[doyleoliver]

9 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

for buying new, 6650XT or 3060 12GB or 3060Ti, whichever is the cheapest. All will be bottlenecked by the CPU pretty hard but slower GPUs are worse in value. For used the 6600 is also an option but it's also noticeably slower.

 

Also watch out for the power supply.

Thanks a lot sounds like I was in the right ballpark, I have asked her to send me a pic of the power supply to double check that.

If she wanted to spend a bit more or a future upgrade would moving up to a i7 help?

[Ottoman420]

Those cards will be restricted by the cpu

 

But if and when he upgrades cpu he will see the full benefit of a last gen/current gen card

 

I would say the SSD is going to be almost if not more important than the gfx card at this stage in terms of usability.

[doyleoliver]

4 minutes ago, Ottoman420 said:

Those cards will be restricted by the cpu

 

But if and when he upgrades cpu he will see the full benefit of a last gen/current gen card

 

I would say the SSD is going to be almost if not more important than the gfx card at this stage in terms of usability.

What CPU would you recommend?

Yea SSD is top of my list if it does not already have one.

[Ottoman420]

19 minutes ago, doyleoliver said:

What CPU would you recommend?

Yea SSD is top of my list if it does not already have one.

Im not well versed in older Intel cpu's but that motherboard can accept 7th gen Intel cpus but i doubt it is worth it unless there is something about that generation that would make it the best budget upgrade path

Looking at this thread i doubt its worth it when you can get a 11th gen intel 11100/11400 or AM4 5600g with a 1tb sata ssd within the £300 budget and a pretty big boost to the pc capability and performance with the AMD APU (the son) could likley go a while without a gpu depending on the games he plays but for csgo or esports its pretty good tbh.

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/8P86sh   Intel 11400 with igp (not good for gaming on igpu)

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/rvzw9r   AMD 5600g APU (pretty good for gaming on at 1080p low/medium)

 

Both come with their own stock cpu coolers.

 

 

 

 

[Jurrunio]

2 hours ago, doyleoliver said:

Thanks a lot sounds like I was in the right ballpark, I have asked her to send me a pic of the power supply to double check that.

If she wanted to spend a bit more or a future upgrade would moving up to a i7 help?

Moving to a new platform (i.e. new motherboard, maybe new RAM) will be necessary. The improvement on 6th and 7th gen doesn't justify the spending because the new architectures and increased core counts on new platforms are huge.

 

2 hours ago, Ottoman420 said:

Looking at this thread i doubt its worth it when you can get a 11th gen intel 11100/11400 or AM4 5600g with a 1tb sata ssd within the £300 budget and a pretty big boost to the pc capability and performance with the AMD APU (the son) could likley go a while without a gpu depending on the games he plays but for csgo or esports its pretty good tbh.

But do note that new platform without dGPU gets smashed by i5-6400 with dGPU, GPU performance is still the number 1 factor for games and those iGPUs don't come anywhere close to a 250 quid card.