Upgrading a Pre-built

[RohBoh]

Howdy,

 

Not sure if this is the right spot, but I'm wanting to upgrade my pre-built. There's tons of videos about how to build a PC from scratch but as some who bought a pre-built because I didn't have the experience to build, I'm now feeling stuck not knowing what upgrade would be most effective. 

 

I have an HP OMEN 30L- AMD Ryzen 7- 3700X - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 that has seen daily use for 4 years. 

 

I've added more storage and that's it... I could ask for recommendations with a $500 budget to play games like Warzone or Space Marine and looking to get more frames with a beautiful image. I'm finding games used to default to high settings are now defaulting to normal when I set up new games and I'm having to choose either frames or beauty with newer games. I average around 60 which is totally serviceable. But to me part of having the PC is pushing performance past the consoles. Which is why I got this rather than wait for the PS5 back when. 

 

I would love recommendations, but my real question is how would you go about determining what should be upgraded and which parts will make a noticable difference? Pre-built seemed like the right way to step into PC gaming and I love it. But console upgrades are far simpler, just buy the next one in the series. Maybe it's just me. But product naming conventions don't feel simple to understand what would be an upgrade. 

 

Thanks for any knowledge and insight.

 

 

[Jeppes]

It depends a bit on what psu that system has. Can it handle a 4070? Does it have dual 8-pin for gpu?

[venomtail]

We're gonna need far more info about your prebuilt. Maybe use something like HW64 to get every spec of your PC so we can see if there's anything too slow or low preventing you from upgrading.

[RohBoh]

So I added a screenshot of the HW64 info. Sorry I was missing some details. Other than the SSD and general cleaning haven't ever opened the PC. All of it is still the stock pre-built omen system. Model GT13-0024. I do appreciate the places to start though!

[RohBoh]

4 hours ago, Jeppes said:

It depends a bit on what psu that system has. Can it handle a 4070? Does it have dual 8-pin for gpu?

It looks like a 500w power supply that came with it. 

[rikitikitavi]

Main gaming upgrade is GPU. You might need a new PSU if you go high end. Here's a PSU calculator https://www.bequiet.com/en/psucalculator. For example, I've got a combo 3700X + 3070, and I don't see a point in upgrading for 1080p gaming at all, while 1440p might need some tweaking. If you are curious about 4k -> I've tried Cyberpunk, and for 4k30-60 you will have to use DLSS.

 

Next would be CPU. 3700X still holds up. The easiest is going up to 5600x3D/5700x3D, but check if your mobo supports it (possibly needs a BIOS update). Otherwise, you will be looking at a new platform, so CPU+MOBO+RAM (+PSU possibly), so basically buying a brand new pc lol.

 

For visual performance difference google/youtube: 2060 vs GPU of your choice or 3700X vs 5600x3D

 

EDIT:

Paraphrased some stuff. Also 5600x3D is not globally available, so 5700x3D

[RohBoh]

7 minutes ago, rikitikitavi said:

Main gaming upgrade is GPU. You might need a new PSU if you go high end. Here's a PSU calculator https://www.bequiet.com/en/psucalculator. For example, I've got a combo 3700X + 3070, and I don't see a point in upgrading for 1080p gaming at all, while 1440p might need some tweaking. If you are curious about 4k -> I've tried Cyberpunk, and for 4k30-60 you will have to use DLSS.

 

Next would be CPU. 3700X still holds up, but you can go up to 5600x3D/5700x3D, but check if your mobo supports it. Otherwise, you will be looking at a new platform, so CPU+MOBO+RAM (+PSU possibly).

 

For visual performance difference google/youtube: 2060 vs GPU of your choice or 3700X vs 5600x3D

Hey thank you! This is a killer place for me to start and make some choices. Really appreciate the insight

[rikitikitavi]

58 minutes ago, RohBoh said:

Hey thank you! This is a killer place for me to start and make some choices. Really appreciate the insight

- don't forget that used market can save you a lot

- some games run better on AMD, other on Nvidia, so if you have one "main" game, like a competitive title, or it might be a title like CS2 that is more CPU bound

- typically lower resolution is more CPU bound than higher

- you can also compare what would be if you only upgrade CPU, so "2060 5700x3D gaming"