upgrading my secondery pc

[GOATWD]

Budget (including currency): to be decided gbp 

Country: england

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

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): the machine curnently is a i7400 a 128 gb ssd 2 tb of hard drives a rx580 4gb 20gb of ram i am thinking of moving it to am4 for some newer feaure suport after that i want to upgrade the gpu since i use the system on a 4k tv but for now i wanan do the cpu and motherboard unless u guys think a gpu is more worth it curent list https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/PwMgw3

 

[dark_globe]

do you plan to use this machine just as a multimedia center  ?
or are you also planning to game on it ? if so what games do you wish to play ?
what power supply , mobo and case do you currently have ?

also i´m curious about the memory configuration :
i can already tell there are some mismatched kits in there , i guess 3x4gb + 1x8gb 
which is bad for any cpu oriented high performance tasks (especially for gaming) ...
(even more so for older ryzen cpus which lose around 30-40% performance without the dual channel and with mismatched memory kits)

another thing to consider is that ryzen 1600x is pretty old already and while still good in multitasking it is not great for gaming due to slow single core performance .
if you upgrade your current platform to i7 7700K you will get better gaming performance out of it compared to 1600x .
if you want fast and cheap ryzen chips try to look for ryzen 3300x or 3500x ona  second hand market
(sometimes you can even get ryzen 3600 for similar price)

[GOATWD]

4 minutes ago, dark_globe said:

do you plan to use this machine just as a multimedia center  ?
or are you also planning to game on it ? if so what games do you wish to play ?
what power supply , mobo and case do you currently have ?

also i´m curious about the memory configuration :
i can already tell there are some mismatched kits in there , i guess 3x4gb + 1x8gb 
which is bad for any cpu oriented high performance tasks (especially for gaming) ...
(even more so for older ryzen cpus which lose around 30-40% performance without the dual channel and with mismatched memory kits)

another thing to consider is that ryzen 1600x is pretty old already and while still good in multitasking it is not great for gaming due to slow single core performance .
if you upgrade your current platform to i7 7700K you will get better gaming performance out of it compared to 1600x .
if you want fast and cheap ryzen chips try to look for ryzen 3300x or 3500x ona  second hand market
(sometimes you can even get ryzen 3600 for similar price)

the powersuply is curntly 550wat its a cyberpower class c case the motherboard is a msi b250m bazakoo its 2 8gb sticks one being sodim plus a 4gb stick they  run in dual chanel acording to cpu z with the other 4gb out of that dual chanel im using it for youtbe and lower end gaming like 30 fps min but just ment to be mostly story based games or games like ark where fps isnt importanrt

[dark_globe]

if i were you i would either leave just the 2x8gb memory sticks which run in dual channel together in this machine and
take out the mismatched 4gb one out 
or upgrade to another 2x8gb for the total of 32gb running in dual channel .
for your use case 2x8gb is totally fine and the system will be faster overall without the mismatched 4gb module in there .

1/2/3rd gen ryzens also perform much better with faster memory - i guess yours are pretty old 2133MHz or 2400MHz kits ?
while ryzen cpus perform the best with 3200/3600MHz cl16/cl18 memory modules due to CCX and infinity fabric architecture .

older intel chips are less sensitive to memory speed and it will not affect their perfromance nearly as much .
for that reason it is maybe worth to consider getting a i7 7700 (7700K is pointless since you don´t have a K mobo)
or maybe buy a newer gen intel - something like i3 12100f  (even 12400f can sometimes be found for a good price -
i once managed to get it along with b660 mobo as a combo for a €120) .

you should also be considering replacing a power supply if it is some old generic 550w model 

[GOATWD]

14 minutes ago, dark_globe said:

if i were you i would either leave just the 2x8gb memory sticks which run in dual channel together in this machine and
take out the mismatched 4gb one out 
or upgrade to another 2x8gb for the total of 32gb running in dual channel .
for your use case 2x8gb is totally fine and the system will be faster overall without the mismatched 4gb module in there .

1/2/3rd gen ryzens also perform much better with faster memory - i guess yours are pretty old 2133MHz or 2400MHz kits ?
while ryzen cpus perform the best with 3200/3600MHz cl16/cl18 memory modules due to CCX and infinity fabric architecture .

older intel chips are less sensitive to memory speed and it will not affect their perfromance nearly as much .
for that reason it is maybe worth to consider getting a i7 7700 (7700K is pointless since you don´t have a K mobo)
or maybe buy a newer gen intel - something like i3 12100f maybe (even 12400f can sometimes be found for a good price -
i once managed to get it along with b660 mobo as a combo for a €120) .

you should also be considering replacing a power supply if it is some old generic 550w model 

i will look into the i7 7700 it will mean ill have to get a new cooler since its using the stock cooler altho most of the i7 7700 cost as much as a whole new am4 mobo and i can get the ryzen 5 1600x for 25 gbp

 

[dark_globe]

yeah those old i7s can be pretty pricey in most regions .
but you should still try to get a newer ryzen chip if you can 
usually there are some cpu+mobo combos with at least something like 2600x or 3300x/3500x in them available 
and most times they are pretty cheap as well on a second hand market (at least in central europe where i live) .

by the way if you want to keep your current memory kits than i5 8600/9400f/8600k/9600k + mobo combos
are also very cheap on a second hand market usually
(and they have considerably superior single core performance over the ryzen 1600 and are not as affected by memory speeds) 
these chips will also give you nice performance boost over the i5 7400 still .
i build a few machines with these processors fairly recently and they are still decent
even for some high refresh rate oriented less demanding multiplayer titles (cs2 , valorant , fortnite etc.) .

that being said i still have one ryzen 1600 at home "on the shelf" -
and when i was testing it i was pretty happy with it -
although i paired it with faster memory (2x8gb 3000MHz cl15)
i also pushed it to 3,7GHz on all cores using just a wraith spire amd cooler
- as for the video card i was using gtx 1660 super in this build .
this machine could run many older games comfortably .