Tiny Upgrades For a Tiny Machine

[PunchingPigeons]

Hey People of Linus Tech! This is my first visit to the furom after discovering a few videos on youtube and realising it may be the best place for me hopefully ill be able to pass on some knowledge gained later down the line, but for now im here to make sure i dont commit to any acts of idiocy, ragarding small or large upgrades. Im here to make friends because none of mine have PC's and the ones that do? They just laugh at my inferior set up

 

Hardware/System

Radeon Software Version - 15.12
Radeon Software Edition - Crimson
Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R7 200 Series
Memory Size - 1024 MB
Memory Type - DDR3
Core Clock - 780 MHz
Windows Version - Windows 10
System Memory - 6 GB
CPU Type - AMD Athlon(tm) 5150 APU with Radeon(tm) R3

Motherboard - Asus AM1-A Mini ITX

Storage - 250GB HDD

Case - CiT MTX 001B-Black Mini-ITX Cube Case 300W PSU

Operating System - Windows 10

 

My main use of the PC at this current moment is heavy gaming (yes i know, hahaha what am i thinking?)

Well, the purpose was origonally a basic machine to do all tasks of my business and light media use. After playing about on some games (and comming from an xbox360) you can see why i thought this little set up had a lot of potential. slight improvement on xbox graphics with better lighting and a higher frame rate and 4k ready! Although it fails to play nearly all videos from my Galaxy note . But have you ever played skyrim on a 360? Yeah, well...im used to under average FPS gaming when playing newer titles.

 

Im getting a bit tired of constantly messing with settings with no positive reults on some titles post 2012. Some games like Batman Arkham City run very nicely on high settings, along with left for dead, frame rate on high is awesome. Dirt Rally runs nice on low and okay-ish on medium (only game i notice heating my PC).

 

Witcher 2 (not 3) Mortal kombat 10 on lowest settings (oh so low), Project cars, witcher 3, a plethora of open world rpg games recently released, i could go on....there is so much i long to play but refuse to even try to download for fear of embarrasment. I have a naff hd ready flatscreen i use, which i know doesnt help things. my screen will be one of the first upgrades. im sporry for my rants, if im here for long enough im sure you wil get used to them

 

AIMS

Realistically i have both a short term and long term goal. All revolves around the world of micro itx builds. The first i would love to split into 2 groups:

 

1: Budget upgrades to this sytem to increase stability in more recent games where textures and fancy options cannot be dialed back as much. No i dont mean for the witcher 3 (thats my long term goal). I want to address areas i cant find much detail about online, such as upgrading to a 5350 chip and more ram vs adding a gpu to the current 5150 and keeping 6gb ram. Out of ssd, more ram, gpu or better apu (or what combination) will improve my gaming stability. Should i overclock my current apu? because i have been, with improvements (for example dark souls 2 almost runs at 25 fps on high settings, yaaaaay) and i havent noticed an increase in total heat (until dirt rally misses parts of the track). stopping things like that happening without losing too much finesse of game detail is important to me. By stable i mean 30fps or above. 60 would be golden but on a cheaper budget i doubt thats possible. i will hack the case to add fans if the psu can fit more.

 

2. The best possible parts that will fit on this motherboard that could be kept when i upgrade my motherboard. bassically here my aim would be to create bottlenecks, dial whats causing them back and be able to open things up as i improve the less worthy pieces (like getting some gigabyte motherboard and keeping my basic apu until a later date, having a good gpu thats far to [powerful for cpu but can be utilised later down the line)

 

Am i making sense? i am starting to get a headache. i started this threat with such confidence and now i feel like im drowing in my own explanations and goals. Please help

 

(sorry for any typos, as i said my screen is terrible and doesnt help to look at it too long while typing) i like conversation, light debates and gaining knowledge so feel free to rant away too me, tell me where im going wrong and all that jazz.

 

Before i approach my long term goal at a later date (heres the noob request for you and im so so sorry if anyone thinks less of me for it but....) if anyone can suggest a not too expensive set up, so i can at least have a go at witcher 3...i would be in your debt...the day its possible to send a cookie through an email, then you can have all the cookies

 

[SlipperyPete]

welcome to the forum  I am new as well and my system is also a budget mini itx. my pc is a bit more powerful as I have made a few upgrades so helping you along your upgrade path shouldn't be too hard. your cpu is good enough for the time being and you have enough ram. I wouldn't focus on having a "great" motherboard. budget ones do just fine. I would recommend a new video card. at least a 2 or 3gb one. what is your budget on new components?

 

[PunchingPigeons]

Hey Pete thanks for the reply

if a standalone video card is where I'm lacking then I can devote more money to it. If it's hardware that will last me a while (not just 'somthing for now) then I'm willing to spend a few hundred. Second hand is fine as well

I was originally thinking just upgrading to amd hd5350 (as it's so cheap), getting the amd 57somthing somthing gpu to take to the pressure off the apu.

 

Another 4gb stick of ram and the slightly better apu, while buying buying a second hand video card should keep all with my budget of a few hundred quid. It's hard to give an exact price because I'm a gardener and my wage changes from week to week it's better for me to work towards suggestions in different price brackets. I can look up the cards and try work out what will give me the best performance to price ratio.  Then come back here crying with more questions when my brain explodes thanks again for your help

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SlipperyPete]

On 3/10/2016 at 4:01 AM, PunchingPigeons said:

Hey Pete thanks for the reply

if a standalone video card is where I'm lacking then I can devote more money to it. If it's hardware that will last me a while (not just 'somthing for now) then I'm willing to spend a few hundred. Second hand is fine as well

I was originally thinking just upgrading to amd hd5350 (as it's so cheap), getting the amd 57somthing somthing gpu to take to the pressure off the apu.

 

Another 4gb stick of ram and the slightly better apu, while buying buying a second hand video card should keep all with my budget of a few hundred quid. It's hard to give an exact price because I'm a gardener and my wage changes from week to week it's better for me to work towards suggestions in different price brackets. I can look up the cards and try work out what will give me the best performance to price ratio.  Then come back here crying with more questions when my brain explodes thanks again for your help

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok that sounds good. First things first. A new video card. Id recommend a Radeon R9 270x or a  Radeon R9 280 and another 4gb stick of ram. Just with that you should be able to run the witcher 3 in a stable 30+ fps nature. Than if you have extra money or after you save a bit more grab a quad core cpu clocked at 2.5 ghz at least. Just check socket type compatibility. 

[PunchingPigeons]

20 hours ago, SlipperyPete said:

Ok that sounds good. First things first. A new video card. Id recommend a Radeon R9 270x or a  Radeon R9 280 and another 4gb stick of ram. Just with that you should be able to run the witcher 3 in a stable 30+ fps nature. Than if you have extra money or after you save a bit more grab a quad core cpu clocked at 2.5 ghz at least. Just check socket type compatibility. 

Will the R9 series fit my motherboard? the asus am1i-a only has a pcie x4 slot and i have no idea how they work. Do i need a x16 slot for any board to take a video card? (this is where you can tell im new around here)

 

If it does fit, then that's going on my shopping list will be able to transfer over to a more desireable cpu (and board) at a later date, as you say.

[Elysiann_OZ]

2 hours ago, PunchingPigeons said:

Will the R9 series fit my motherboard? the asus am1i-a only has a pcie x4 slot and i have no idea how they work. Do i need a x16 slot for any board to take a video card? (this is where you can tell im new around here)

 

If it does fit, then that's going on my shopping list will be able to transfer over to a more desireable cpu (and board) at a later date, as you say.

Hmm, that will limit things in regards to graphics cards. The first card that came to mind that will work on the PCI2.0 x4 slot was a GeForce GT610 (like a Zotac ZT-60607-10L) but that has only 1Gb of memory. Then I remembered that the Radeon HD 6450 ( like a HIS H645H2GD1), has 2Gb of memory. Either way, both of these cards use the PCIe x1 interface. The PCIe2 x 4 interface was used on things like sound cards, RAID cards, add-in cards for more USB2 ports, etc.

 

I'm sure there are other cards out there, but the fact is that most graphics cards these days use the x8 or x16 slots.

 

 

 

[Elysiann_OZ]

Well, I must of had a brain fart. LOL

There were other cards out there .. that use the PCIe2 x4 interface.. stuff like the ASUS GT630 2Gb ( GT630-SL-2GD3-L), ASUS GT720 ( GT720-SL-2GD3-BRK).

 

The GT630 would be my recommendation, it has 384 CUDA cores, the GT720 only has 192 CUDA cores.

 

[SlipperyPete]

He wants to play the witcher 3. Upgrade to a new board. Dont waste ur money on a crappy video card 

[SlipperyPete]

Also a new board means a new windows key. Buy it on the cheap on reddit  be careful though. Pm me if you want the link

[PunchingPigeons]

On 12/03/2016 at 9:26 PM, Elysiann_OZ said:

Well, I must of had a brain fart. LOL

There were other cards out there .. that use the PCIe2 x4 interface.. stuff like the ASUS GT630 2Gb ( GT630-SL-2GD3-L), ASUS GT720 ( GT720-SL-2GD3-BRK).

 

The GT630 would be my recommendation, it has 384 CUDA cores, the GT720 only has 192 CUDA cores.

 

I looked up the card and the reviews were...disscouraging, haha. Thanks Linus!

 

If i come across somthing like this second hand then it will be a must! Full price, including the 5350 APU, 4GB RAM and SSD is just pointless. Upgrading the board at a later date gives me a lot more options, wish i checked the slot before asking questions. i appreciate the input though. hoping these cards are cheap as chips now.

On 14/03/2016 at 5:19 AM, SlipperyPete said:

He wants to play the witcher 3. Upgrade to a new board. Dont waste ur money on a crappy video card 

Hey Pete, Im not quite that niave. My aim was to get my current set up running as fast as possible. When i have my budget for my Mini ITX for witcher 3 on super ultra "oh my god how beautiful is this game" settings (and whatever else is out at that point) ill be shoving this into a smaller case with a better fan and giving it my sister.

 

Im hoping that the minor upgrades will give it enough power for me in the meantime (currently my pc doesnt over heat, it just makes it very clear when its having a bad time while gaming). Someone better than me could have my set up running a lot better. I dont understand its inconsistency between games. Dirt 3 runs nice on medium, brilliant on low. as you would expect. Witcher 2 shows my PC the middle finger and Mortal Kombat runs nice on a mix of medium to low, then half way through a cut scene has an epileptic fit and stops working. Thes best running games dont always have the lesser graphics.

 

Gamming on a mini ITX that cost less than most peoples graphics cards and im here complaining about my experince