Platform Upgrade

nsinnott · January 10, 2018

Okay, so a family common question, I'm sure, but I figured I'd ask. I'm currently running Sandy Bridge, with a 2600 and an H61 board. I ended up purchasing the 1060 3GB, because it fit into my budget just fine and will do what I want it to do. Now, I'm working on getting the money to upgrade essentially the rest of the system, and I'm not sure what to do. On the one hand, Ryzen offers more cores at lower prices, but Intel has proven to be very good at gaming. This machine will be used mostly for gaming, but it will also be running Plex, with a maximum of 3 transcoding streams at once. the 2600 handles it pretty well, but it's starting to show its age. I'm debating between something like the 8350K/8400, and the R5 1400. I'm trying to this as cheaply as possible, while still allowing room for upgrades in the future. AMD has promised to support AM4 for much longer than Intel has supported their platforms in the past, so I'm really torn here. I have always preferred Intel, but AMD has come back with Ryzen, so if you guys could give me some ideas here, that would be great.

Sorry if this post is long winded and confusing, I had a long day and I'm not too sure that my English is the best at the minute

EDIT: Ok, so I just found a Maximus VIII Hero Alpha for ~$120 and I could probably still get a 6700K for ~$200 if you guys think that's a better idea.

P.S. I'm trying to keep it around $450-$500, but less is better (total for CPU, mobo, and RAM)