Replacing components from my desktop

Riumi · April 20, 2018

So I have a Dell Inspiron 660 with an i5 3340 and 8 gb ddr3 ram. I've upgraded the PSU to 750 Watts and the graphics card to a 970. I want to upgrade the cpu, ram and motherboard. I've never done this before so I got a couple questions if anyone can help me out. I know the inspiron 660 takes a micro-ATX board, but i'm not sure if it's compatible with a mini-itx board. If anyone knows and could let me know that'd be awesome! Also I plan to upgrade to a 6700k or 7700k and like a fairly cheap motherboard. I'm not sure how RAM compatibility works with motherboards. Will any DDR4 non-ECC unbuffered RAM work on the motherboard or do I have to specifically look at the compatibility on the motherboard's support page?

Streetguru · April 20, 2018

17 minutes ago, Riumi said:

What's your budget/country for upgrading and what do you use your PC for?

There's absolutely no reason to buy skylake/kaby lake anymore.

If it's compatible with micro ATX it should fit an ITX board fine.

KenjiUmino · April 20, 2018

if you want to upgrade to skylake/kabylake/coffeelake you need a new mainboard and new RAM - and when you plan to spend that much dough then you can possibly throw in a matching case too.

then just move your PSU and graphics card out of the dell into the new case and not bother with the dell case being compatible with the mainboard or not.

eventually, you can just put the original PSU back into the dell (better get an inexpensive replacement) and sell the dell or use it as a 2nd computer for low spec stuff

Riumi · April 21, 2018

6 hours ago, Streetguru said:

What's your budget/country for upgrading and what do you use your PC for?

There's absolutely no reason to buy skylake/kaby lake anymore.

If it's compatible with micro ATX it should fit an ITX board fine.

why do you say no reason? what else would I get? also, budget is like 350 currently. might just wait till i have more cash aswell.

Streetguru · April 21, 2018

8 minutes ago, Riumi said:

why do you say no reason? what else would I get? also, budget is like 350 currently. might just wait till i have more cash aswell.

Because Ryzen killed both of those platforms? The R5 1600 is about the best value CPU right now, even with Ryzen 2 having just launched. 8GBs of 3000mhz RAM is usually $80-90 right now due to broken DDR4 pricing.

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/CXfXvn
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/CXfXvn/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor ($174.69 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($74.39 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($162.99 @ Newegg)