Upgrade help for combo Plex/Gaming rig

[Itsnotwebby]

Hello,

I'm struggling on what to upgrade and I'm not sure where to start. My rig is for gaming (fps, simulators, I Indie games) and running a plex server for about 10 users (roughly 2-4 concurrent).  

• My current setup is a ryzen 5 1600x
• Asus b350m-acsm, cooled with 120mm coolermaster AIO. 
• 8gb (2x4) ddr4 Geil ram OCd to 2600
• Samsung 850 evo 250gb ssd for OS/850? Pro 250gb for games/2x2tb WD blue HDD for media
• Evga gtx 1060 6gb

All tightly wrapped in a coolermaster masterbox lite 3.1 case. 

This was a budget build purchase from BB built by CyberpowerPC. It seemed like a good starting point, but I'm having issues with gaming mostly. I'm having a lot of screen tearing issues when gaming on just about any quality and cant figure that out. Monitor is a 1080p Samsung curved 27inch cf396 with freesync. I tried a few settings on the monitor and OCing the GPU to no avail. Since I have a freesync monitor should I switch to an AMD card, or is it a monitor limitation and just move on to a better monitor? Or is the 1060 just not enough?

 

 

Budget & Location [US]

No more than the cost of a 1080.  Doubt I'd need to to a 1080ti for most games. Plus I dont think the GPU deals with anything plex related. 

RAM if that's a recommended upgrade, I have no idea where to start. So many options between speeds, capacity, and brand. I definitely like the look of the tridentz and the dom plats but I feel like I could go the corsair value  brand and get higher capacity for the same price, but the speeds suffer, but how much does that affect what I'm trying to accomplish?

 

Aim

I'd like to eliminate the screen tearing problem I have, and be able to handle the 2-4 people streaming 1080p media. 

 

Monitors

I have the one above currently. Depending on advice I can upgrade. Eventually would like to end up with dual 1080p monitors or an ultrawide 1440p.

 

I hope this gives you all the info needed to help me solve this. I've been so consumed with all the upgrade options, that another perspective would be great. 

Also I'm sorry it's so scattered. This is my life right now. 

[speedbeastxx]

ryzen 7 will help and 16gb of ram 

[speedbeastxx]

A motherboard upgrade is needed, with no vrm cooling on the board, you wont get the full benefit of upgrading. 

[Itsnotwebby]

Do you have any recommendations for a better mobo? And the ram. Is going with the higher end ones with heat spreaders really beneficial or would  basic corsair value select sticks be good enough?

[Taf the Ghost]

4 minutes ago, Itsnotwebby said:

Do you have any recommendations for a better mobo? And the ram. Is going with the higher end ones with heat spreaders really beneficial or would  basic corsair value select sticks be good enough?

Modern RAM really isn't overheating. The heatspreaders help a little, but it doesn't matter much if there is airflow over the space. (But, hey, who doesn't like RGB? haha)

 

Give me a min to sort a thing or two.

 

 

 

[Taf the Ghost]

It's a Micro-ATX case. There doesn't seem to be a single one with VRM cooling. Thus, we really just need to find some heatsinks you can put on the VRMs.

 

Do you have fans in the case? That's going to matter.

[Taf the Ghost]

15 minutes ago, Itsnotwebby said:

Do you have any recommendations for a better mobo? And the ram. Is going with the higher end ones with heat spreaders really beneficial or would  basic corsair value select sticks be good enough?

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/GbdNcY

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 2700 3.2GHz 8-Core Processor  ($289.89 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: GeIL - EVO FORZA 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory  ($82.99 @ Newegg) 
Total: $372.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-05-20 20:32 EDT-0400

 

You're going to need to spend about ~20 USD to get some heatsinks for the VRMs. Maybe look around for some guides on that. You just need some thermal pads and little heatsinks. As long as there is airflow, that should solve any issues that crop up.

 

Then you'll want to look into something like Process Lasso and stick the Plex server onto 2 specific cores/4 threads (on the same CCX).

 

Actually, Process Lasso might be something worth doing before buying any parts, though I think it's going to end up being the Game + Plex is throttling part of the I/O.

[Itsnotwebby]

I'm gonna start looking into all this. I have 4 thermaltake fans in the case. 2 in the front . And two in the rear. The rear 2 are pwm push/pull with the aio cooler in the middle. 

 

I've never heard of Process Lasso before so I'm interested in that too. 

Also thanks for the pcpartpicker list. 

[Taf the Ghost]

6 minutes ago, Itsnotwebby said:

I'm gonna start looking into all this. I have 4 thermaltake fans in the case. 2 in the front . And two in the rear. The rear 2 are pwm push/pull with the aio cooler in the middle. 

 

I've never heard of Process Lasso before so I'm interested in that too. 

Also thanks for the pcpartpicker list. 

Process Lasso (there are other programs, as well, that do that same thing) became a big discussion point around the Ryzen launch. Microsoft has updated the system's scheduler at least once (and seemingly with more tweaks) since the launch to deal with the issue.

 

Hard locking the Plex Server to 3-4 threads, on the same CCX, should help some. Games require a lot of really fast, little calculations, which the Plex server could easily be impacting because it's saturating some part of the I/O. (Could end up being the ethernet, now than I think about it.)