Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

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Calavera
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Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by Calavera »

I would like to upgrade my PC when I get some extra money. If any of you remember my PC upgrade threads from the past you know it will take me forever to finally settle on the parts and actually order it. I'm looking for the best bang for my buck, so no $500 Core i9.

For the CPU I'd like to stay around $200. I'm willing to pay a little more if there is something much better for only a few dollars more. And of course I would love to pay less if there is something that is just a little slower for less.

This is what I'm considering for the CPU
AMD RYZEN 5 3600 6-Core 3.6 GHz (4.2 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 65W $200
https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-3600 ... 6819113569

Now onto the motherboard which is usually one of the hardest components for me to pick. There are so many with such a huge difference in price. As long as it has the features I need which are all pretty standard I don't think a $300 motherboard is going to give any noticeable difference than a $100 motherboard. But maybe I'm wrong. I could use some more education in the mobo department. I'd like to keep the price of the motherboard under $100 if possible.

I haven't looked into motherboards all that much but I suppose this one looks ok
ASRock X470 Master SLI/AC AM4 AMD Ryzen 3000 Series CPU Ready $140
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813157833

At $140 it is a bit more than I'd to spend on a motherboard. They do have an open box of it for $104 which is closer to the price I'd like to pay for a mobo. But I figure buying an open box motherboard probably isn't the greatest idea. Any motherboard recommendations would be appreciated.

For the RAM I'm considering this
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) $78
https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-16gb-288 ... 6820231941

So how does that look? I'll be keeping my GPU for now which is a R9 290X. If I do decide to upgrade I was looking at this.
MSI Radeon RX Vega 56 $310
[/i]https://www.newegg.com/msi-radeon-rx-ve ... 6814137263[/i]

So I'm looking at around $420 for just the PC and $310 for the GPU. So a total of $730 if I decide to get the GPU. I'd like to bring the price down on the CPU,MOBO,RAM if possible.
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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by ian »

Will advise when back at computer.
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Calavera
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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by Calavera »

ian wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 3:51 pm Will advise when back at computer.
No rush, it always takes me forever to finally settle on what I'm buying. :olol: I always like to run it by everybody here first as I know most of us are pretty knowledgeable when it comes to computers. My problem is that I don't follow what new hardware comes out. So when I finally decide to upgrade it has been 5 years or more since I've really looked at CPUs and don't know what is a good one to buy. I'm pretty sure for the price that the CPU I picked out is pretty good. RAM is just RAM, hard to go wrong there unless there is a higher speed that would do me better. Like I said in my first post motherboards are always the hardest part for me. Am I really even going to notice a difference if I buy a $200 motherboard vs a $90 one? The only features I need are just standard things. But then there are different chipsets and I have no clue what would be the best chipset to have for the CPU I've picked out. I'll probably hold off on the GPU for now as my R9 290X still performs pretty damn good even in newer games. But it is getting close to the time where I'll need to upgrade it. The RX Vega 56 I picked seems like a really good card for the price, but as always I like to get opinions from everybody here.

One thing I forgot to add in my first post is my current PC specs. So I'll add them in here

Motherboard- ASRock Z77 Pro3
CPU- Intel i5-3570k overclocked to 4.2Ghz
GPU- Radeon R9 290X
RAM- CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB DDR3 1600

*edit I've been looking at different GPUs and am now wondering how the GTX 1070 would do. It seems good depending on the price. I see them on ebay from anywhere from $120 up to $200+. If I could get one for $120 and sell my R9 290X for $75 and be getting a card that is much more powerful than my R9 290X I'd probably do that right now before even buying the other components!
I know I'm asking a lot of questions but if anybody has the time to read it all and respond I will greatly appreciate it. You guys are pretty much the only people I know of to ask such things.
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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by ian »

Calavera wrote: Sat Aug 10, 2019 3:42 pmI'm pretty sure for the price that the CPU I picked out is pretty good. RAM is just RAM, hard to go wrong there unless there is a higher speed that would do me better.
RAM:
Well now that you mention it.. RAM was the most important factor to having a good Ryzen experience. They since fixed it for the most part, but basically if you got any Hynix die and not Samsung B die, you had nothing but god damn misery.

My experience with Micron E-Die has been good on the limited second gen stuff I've tried, so just make sure you get at least 16GB and it'll do speeds of at least 3200.
my favorites:
CRUCIAL BALLISTIX SPORT LT DDR4-3200 (this stuff is cheap enough for how good it is)
HyperX Predator DDR4-4000 (You could find the 3200 non RGB stuff cheap, and I can confirm, it's good RAM but useless on Gen 1)
You want fast RAM with tight timings for Ryzen.


CPU:
The 3600 is a great pick, and the only thing beating it price/performance ATM is the now hugely discounted 2600.. If you could pick up a 2600/X for half the price, I'd do that. or find a 2700X for near the same price as the 3600 (just beware, they use more power)

Motherboard:
The board you picked out has enough of everything and a good VRM, Good memory options and enough connectivity for a lifetime.
Here's a comparison chart to let you know what boards will be good enough for high end later on:


The only other comments I'll make are on boards I hate!!!
Avoid like the plague: Gigabyte. Avoid unless it's cheap: Asus.
I have a Gigabyte AX370 Gaming 5 (Main PC) and a gigabyte AB350N Gaming WIFI (MEDIA ITX)
Gigabyte overall have made the best, most reliable motherboards I've ever owned. Never had one go wrong... Until Ryzen
But these 2.. JESUS!! Gigabyte cannot make a decent Ryzen board.
I am on my Second 370, It couldn't remember overclocks, it couldn't run RAM anywhere NEAR what other boards could (Same CPU and RAM in an Asus Crosshair 6 extreme worked amazing) and it hated booting off NVME. I took it back and got another one, and it's still a picky bastard with RAM.
The 350N has the worst layout I've ever seen on an ITX board, and it too flat out refuses certain RAM which is on the QVL..
for how much they each cost, I probably won't be getting a gigabyte motherboard for my next computer. (and every one of MY computers since 2002 has been a gigabyte motherboard)
And the crosshair was AMAZING.. then gen 2 hit.. OMG, and people are reporting it's worse gen 3. This board was insanely expensive, so you think Asus could get a working bios for it..

Go with Asrock. ;)

And since you're going to be on an all new platform that supports it.. a MUST buy is an NVMe SSD.
Samsung 970 EVO's are hard to beat for the price. (I've got a 950 Pro in my 4790K, a 960 evo in my Main, and a 970 evo in my media ITX)
Common thing is that all my computers have an NVMe SSD because they're just great, and they're finally cheap enough to warrant the upgrade over sata on a boot drive.


Video card is the hardest call. I would say get a used 1070 or 1070ti.. Rtx cards are priced at a fucking million dollars for a mid level card, and 5700 cards haven't got proper coolers or had the price drop yet, when they come down another $100-150 and have good coolers, get one of them.

if you're only gaming at full HD, the 1070 is perfectly ample to do it. (and you can stretch it to 1440p if you need)


So them's my thoughts.
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melancholy
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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by melancholy »

I haven’t built an AMD rig in over 10 years, so I can’t really give any advice on mobo or CPU.

I can say that an Nvidia GPU would be the way to go. One thing I will point out, though: the 2060 benchmarks faster than the 1070 and they both have the same new price, so I would try to shoot for a 1070 TI if you are going for something used.

Also, Ian is right: if you are buying a NVMe compatible board, you MUST buy one as your boot drive. The speeds are just insane and easily the best general performance boost you can give a computer. Even if you have a SATA SSD, do yourself a favor and budget for NVMe. It’s totally worth it.

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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by pixel »

I just built a 2600X / RTX 2060 for my new main PC. I was able to buy the CPU and motherboard for $225 last month.

Here's what I did: Check /r/buildapcsales two or three times a day and use product search options in the sidebar. I'd spend $225-280 on a 2600X CPU/MBB combo, or $280-320 for 3600X. The 2700 is also an option too.

I've been watching the deals for the past month and they have been selling a lot of 2600X combos, so they may be a little harder to come by.
ian wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 12:04 pm Avoid like the plague: Gigabyte. Avoid unless it's cheap: Asus.
I've never had huge problems with Asus. That said, always look at the reviews for quality control issues. The Ryzen rollout has been really bumpy with motherboard BIOS compatibility and it's always worth checking both Newegg and Amazon for reviews to see any potential issues. BIOS compatibility has gotten better since last year, but you can never be too safe.
ian wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 12:04 pm Video card is the hardest call. I would say get a used 1070 or 1070ti.. Rtx cards are priced at a fucking million dollars for a mid level card, and 5700 cards haven't got proper coolers or had the price drop yet, when they come down another $100-150 and have good coolers, get one of them.
I'd agree, it's a tough call. I got my 2060 for $300 because it was an open box fat boi card with a single fan. It was a gamble, but I haven't seen any temperature or noise issues so far. With the GPU, you need to figure out if you're staying at 1080p or moving up in resolution to 1440p or 4K. A 2600X and 2060 is already overkill for 1080p at the moment, so if you spend more for a 1070, I'd also look to upgrade your monitor.
melancholy wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:28 pm Also, Ian is right: if you are buying a NVMe compatible board, you MUST buy one as your boot drive. The speeds are just insane and easily the best general performance boost you can give a computer. Even if you have a SATA SSD, do yourself a favor and budget for NVMe. It’s totally worth it.
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Can't stress this enough, and prices are at their cheapest. It's really nice to be able to get 1 TB of crazy-fast storage for ~$100.

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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by ian »

pixel wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:18 am
ian wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 12:04 pm Avoid like the plague: Gigabyte. Avoid unless it's cheap: Asus.
I've never had huge problems with Asus. That said, always look at the reviews for quality control issues. The Ryzen rollout has been really bumpy with motherboard BIOS compatibility and it's always worth checking both Newegg and Amazon for reviews to see any potential issues. BIOS compatibility has gotten better since last year, but you can never be too safe.

Oh don't get me wrong, they make amazing GPU's, and laptops, and monitors, and now keyboards, but if a motherboard is going to flat out die for no reason it's 75% likely an Asus. Their ratio would be better, but now Abit don't make motherboards, Asus take my crown for least reliable in general.
ian wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 12:04 pm Video card is the hardest call. I would say get a used 1070 or 1070ti.. Rtx cards are priced at a fucking million dollars for a mid level card, and 5700 cards haven't got proper coolers or had the price drop yet, when they come down another $100-150 and have good coolers, get one of them.
I'd agree, it's a tough call. I got my 2060 for $300 because it was an open box fat boi card with a single fan. It was a gamble, but I haven't seen any temperature or noise issues so far. With the GPU, you need to figure out if you're staying at 1080p or moving up in resolution to 1440p or 4K. A 2600X and 2060 is already overkill for 1080p at the moment, so if you spend more for a 1070, I'd also look to upgrade your monitor.

And the choice is made harder by the fact he has a 290X already. the 290/X were the last truly great cards AMD has made.
Sure the Fury Nano was an amazing card. As is the Vega 64, and Vega 7, but you certainly had to pay out the ass for them. where as the 290/X were priced right.

In fact, I still know 5 people using 290's in their computers, because even after 6 years, going to an RX 570, 580, 1060, 1660 is kind of a waste of money. for how much extra performance you get spending $300-500 AUD it's simply not worth it.
(I can't be much help on the pricing side since we aussies get fucked over super hard)

but if he want's to stay on 1080P, not really many places to go for a significant upgrade at a sane price aside from a 1070/ti

Cal, you should buy an ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB.. :owink: That is a very reasonably priced card.. at just $3799 AUD.. :rofl: It's only $2000 more than any consumer card is worth, or should ever cost.. but VALUE!!


Gamers nexus has a good article:
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3430 ... x-gtx-more
I wish I saw this article and copied the conclusion BEFORE I did all that typing:
"Jumping to Vega-class cards or RTX 2070 would sort of be the entry point for this one, minimally, as anything short of that is a pointless endeavor and more of a “side-grade.”"

melancholy wrote: Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:28 pm Also, Ian is right: if you are buying a NVMe compatible board, you MUST buy one as your boot drive. The speeds are just insane and easily the best general performance boost you can give a computer. Even if you have a SATA SSD, do yourself a favor and budget for NVMe. It’s totally worth it.
Image

Can't stress this enough, and prices are at their cheapest. It's really nice to be able to get 1 TB of crazy-fast storage for ~$100.
Hell even if he found a Decent Z97 board and 4790K for cheap enough, adding a nice SSD would be a good option He could Re-Use RAM, sell off mobo, cpu and GPU and spend more money and get a 1080 and decent 1440P monitor.
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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by ian »

somehow I fucked the quote up.. lmao, but my points remains valid... pixel can take credit for my post if he wants. :olol:
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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by pixel »

ian wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 2:24 am somehow I fucked the quote up.. lmao, but my points remains valid... pixel can take credit for my post if he wants. :olol:
Sure will :olol: I glossed right over the post about using the old GPU. I think that a new Ryzen CPU and motherboard are a good upgrade. If I'm not mistaken, the current chipset should be around for a while which means a good amount of future proofing. I agree on the GPU recommendations, not much sense to upgrade now if Cal is staying at 1080p unless there's a really good deal on a GPU (around ~$300).

For me personally, I wanted a machine that crushed 1080p without compromise and buy into 1440p further down the road. A 2600X and R9 290X is doing pretty well for that same goal: https://www.gpucheck.com/gpu/amd-radeon ... n-5-2600x/

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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by ian »

Well I have a 1070 on a 1440p panel
RX580 on 4K media duties
And Vega for 4K gaming (untill recently)

All were good, and yes Amd has great future proofing.
Love that a board I bought in 2017 can run CPUs from 2019.

And that should my x370 or B350 crap out I can get a 400 series chipset.

Because I won’t be replacing my 1800x in a hurry, absolute monster of a chip, and I’ll be keeping it as main for probably 3 more years.
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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

Post by melancholy »

I don’t understand the logic of not upgrading if you aren’t going above 1080p. Games released within the last year need that extra hardware even to run 60fps at 1080p. For example, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey would only run at 50fps on my 1070 at 1080p, and that was on high, not even ultra. It’s only going to get worse from here, especially on a card as old as the 290x.

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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

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melancholy wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:44 pm I don’t understand the logic of not upgrading if you aren’t going above 1080p. Games released within the last year need that extra hardware even to run 60fps at 1080p. For example, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey would only run at 50fps on my 1070 at 1080p, and that was on high, not even ultra. It’s only going to get worse from here, especially on a card as old as the 290x.
Just depends on the budget and expectations :dontknow" It might be beneficial to wait out on the GPU because of the RX 5700 and possible price cuts. But CPU prices are very hot right now with all the new Ryzen chips, plug you've got cheap RAM and solid-state storage options these days.

If I had to prioritize, get a new Ryzen CPU and mobo while prices are good. I'm just afraid that the 2600X gravy train has left the station, if the lack of new deals posted this month on /r/buildapcsales means anything.

I usually keep a few components from the last PC build, but I had to do a fresh machine this time. My old i5-2500K / GTX 780 is being used as a Plex server and a Sims 4 / Cities Skylines machine now.

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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

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Thank you for all the input. For gaming I plan on sticking with 1080p. I know some people may scoff at that but honestly it is plenty good enough for me. As long as I can run the newest games in 1080p at 60fps with the visuals maxed out then I'll be happy.

I looked at a Ryzen 5 2600 system and for the motherboard,ram and CPU it came out to $298 after tax. The motherboard was $30 off if you bought a 2600 CPU with it. That seems like a pretty cheap price and I assume will be a substantial upgrade from what I am running now. The 2600x is only $20 more so for that little I might as well just get the 2600x which would bring the total around $320.
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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

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Calavera wrote: Fri Aug 16, 2019 6:31 pm Thank you for all the input. For gaming I plan on sticking with 1080p. I know some people may scoff at that but honestly it is plenty good enough for me. As long as I can run the newest games in 1080p at 60fps with the visuals maxed out then I'll be happy.

I looked at a Ryzen 5 2600 system and for the motherboard,ram and CPU it came out to $298 after tax. The motherboard was $30 off if you bought a 2600 CPU with it. That seems like a pretty cheap price and I assume will be a substantial upgrade from what I am running now. The 2600x is only $20 more so for that little I might as well just get the 2600x which would bring the total around $320.
Yeah that's a good price for all three

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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

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Here's a 2060 for $310, which will likely be the norm now that Nvidia released the Super line.

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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

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melancholy wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 1:44 pm I don’t understand the logic of not upgrading if you aren’t going above 1080p. Games released within the last year need that extra hardware even to run 60fps at 1080p. For example, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey would only run at 50fps on my 1070 at 1080p, and that was on high, not even ultra. It’s only going to get worse from here, especially on a card as old as the 290x.
Cost and timing.
For the price of lets say $350 USD, he could get a whole new platform (CPU, Motherboard, RAM, and SSD)
or a what 2060, not even super?

Since Cal isn't on the bleeding edge and upgrading every 20 seconds like some of us (well ME untill 2018) He's going to see more increase in performance on a whole platform shift than a video card. I mean if he found a 4790K or 6700K system in goodwill for $10 I'd have no hesitation suggesting he spend an entire wad on a 2070 super, 2080, or 2080ti, but I don't see that happening.

Now is the right time to buy a system, since a whole new CPU series just came out, and the CPU market is competitive and RAM prices have finally become sensible again, and high performance high capacity SSD's are now affordable. (2016-2017 poor time for system. Now GOOD)

Now is not the right time to buy a GPU, since there hasn't been real competition since 2013... Even in the middle of the stack the RX 390, 480, 580... they're all essentially refreshes of the 290. AMD's mid range, is essentially the 290 still. Vega costs too much, and the 5700 cards are too new so still have the early adopter tax on them and because of that lack of competition, and not to mention a mining boom, Nvidia got stupid.. the 1070 was I think $379 at launch, that's how much the 1070ti/2070/2070 super should cost. (2018-2019 poor time for video card. early 2017 or hopefully 2020 good)

May as well wait to see what intel can do next year before an upgrade... Who knows, maybe they'll have a 2080 beater at a 2060 price.. because Fuck knows ATI/AMD used to do it all the time.

If cal can find a good card at a decent price, good luck to him, but buying a brand new card atm is so batshit, not even I would do it. (And I bought a Vega 64 last year)
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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

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Re: Thinking of upgrading my PC, looking for opinions

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I look forward to seeing this thread bumped in 2021 and going "Oh hey, Cal is updating his PC again. No wait, he's still thinking about it"

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