Upgrade path

S

Sumax

n00b
Joined
Apr 19, 2004
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37
Only have a budget of $500 video card or MB/CPU/MEM. What would you spend your $500 on?

Current sys: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 - AMD FX8370 - Corsair XMS3 DDR3 16Gb 1600 - Crucial 256Gb SSD - 6TB HDD - Asus R9 290 Dir CU II 4Gb and a Corsair HX850 PS

Looking for the most bang for the buck.
 
Kind of depends what you want to play and what resolution, but atm you don't have a lot of choice as most GPU's are out of stock 99% of the time as are most AMD CPU's, and also the prices of what you can find are somewhat out of whack.
 
I would buy this. Buy it outright, or pay monthly.

You can migrate some of your parts to it, or take it apart and put it in your current case and you wont have to worry about buying a video card if you're playing at 1080p. It has a pretty powerful APU in it.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-des...emory-256gb-ssd-black/6429426.p?skuId=6429426

YES, ITS A PREBUILT....YUK...RIGHT? Wrong! Don't look at it as a prebuilt. Look at it as a box of parts to build from. A box of parts that has both a powerful CPU & GPU together for around $500 dollars, you won't find that separately right now.

You're not going to be able to find a reasonable price if you include a video card right now.

Another option for you,

Buy the prebuilt mentioned above. Pay it off monthly or when you can. Sell off your old components. Use some of the $500 dollars added to the amount you got from your old components and buy a decent video card for your prebuilt. The CPU is plenty powerful as is.


You other options are to scour Ebay / Craigslist and buy used. Good luck with that.
 
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I'd definitely factor in PCIe 4.0 for future proofing. Especially if you want a really fast M.2 drive at some stage.
 
Krenum said:
A box of parts that has both a powerful CPU & GPU
Click to expand...
Integrated graphics is not a powerful GPU.

To op buy a CPU and motherboard combo, gpus are hard too find currently.

~$200 decent lga 2011v3 or previous gen ryzen combos are easy to find and will beat a bulldozer CPU by a fair margin. You could keep most of the parts you have and make your next upgrade a GPU when practical
 
Krenum said:
I would buy this. Buy it outright, or pay monthly.

You can migrate some of your parts to it, or take it apart and put it in your current case and you wont have to worry about buying a video card if you're playing at 1080p. It has a pretty powerful APU in it.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-des...emory-256gb-ssd-black/6429426.p?skuId=6429426

YES, ITS A PREBUILT....YUK...RIGHT? Wrong! Don't look at it as a prebuilt. Look at it as a box of parts to build from. A box of parts that has both a powerful CPU & GPU together for around $500 dollars, you won't find that separately right now.

You're not going to be able to find a reasonable price if you include a video card right now.

Another option for you,

Buy the prebuilt mentioned above. Pay it off monthly or when you can. Sell off your old components. Use some of the $500 dollars added to the amount you got from your old components and buy a decent video card for your prebuilt. The CPU is plenty powerful as is.


You other options are to scour Ebay / Craigslist and buy used. Good luck with that.
Click to expand...
Its not a horrible but the motherboard is gonna be locked down, it has a SEVERELY underpowered PSU (180w) for any gpu added and only 8gb of generic ram.
I would pick up a ryzen 3600 ($200), B550 motherboard of your choosing ($150-200) ~ I like gigabyte, and a compatible kit of ddr4 ram 16 or 32gb if budget allows ~ I like gskill ($100-150)

I threw together the below combo that should be fully compatible and total $510 (the cpu and memory are directly listed in the gigabyte support compatibility list)
https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-...iption=3600&cm_re=3600-_-19-113-569-_-Product
https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b550-aorus-elite-v2/p/N82E16813145249
https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb...Q-32GVK-_-20-231-942-_-Product&quicklink=true

You should see a substantial performance increase in cpu and memory related workloads as you'd be just about doubling both your ram and CPU capability in computational and capacity alike.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-FX-8370-Eight-Core-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-3600/2347vs3481
 
Spartacus09 said:
Its not a horrible but the motherboard is gonna be locked down, it has a SEVERELY underpowered PSU (180w) for any gpu added and only 8gb of generic ram.
I would pick up a ryzen 3600 ($200), B550 motherboard of your choosing ($150-200) ~ I like gigabyte, and a compatible kit of ddr4 ram 16 or 32gb if budget allows ~ I like gskill ($100-150)

I threw together the below combo that should be fully compatible and total $510 (the cpu and memory are directly listed in the gigabyte support compatibility list)
https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-...iption=3600&cm_re=3600-_-19-113-569-_-Product
https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b550-aorus-elite-v2/p/N82E16813145249
https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb...Q-32GVK-_-20-231-942-_-Product&quicklink=true

You should see a substantial performance increase in cpu and memory related workloads as you'd be just about doubling both your ram and CPU capability in computational and capacity alike.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-FX-8370-Eight-Core-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-3600/2347vs3481
Click to expand...

Right on, probably better to do what Spartacus said. Use your existing 290, Hard Drives & Power Supply
 
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Here you go OP



CPU Ryzen 3600
https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-3600/p/N82E16819113569?Item=N82E16819113569&nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=AFC-RAN-COM&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_source=afc-PCPartPicker&AFFID=2558510&AFFNAME=PCPartPicker&ACRID=1&ASID=https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9nm323/amd-ryzen-5-3600-36-thz-6-core-processor-100-100000031box&ranMID=44583&ranEAID=2558510&ranSiteID=8BacdVP0GFs-r1fKSXvjvfv_V3Gtj4dWBg

Motherboard
https://www.newegg.com/msi-mag-b550m-bazooka/p/N82E16813144329?Item=N82E16813144329&nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=AFC-RAN-COM&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_source=afc-PCPartPicker&AFFID=2558510&AFFNAME=PCPartPicker&ACRID=1&ASID=https://pcpartpicker.com/product/mJQfrH/msi-mag-b550m-bazooka-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-mag-b550m-bazooka&ranMID=44583&ranEAID=2558510&ranSiteID=8BacdVP0GFs-ym1AtNkCNmlDflh2dIyPNg

RAM
https://www.newegg.com/oloy-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820821248?Item=N82E16820821248&nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=AFC-RAN-COM&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_source=afc-PCPartPicker&AFFID=2558510&AFFNAME=PCPartPicker&ACRID=1&ASID=https://pcpartpicker.com/product/fByqqs/oloy-16-gb-2-x-8-gb-ddr4-3200-cl16-memory-md4u083216bjda&ranMID=44583&ranEAID=2558510&ranSiteID=8BacdVP0GFs-XK_JjGVPrBOpRa.HIFeW4A


As for the video card. You'll have to scrounge around on your local craigslist or Ebay
 
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