[SOLVED] Affordable PC upgrade advice

[Dangermaus33]

I have an older PC (8-10 years old) and I was thinking of trying to upgrade. I have done my own builds in the past but I am a little rusty having not built my current PC (so it's been 12+ years since I last put one together).

I mainly use my PC for work but I do want to be able to play NBA2K20 and other games. I don't need the fastest or best graphics.

I would like to get an SSD drive for Windows OS etc. and then have 1TB+ storage on top of that.

My main question if how much of my current PC can I keep and do this? I'm on a budget ($300-$400) and I assume this is the best way to save money. But I know my components are old so they may not be worth keeping.

Here are my current specs:
Gigabyte Tech EX58-UD4P motherboard
Intel i7 2.67GHz, 2793 Mhz CPU
12GB RAM
1 TB SATA HDD
500GB SATA HDD
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750

Any advice on affordable components or if my Motherboard, CPU, or RAM is worth reusing would be very helpful. Let me know if you need more detailed spec info.

Thanks,
Peter

 

[GarrettL]

I'm afraid with an upgrade you'll still experience some stuttering in some games. I've retired my x58 Intel PC from gaming as on newer game titles such as CoD MW and BFV it would suffer from stuttering, even with a SSD's and 2070 Super.

You already stated a 500GB SSD and 1TB HDD in your specs, re-use them or add an additional SSD if you'd like.

If your PSU is original to the build you should replace it as well.

It's just an old platform and investing more into is not going to help it's gaming performance all that much.

Sorry for the bad news.

 

[Dangermaus33]

I replaced the power supply a couple years ago. I have an Antec earthwatts EA-500D 500W power supply now.

Any recommendations on a decent motherboard and chip on the cheaper side?

 

[John Chesterfield]

Ryzen 3100 or 3300x and B450 Tomahawk Max.

 

[julienruc]

I replaced the power supply a couple years ago. I have an Antec earthwatts EA-500D 500W power supply now.

Any recommendations on a decent motherboard and chip on the cheaper side?

The PSU should be fine fir now. And as stated above, your current storage units can be reused, you can just add am SSD for your OS. You can also reuse your case.

So that boils down to your GPU, and your CPU/Motherboard/RAM combo as upgrading any one of these will require you to upgrade the set.

You could look at something like this:
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI A320M-A PRO MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($59.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: OLOy 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: ADATA SU635 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($25.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card ($169.99 @ B&H)
Total: $413.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-24 16:04 EDT-0400
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/hLGXx6


Alternatively, you could look into getting a used RX570, RX580 or GTX 1060 for the GPU for around 100$.

How does this sound to you?

 

[Dangermaus33]

Ryzen 3100 or 3300x and B450 Tomahawk Max.

Thanks, I will look at these.

 

[Dangermaus33]

The PSU should be fine fir now. And as stated above, your current storage units can be reused, you can just add am SSD for your OS. You can also reuse your case.

So that boils down to your GPU, and your CPU/Motherboard/RAM combo as upgrading any one of these will require you to upgrade the set.

You could look at something like this:
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI A320M-A PRO MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($59.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: OLOy 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: ADATA SU635 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($25.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card ($169.99 @ B&H)
Total: $413.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-24 16:04 EDT-0400
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/hLGXx6


Alternatively, you could look into getting a used RX570, RX580 or GTX 1060 for the GPU for around 100$.

How does this sound to you?

Thank you. That gives me something to build around and use as a baseline. I will look into these.

 

[Dangermaus33]

The PSU should be fine fir now. And as stated above, your current storage units can be reused, you can just add am SSD for your OS. You can also reuse your case.

So that boils down to your GPU, and your CPU/Motherboard/RAM combo as upgrading any one of these will require you to upgrade the set.

You could look at something like this:
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI A320M-A PRO MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($59.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: OLOy 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: ADATA SU635 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($25.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card ($169.99 @ B&H)
Total: $413.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-24 16:04 EDT-0400
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/hLGXx6


Alternatively, you could look into getting a used RX570, RX580 or GTX 1060 for the GPU for around 100$.

How does this sound to you?

Here is what I came up with. I wanted to replace my HDD with a larger one. A little more than I wanted to spend but I could make this work. Thoughts?

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU | AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor | $104.99 @ Newegg
Motherboard | MSI B450-A PRO MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard | $109.99 @ B&H
Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory | $59.99 @ Amazon
Storage | Kingston A400 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive | $33.28 @ Amazon
Storage | Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $54.99 @ Newegg
Video Card | Asus GeForce GT 1030 2 GB Phoenix Fan OC Video Card | $84.99 @ B&H
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | $448.23
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-24 16:53 EDT-0400 |

 

[julienruc]

ersonally, I try to avoid paying as much for the board as I do for the CPU. But in theory, the build looks good to me.

Not that the GT 1030 offers virtually the same graphics performance as the GTX 750.
I would suggest to continue using this u til you can spend around 110$ on a good second hand one. Or low-end gaming GPU which I believe starts at 160$ for anything new.

What case are you using? It should allow for several HDD slots. Keep in mind that you can also simply add this later on.

If you would lke to reduce the cost further.
You can checkout the intel i3 9100F. It should be around 80$ but the motherboard pptions are usually much cheaper (H310, B360/5)

 

[Dangermaus33]

ersonally, I try to avoid paying as much for the board as I do for the CPU. But in theory, the build looks good to me.

Not that the GT 1030 offers virtually the same graphics performance as the GTX 750.
I would suggest to continue using this u til you can spend around 110$ on a good second hand one. Or low-end gaming GPU which I believe starts at 160$ for anything new.

What case are you using? It should allow for several HDD slots. Keep in mind that you can also simply add this later on.

If you would lke to reduce the cost further.
You can checkout the intel i3 9100F. It should be around 80$ but the motherboard pptions are usually much cheaper (H310, B360/5)

Thanks for the input, especially about the gpu.

Here is what I have now:
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU | Intel Core i3-9100F 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor | $69.99 @ B&H
Motherboard | ASRock B365M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard | $83.99 @ Newegg
Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory | $59.99 @ Amazon
Storage | Western Digital Blue 250 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive | $44.99 @ Amazon
Storage | Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $54.99 @ Newegg
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | $313.95
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-25 09:36 EDT-0400 |

 

[julienruc]

Looks pretty good to me. As for your GPU concerns, you can keep using your GTX 750 in the meantime, until you're ready to purchase something you're comfortable with.

The issue is that in terms of "actual" performance, the two cheapest GPUs, which use recent hardware are the GPU 1650 and 1650 Super. The former being less powerful than an RX 570, the latter being on par with an RX580 or GTX 1060. Both of them will cost about 150-200$ respectively. In this regard, I would suggest waiting until next month as the new 3000 series GPUs from Nvidia will release. Everyone is hoping that the pricing of current units will decrease accordingly.