Question Care to help me rebuild from 2015?

[OldManScham]

Hello fellow geeks and gamers!
Way back in 2015, I pieced together a PC and it has held up pretty well with little upgrading.
Now, however, I have a new AAA title I'd like to get in on, but won't be able to keep up. The old Diablo franchise is calling my name with 4 out now.
I was uneducated when I put the build together, but I had help. Now, I'm a bit at a loss. I've tried to fiddle around with compatibilities, but I'm probably not looking in the right place.
If you're interested, I could sure use some advice.


Approximate Purchase Date: Within the next 2 weeks or so

Budget Range: Under $500

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, ecommerce, streaming

Are you buying a monitor: Only if necessary

Parts to Upgrade: CPU and GPU, but that may require motherboard

Do you need to buy OS: If replacing mobo
Please note that if you're using an OEM license of Windows, you will need a new one when buying a new motherboard.

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg, Amazon, whatever is legit

Location: Ft. Wayne, Indiana

Parts Preferences: Ran with AMD previously

Overclocking: Never have

SLI or Crossfire: Open to it

Your Monitor Resolution: 1360 x 768, which is a tv

Additional Comments:
Motherboard: Gigabyte gigabyte 990fxa-ud3
CPU: AMD FX 9590 4700Mhz
GPU: AMD R9 280X
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance
Power: Raidmax Vampire 1000W 80Plus Gold
Hard drives: 1TB WD HDD, 110GB Kingston SDD

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Wanting to play Diablo 4 at a high quality

Please let me know if there are any other pieces of information that would help!

Thanks for your time!

 

[Lafong]

Not sure how far you can go with the existing motherboard.

Not sure how far you can go by upgrading GPU only.

Reasonably sure that motherboard uses DDR 3 RAM.

To get much of an upgrade, the standard recommendation would be new motherboard, new RAM, new CPU, new GPU.

8 year old platform is severely limiting.

500 dollars would likely make that impossible for those 4 parts.

Is delaying and continuing to stockpile more money a possibility?

 

[punkncat]

In the neighborhood of $350 you could do a R5 5500, A520M, 2x8 DDR4, P3 Plus 500GB, Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 Gold 600W, and a cheap case (all from Amazon). This would only leave you ~$150 to find a graphics card which could be tough.

The same build aside from RAM is about $25 bucks cheaper at Micro Center, but I don't know if you have one close by. If you opted to use your old power supply then could probably scratch out a decent graphics card, but could be a risk according to age of the unit.

 

[OldManScham]

I appreciate your fast and informative responses!
I'm not terribly surprised about having to make major renovations. I hadn't thought of the old power supply being a threat, so thanks for bringing that to my attention.
You're right, I'm running DD3.
It's certainly an option to hold up and enlarge the budget. Sounds like that's probably my best bet.
I'll dive into some of the specifics provided here and get back to you.
I have a pretty nice and big Cooler Master case. Looks like that may be the only keeper eh? 😆

 

[pete_101]

You can keep your case and power supply, and if you choose, the hard drives too. I would suggest getting a new NVMe m.2 drive as the main boot drive and to load games off, the good news is they are really quite cheap for their size now.

You might find this video worth watching

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtdFHmyv7B0

The first build is in your budget, you don't need the case and PSU, so it will keep the price down. It can be upgraded more in the future too.

 

[OldManScham]

I appreciate the help, you fine folks.
I'll plan on building the budget a big and giving things a good overhaul. I'll let you know what I decide on and how it turns out!
I apologize for being slow with this. Lots to do with hosting a disc golf tourney this weekend
I'll keep you helpful heroes in the loop!

 

[OldManScham]

Ok, gang. I placed an order. I did pretty well run the cheaper build from the video provided, so thanks for that!

I'll be receiving:
CPU: AMD R5 5500
GPU: Gigabyte Eagle Radeon RX 6600
RAM: G.skill Ripjaws V16 DDR4-4000
Mobo: ASRock B550M Pro4 ATX AM4 (noting that I will need to update BIOS for CPU compatibility)
Storage: Silicon Power A60 2TB m.2-2280

For now will run with the same power supply and case. I may investigate how to move the old Corsair liquid cooling to the new gear, as well.

You all have been swell and very helpful - thank you!
I'll be very careful with replacing the hardware and will definitely be having resources while I do it.
I will return with tales of my success! ...or otherwise.

 

[OldManScham]

Well, I'm a little stuck.
I'm all tightened back up but I get a VGA light on start and no picture on screen.
I've tried reseating it and everything is good there.
The one difference with this GPU setup is that the PCIE is no longer long enough to make the GPU's LED3 receptacle. Everything else that had a home before has one now.
Any ideas as to where else I might have gone wrong?

 

[OldManScham]

I was able to reroute the PCIe cable but alas, that did not solve the problem.

 

[OldManScham]

Ok, so. Easy solution, but maybe you could help me understand it.
I plugged the HDMI cable into the GPU rather than the main I/O area and that seems to have done the trick to load up.
That's not where I was plugged in on the last setup. Can you help me understand the difference?
Thanks as always!

 

[thestryker]

Ok, so. Easy solution, but maybe you could help me understand it.
I plugged the HDMI cable into the GPU rather than the main I/O area and that seems to have done the trick to load up.
That's not where I was plugged in on the last setup. Can you help me understand the difference?
Thanks as always!

Honestly I'm surprised your old setup worked well hooked up that way. The outputs on the motherboard IO are for integrated graphics be it on the board or from the CPU. In the case of your new system the CPU you got has no integrated graphics nor does the board. Just as a rule you should always be using the outputs on the graphics card to minimize latency and compatibility problems even if it works the other way.

 

[OldManScham]

Interesting that I didn't have any troubles. Not that I noticed anyway!
Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense.
Everything is working, but I'm having some random restarts. Just updated drivers so hopefully that helps.

 

[DSzymborski]

Just for archival purposes of anyone reading this thread with a question on the old motherboard, you had to have been using the GPU's outputs because the old motherboard doesn't *have* any GPU outputs on the I/O.

Those ports are various USBs, S/PDIF, IEEE 1394a, PS/2, eSATA, Ethernet, and then the audio outputs.

This was the case for most AM3+ motherboards because no AM3+ CPUs had integrated graphics. So there was no purpose to having those in the I/O for the vast majority of AM3+ motherboards. The exception was that some AM3+ motherboards, mainly cheaper ones from 2007-2010 or so, were retrofit and still had older chipsets that still had integrated graphics.

By AMD's 900-series chipset, the one released with the FX CPUs, the integrated graphics had been cut out of the Northbridge and your integrated graphics solution with AMD had to be their FM2+ APUs, which were not performance chips. AMD didn't have high-performance CPUs that had integrated graphics until the latest generation. 990FX, 990X, and 970 chipsets all lacked integrated graphics. The 980G technically existed and still retained the chipset-integrated graphics, but I can't remember ever running into a motherboard with that chipset; you won't even find a checkbox for them on PCPartPicker and a cursory look right now fails to prove my memory wrong in this case.

 

[OldManScham]

One last reply to say thanks again.
Everything is running smoothly and effectively. I appreciate everyone's knowledge and insights!