[SOLVED] Component upgrade advice

[hamilton9]

Hello

I try to have a balance between my computer costs and performance. I primarily use my computer for work, internet, youtube. I actually am pretty proud of how I have gotten by over the years by scrabbling along, assembling PCs and upgrades with 'just enough' to get me another few years of acceptable performance.

You may not believe it, and please don't laugh but here is my current work PC and it seems to perform 'decently' though it starts to bog down once the number of tabs open in the browser start adding up (I just get a short pause in responsiveness then I can get back to it)

OS: uBuntu Linux 64 bit 20.04
Motherboard: ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS AMD 760G Motherboard - Micro ATX, AMD 760G Chipset, 1866MHz DDR3 (O.C.), SATA 3.0 Gb/s, RAID, 8-CH Audio, Gigabit LAN, Hybrid CrossFire, AMD FX Ready Socket AM3+ (Released 2011, Added Dec 2012)
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 945 - HDX945WFGIBOX Quad Core Processor - 3.00GHz, 6MB Cache, 2000MHz (4000 MT/s) FSB, Retail, Socket AM3, Processor with Fan (Released July 2009, Added Dec 2012)
RAM: Kingston HyperX Red KHX16C9B1R/4 8GB Memory Module - 1600MHz, 9-9-9, DDR3, CL9, 1.65V, Unbuffered (added Dec 2012)
Graphics/GPU: NVIDIA GEFORCE GT710B - specs GK208 (rev a1) - 2GB, DDR 3, Core 954 MHz (Released April 2013; added Sept 2017)
Hard Drives
KINGSTON SV300S3 - SSDNow V300 Series 2.5" SSD 120GB
Hitachi HDS72105 - 7200RPM, 500GB
Network: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Power Supply: Enermax Tomahawk ETK450AWT

My question: It is time to upgrade the component(s) I need to to squeeze out a few more years on this unit. What components would get me the most bang-for-my-buck in terms of improved performance? I want to try and upgrade only what I absolutely need to (ie where the bottleneck seems to be in my current build) at the lowest cost.

My guess is that if I put a modestly priced graphics card in at around 4GB I should be good.

Thanks for any advice!

EDIT:
Budget for Graphics $200-300 (?) other upgrades 'lower end' if possible. I like buying used if possible
Location: Ontario Canada

 

[4745454b]

Budget and location?

Believe it or not, those "stars" arch CPUs were really good. The IPC was better than dozer. By the time AMD got dozer fixed and moved to Ryzen, they finally got the IPC back to what stars could do. So you basically have a 3GHz dozer CPU right now. I worry a bit about your mobo and PSU aging out on you. But if they are working right now you're ok.

If I'm reading your specs right you have 8GBs of ram and a 710 GPU. Working/many tabs will chew up that 8GBs. If you can find more cheap I'd start there. The GPU is a lot harder to fix. You don't game at all? If that's the case and you have a large enough budget, moving to a modern AMD APU will be amazing for you. Any of the Ryzen 5xxx APUs will be a lot faster than your current CPU, and have a built in GPU that will run circles around your 710. Decide if you are going this route BEFORE upgrading the ram as it won't carry over. If you are staying with the current setup and just upgrading the ram and GPU, the 750 is really the other budget upgrade. But you can still expect to pay way more than you should for that.

 

[hamilton9]

Sorry - should have put those in the intial thread
Budget for Graphics $200-300 (?) other upgrades 'lower end' if possible. I like buying used if possible
Location: Ontario Canada

 

[hamilton9]

Awesome - thanks for that

8GBs of ram and a 710 GPU >> correct
modern AMD APU >> cool idea. I learned a new thing today- -- the existence of APUs
upgrade RAM/750 GPU vs APU/new RAM >> good idea, I will look over these two options and compare

I appreciate the response -- have a good one eh