Is this a good upgrade?

[Guest]

Hi,

I currently have an MSI-760GM P23 FX Motherboard with an AMD Sempron 145 2.80GHZ, a 120GB SSD, Windows 7, and HyperX Fury 8GB RAM, and an ASUS Geforce GT-619. I have a budget no name case.

I only surf the web, check emails, and sometimes watch DVD's and I will be playing Minecraft. My PC is still very fast compared to other similar systems. What I want to upgrade is the motherboard to a Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AMD 970 Motherboard (Socket AM3+, DDR3, S-ATA 600, ATX, PCI Express 2.0 x16, USB 3.0) and upgrade the case to a Corsair 100R Silent edition, get Windows 8.1 and add a rear fan. Worthwhile upgrade?

 

[raisonjohn]

If the main purpose of your motherboard upgrade is performance, then I don't think that's worthwhile as you probably won't notice any difference in performance from your original rig other than getting that larger ATX format, that USB 3.0 port, those SATA 6Gb/s slots, an additional PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and RAM speed to 4x DIMM @ 1866MHz. The cost of both your current motherboard and your upgraded motherboard is almost the same (at $48). For you purpose of mostly checking emails, web, DVD and Minecraft, I, personally, would not consider that an upgrade. But, that's just my two cents. I'm sure others might think otherwise.

 

[jakegroves]

For your use of PC no i would reccomend staying until you decide to do some more heavy dutygaming.

 

[Guest]

I would but I would like a SATA 3 port to use with my SSD, rather than SATA 2 on my Motherboard. And also, I want USB 3 as my case has two USB ports.

 

[raisonjohn]

I would but I would like a SATA 3 port to use with my SSD, rather than SATA 2 on my Motherboard. And also, I want USB 3 as my case has two USB ports.

Your SSD will work as it is on SATA 3Gb/s ports. In fact, real-world tests show that you won't get a lot of performance gain in using SATA II or SATA III (only very very slight gain which is very unnoticeable based on the benchmarks).

As for the USB 3.0, if you have a lot of devices that have 3.0 connection, then that's one reason to "upgrade" as the difference between the USB 2.0 and 3.0 speeds are huge. But ask yourself if you really need it based on your current situation (such as how many USB 3.0 thumb drives you are using now or do you use it regularly to transfer large file sizes or just seldomly?).

In my opinion, you are looking at a "half-upgrade", if there's such a thing (as this upgrade doesn't really increase performance, only additional connections). For me, a better upgrade would be a "full upgrade" that would be focused on the CPU (+ the Motherboard, yes, that's the time) and/or the GPU+PSU.

Ultimately, if you feel that the SATA III and the USB 3.0 are indeed very very necessary for your current work, then go for it. If not, I would save up some more money to go for that full upgrade in not only connectivity-wise but performance-wise.

 

[Guest]

I am going to be doing some gaming, like Battlefield 4, Minecraft and maybe Far Cry 4. But should I just upgrade my CPU to an FX-6300 and my graphics card?

 

[raisonjohn]

I am going to be doing some gaming, like Battlefield 4, Minecraft and maybe Far Cry 4. But should I just upgrade my CPU to an FX-6300 and my graphics card?

Yes, that's a better upgrade choice for performance. I would get either a GTX 960 or an R9 280x to pair it with the FX-6300.