Looking for a component upgrade with a $300 - $400 Budget

Sep 17, 2018
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Hey guys,
So i have decided to make some upgrades on my PC, my (loose) budget is around $300 for the upgrades, i primarily use my computer for playing LoL and CS:GO whilst on discord, however i am finding that i am getting unusually low FPS whilst playing CS:GO on low settings (50 -70 FPS) while on or off discord. My specs are as follows:

Motherboard: MSI B350 PRO-VDH
CPU: 7th Gen A8 9600 APU
Graphics Card: Asus Sapphire Pulse RX560 2GB
HDD: Seagate BarraCuda 7200 rpm 1TB
SSD: N/A
RAM: 8GB Single 2133 GHz
Monitor: Sumsung 23.5" Curved 60Hz
PSU: Generic 500W PSU

I was thinking about purchasing an SSD and upgrading my processor to a Ryzen 5 2600, as i am sure that my CPU is bottle-necking my computer's performance. However i am not certain of this, neither an expert at all so i would like a professionals idea of what to upgrade :).
 

Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
Windows 10?

Use Resource Monitor to observe your system to see what is happening.

Just open and watch. Then slide the window to one side and work on your cfomputer as you normally do.

Overall, you should end up with some sense of any bottleneck(s).

My thought would be that a SSD for hosting the OS would be a good first start.
 
Sep 17, 2018
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Ok, thank you for your help, i ran into that test and it seems my CPU is always at 100%, whereas my GPU and RAM are all at normal levels.Even if i am going about normal tasks like watching YouTube videos without any programs running in the background my CPU is going at around 80%~, would this mean a CPU upgrade?

Again, thank you for responding :)
 

Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
Very good.

Next step:

Use Task Manager to discover what your CPU is doing when at 100%.

May be some buggy application that is not releasing CPU resources when the application is no longer in need of the CPU.

Keep digging into things.....
 
Sep 17, 2018
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OK, thank you for these suggestions, if i wanted to do more digging, where would look for detailed analysis of my components performance, purley task manager or is there a third party website that would be helpful?

Cheers
 

Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
Remain "in house" as much as you can.

There are many online websites offering "solutions" but those websites will appear no matter what problem you present.

On your system work with Task Manager, Event Viewer, Resource Monitor, and Performance Monitor to dig deeper.

Not always easy and it does take some effort to work through it all.

However, you will learn more and begin to increase your personal understanding of how it all works and, more importantly, the factors relevant to your particular post and problem.

Just be methodical and go one step at a time. Keep notes, look for patterns. Google anything that catches your attention but do not immediately react to and/or install some fix via software.

Overall, I would expect that you will work out that an SSD (vs HDD) is the likely the best choice and within your budget.

End result being a clone: present HDD ---> new SSD

My sense being that the existing CPU is fine...









 
I would disagree that the CPU is fine. Even an upgrade to a Ryzen 3 1200 would see a 48% increase in performance. The 2200G beats it by 62%. The A8 9600 is based on the old FX architecture. It isn't a good CPU. So, if you have the $300 to spend go with an upgrade to Ryzen... any Ryzen and an SSD. A Ryzen 5 1600 will give you a great 74% boost in CPU capability and leave you $150 of that budget left over for a good SSD. Your entire PC's performance will get a big uplift. Alternatively, you could get a 2200G, a RAM upgrade, and still an SSD.

 
Sep 17, 2018
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Ok, thank you so much for your time, this is the insight i needed to perform a well thought out upgrade :)
 
Sep 17, 2018
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Yup, i have done a bit of digging and it seems i am able to get a 500gb SSD for under $150, so i will most likely be looking into purchasing one of those 3 CPU's, thank you so much for solving my problem aswell! :)