[SOLVED] Upgrade Path for Lenovo Legion Y520 i3-7100

[daniel.maxwell]

Hi people.

My step-son has a Lenovo Legion Y520 Tower that’s 1.5yrs old, specs as follows:
-i3-7100
-8GB DDR4-2400
-Nvidia 1050Ti
-500GB SanDisk SSD
-Intel B250 chipset

His birthday is a month away, he’s fairly mad on Fortnite and CS:GO, and rather than rip and replace and spend too much at once I want to phase his upgrades over time - I initially thought about alleviating his current bottleneck with an i7-8700 (or 8700k), which would mean he’d get the extra CPU grunt ahead of upgrading his mobo, PSU and GPU towards the end of the year. I would be prepared to spend £3-400 on the initial ‘phase 1’ upgrade.

The flaw with that is the current B250 chipset, which won’t take an 8th gen intel CPU, and I don’t see the value of buying a similarly priced i7-7700. A new mobo would be the answer, but the Lenovo Tower is tiny and I don’t think it’ll take the majority of mainstream 1151 mobos.

Is a rip and replace the only answer? If that’s the case, should I be considering AMD?

Thanks in advance.

Dan

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Whole new setup is the answer.

 

[Lozrantekh]

Hi, I believe you don't need a big upgrade if he is only playing CS:GO and Fortnite.
Also it may only be my opinion but upgrading from 2 to 4 cores is already a good upgrade if you don't want to go all out, so maybe look around for other CPUs for the B250 Motherboard.

But considering the whole build it depends, maybe instead of upgrading overtime save more money to throw a better upgrade at the PC.
I would honestly start with the PSU, since it seems it only came with 450 Watt which can cause problems if you want to upgrade this system,
then the Mobo, CPU, RAM, SSD and then the Graphics Card. However as I said before this would be even more satisfying if it came all at once especially because you should start with the PSU which is not a cool upgrade.

Maybe just try to convince him to wait for a really good upgrade while you can save up for a good new Build.

 

[daniel.maxwell]

Thanks for the responses gents. I was concerned the response would be a whole new system!!

Let’s say we start with £400 - for a new case, mobo and PSU, what would be recommended?

In addition to this I’m sure I could convince him to invest towards a new CPU.

Thanks

 

[Lozrantekh]

Thanks for the responses gents. I was concerned the response would be a whole new system!!

Let’s say we start with £400 - for a new case, mobo and PSU, what would be recommended?

In addition to this I’m sure I could convince him to invest towards a new CPU.

Thanks

No Problem, however I would start a new thread if I were you and ask more experienced people in that depart, they will definitely get you something better than I can come up with on the spot.
Maybe before starting that new thread you should decide beforehand if you are going AMD or Intel since that would decide which Motherboard type you are going for.
You could also just ask for a complete build which you can then try to complete step by step, but at that point try to have a rough budget in mind etc.
I believe you get what I mean, I hope you have a fun time seeing it all come together, sorry that I can't exactly help in that department.

 

[daniel.maxwell]

Appreciate the steer and the advice, I’ll start a new thread