Question Upgrade recommendations

[whoisev]

Hello, Tom's Hardware Community.

I am planning to upgrade my Intel Core i5-8400 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, but I am not sure what I should get. I wasn't planning to upgrade my motherboard as I recently bought a new one and it works fine, but if I had to then that's fine. I went into a bottleneck calculator and noticed an i9-9900KF and a RTX 3050 Low Profile could work, but I don't know much about computer specs. My current motherboard uses a LGA 1151 socket. Please let me know any recommendations!

Thank you.

 

[geofelt]

Bottleneck calculators are considered junk science.
Best to list the make/model of all of your parts.
CPU-Z will identify your motherboard and ram.

What is the main use of your pc?
D o you have a budget?

 

[whoisev]

Bottleneck calculators are considered junk science.
Best to list the make/model of all of your parts.
CPU-Z will identify your motherboard and ram.

What is the main use of your pc?
D o you have a budget?

Sorry for the late reply. Some parts I don't know the exact model or brand but I should still be able to list every part I have in my current build. I don't have an exact budget at the moment, but I am looking forward for any recommendations. I mainly use my PC for gaming and I mostly play games like GTA V and RDR 2.

• Motherboard:
  ASRock H370M-HDV LGA 1151
• CPU:
  Intel Core i5-8400
• CPU Cooler:
  Thermalright AXP90-X47 42.58 CFM CPU Cooler
• GPU:
  PNY NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
• RAM:
  x2 Crucial 12 GB DDR4-2666
• Case Fans:
  x3 Noctua P12 redux-1700 PWM 70.75 CFM 120 mm Fan
• Hard Drives:
  Seagate BarraCuda 1 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
  TEAMGROUP AX2 512GB 3D NAND TLC 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD
• Power Supply:
  Corsair CX650M (2021) 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply
• Fan Controller:
  Thermalright TL-FAN HUB X4 Fan Controller
• Network Card:
  TP-Link Archer TX55E 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax PCIe x1 Wi-Fi Adapter

 

[geofelt]

Games may be limited by cpu or gpu.
To see how your games run, try this simple test:
Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
This makes the graphics card loaf a bit.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

If you are cpu limited, there are not too many effective cpu upgrades.
Here is the list of options for your motherboard:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H370M-HDV/index.asp#CPU
I9-9900KF would be about the strongest upgrade, but it is a bad value, costing some $200 used on ebay.
And, you may need a stronger cooler.
What you would get mostly is added processing threads.
For your games, look first to the single thread performance.
Run the cpu-Z bench on your i5-8400. You should get a single thread score around 451.
http://valid.x86.fr/bench/xyws8u/1
A i7-9700K might be 548. $120 on ebay.
To do better requires a new motherboard.

Your 12gb ram is strange; I do not know of any 12gb ddr4 ram sticks.

If you need a graphics upgrade, 3050 is not worth it.
Here is Tom's gpu hierarchy chart:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html
Look for a tier higher or you may be disappointed.

 

[whoisev]

Games may be limited by cpu or gpu.
To see how your games run, try this simple test:
Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
This makes the graphics card loaf a bit.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

If you are cpu limited, there are not too many effective cpu upgrades.
Here is the list of options for your motherboard:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H370M-HDV/index.asp#CPU
I9-9900KF would be about the strongest upgrade, but it is a bad value, costing some $200 used on ebay.
And, you may need a stronger cooler.
What you would get mostly is added processing threads.
For your games, look first to the single thread performance.
Run the cpu-Z bench on your i5-8400. You should get a single thread score around 451.
http://valid.x86.fr/bench/xyws8u/1
A i7-9700K might be 548. $120 on ebay.
To do better requires a new motherboard.

Your 12gb ram is strange; I do not know of any 12gb ddr4 ram sticks.

If you need a graphics upgrade, 3050 is not worth it.
Here is Tom's gpu hierarchy chart:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html
Look for a tier higher or you may be disappointed.

Could you elaborate by "eye candy?" Also yeah I was planning to upgrade my CPU cooler as well, since the old one was really bad and I just had this one lying around to use. I actually don't think there is 2 sticks of 12 GBs of RAM, but in total its 24 GBs. My RAM sticks don't have their labels anymore so I can't tell what type of RAM it is, I just said Crucial as I believe one of them was a Crucial stick from what I remember. My CPU-Z bench score was 453.4 so you are correct on that. However on the website you have linked, my multi-thread score was 2521.9 rather than the 2674. I don't really need a huge upgrade, mainly just looking for some parts that should keep my PC going for a couple more years.

 

[Why_Me]

Could you elaborate by "eye candy?" Also yeah I was planning to upgrade my CPU cooler as well, since the old one was really bad and I just had this one lying around to use. I actually don't think there is 2 sticks of 12 GBs of RAM, but in total its 24 GBs. My RAM sticks don't have their labels anymore so I can't tell what type of RAM it is, I just said Crucial as I believe one of them was a Crucial stick from what I remember. My CPU-Z bench score was 453.4 so you are correct on that. However on the website you have linked, my multi-thread score was 2521.9 rather than the 2674. I don't really need a huge upgrade, mainly just looking for some parts that should keep my PC going for a couple more years.

What is your budget and what country are you located?

 

[geofelt]

By "eye candy" I mean graphics quality and detail settings. More makes the gpu work harder.

Your 24gb is likely a 16 gb stick and a 8gb stick.
You can verify this by looking at cpu-Z spd tab.
There you will see exactly what is installed in each slot.
Because the capacity is not matched you are operating in flex mode.
the 16 gb matched capacity operates in normal dual channel mode while the odd 8gb operates in slower single channel mode.
This is not overly important.

 

[helper800]

Here is a place to start with a new build. Graphics cards are a bit tough right now because of no stock. In an ideal world a 9070 XT would be the card to get at 600 dollars.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-14600K 3.5 GHz 14-Core Processor ($229.97 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler ($35.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: NZXT N7 Z790 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Patriot Viper Venom 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-7000 CL32 Memory ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Inland Performance Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($134.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Core 2 Radeon RX 7800 XT 16 GB Video Card ($529.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Focus 2 ATX Mid Tower Case ($63.98 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 TT Premium 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($116.84 @ Amazon)
Total: $1361.65
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-03-06 12:50 EST-0500