[SOLVED] Upgrades

[Joshua Fredricks]

Motherboard is a ASUS P8H61-I R2.0 LGA 1155 Intel H61 running a i5 2500k 8 gbs of ram and a 380 4gb Radeon looking for upgrades that will make a difference have a aftermarket cooler on the cpu

 

[Darkbreeze]

How much are you able to allocate to budget for upgrades? What region/country are you in?

 

[CountMike]

Motherboard is a ASUS P8H61-I R2.0 LGA 1155 Intel H61 running a i5 2500k 8 gbs of ram and a 380 4gb Radeon looking for upgrades that will make a difference have a aftermarket cooler on the cpu

That's a very large question, practically anything made in last couple of years, depends only on budget and intended use.

 

[Joshua Fredricks]

How much are you able to allocate to budget for upgrades? What region/country are you in?

I would do a little at a time with upgrades like cpu one week then when I have everything put it in thinking about 600 and I live in ny

 

[damric]

Depends on how much you want to spend, and what your workload consists of. On the CPU platform side, even the "budget" modern CPUs from AMD or Intel are better than what you have. GPU-wise, it's more of a question of resolution and power supply (which I would also upgrade if it is equally as old).

There are some new things coming out very soon so you might want to wait a few weeks.

 

[Darkbreeze]

What resolution and refresh rate are you gaming at now and do you plan to upgrade to a display that would be significantly different at any point in the moderately "near" future?

What kinds of titles to you tend to play?

 

[Joshua Fredricks]

Depends on how much you want to spend, and what your workload consists of. On the CPU platform side, even the "budget" modern CPUs from AMD or Intel are better than what you have. GPU-wise, it's more of a question of resolution and power supply (which I would also upgrade if it is equally as old).

There are some new things coming out very soon so you might want to wait a few weeks.

The psu is a I play games like wow just looking for something to run the game smother I think my monitor is 1920 not sure of the other number
SeaSonic S12II S12II 520 W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

 

[Darkbreeze]

What is the model of your monitor?

 

[Joshua Fredricks]

What is the model of your monitor?

To be totally honest I think its a dell i got it at a thrift store like 10 years ago for 15$ its got a vga and a dvi-d port i was leaning towards a i7 3770

 

[Darkbreeze]

The 3770k is the best upgrade you can do without also replacing at least the motherboard, and probably the motherboard AND memory. You'd have to find an extremely cheap deal on a CPU to make it worth spending the money for an upgrade on the same platform though. Even the 3770k isn't going to give you more than a marginal improvement over your current model. It's just plain too old. Sure, there would be SOME improvement, so if you could find one cheap enough it might be worth it, but I wouldn't pay more than 75 bucks for a CPU that keeps you on that same platform.

It's just a "money pit" situation at this point. You'd be much better off saving your money and spending it all at once on a full platform upgrade. Your current platform is 9 years old. That's about four years past the maximum age at which most platforms become deprecated. Something like this would be a MUCH wiser use of your money. Or, revisiting this in another month or two after the new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs have been released and reviewed.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($106.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($61.88 @ Newegg)
Total: $368.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-25 21:20 EDT-0400

 

[damric]

It sounds like you are trying to upgrade the bare minimum due to cost constraints. Your 380 should be able to run WoW fine at 1080p. I know that game has got some graphics overhaul but it's always going to be a CPU-bound game engine particularly single-threaded bottlenecked.

Seeing how you cannot overclock that i5-2500K on that board, I suggest at least the main platform upgrade first, CPU, RAM, and motherboard. Keep in mind that your old PSU may not handle modern power states, particularly sleep functions.

I would normally say Ryzen, Ryzen, Ryzen, but really a modern i3 (4c/8t) will be plenty, and you could go with a cheap motherboard and RAM.

Otherwise you are looking at dropping more money to go to the better Ryzen 3600. It's quite a shame that the awesome 1600AF's are no longer found for $85 or I would say get that.

There's always the secondhand market on forums, ebay, ect.

When you update to something better than 1080p you will need a graphics card (and PSU) upgrade. For now you can live with the 380. I'd try overclocking it and see what it can do as far as core and VRAM. It might help a little. Also tweak your advanced driver settings.

 

[Joshua Fredricks]

The 3770k is the best upgrade you can do without also replacing at least the motherboard, and probably the motherboard AND memory. You'd have to find an extremely cheap deal on a CPU to make it worth spending the money for an upgrade on the same platform though. Even the 3770k isn't going to give you more than a marginal improvement over your current model. It's just plain too old. Sure, there would be SOME improvement, so if you could find one cheap enough it might be worth it, but I wouldn't pay more than 75 bucks for a CPU that keeps you on that same platform.

It's just a "money pit" situation at this point. You'd be much better off saving your money and spending it all at once on a full platform upgrade. Your current platform is 9 years old. That's about four years past the maximum age at which most platforms become deprecated. Something like this would be a MUCH wiser use of your money. Or, revisiting this in another month or two after the new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs have been released and reviewed.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($106.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($61.88 @ Newegg)
Total: $368.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-25 21:20 EDT-0400

I appreciate it and I'll shop around on prices I actually got the i5 probably 6 years ago used on ebay for 50 bucks and still holding strong bit im due to upgrade games are choppy and system is old

 

[Joshua Fredricks]

The 3770k is the best upgrade you can do without also replacing at least the motherboard, and probably the motherboard AND memory. You'd have to find an extremely cheap deal on a CPU to make it worth spending the money for an upgrade on the same platform though. Even the 3770k isn't going to give you more than a marginal improvement over your current model. It's just plain too old. Sure, there would be SOME improvement, so if you could find one cheap enough it might be worth it, but I wouldn't pay more than 75 bucks for a CPU that keeps you on that same platform.

It's just a "money pit" situation at this point. You'd be much better off saving your money and spending it all at once on a full platform upgrade. Your current platform is 9 years old. That's about four years past the maximum age at which most platforms become deprecated. Something like this would be a MUCH wiser use of your money. Or, revisiting this in another month or two after the new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs have been released and reviewed.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($106.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($61.88 @ Newegg)
Total: $368.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-25 21:20 EDT-0400

Also would a razen 5 2600 be a better difference as well as upgrading the motherboard and ram?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Not really. The performance of the Ryzen 5 2600 is ONLY better in games that absolutely utilize a higher number of threads, and are well optimized for it. The single core performance of the Pinnacle ridge CPUs like the Ryzen 2600 are not very impressive, more like the 3rd Gen Intel processors. Plus, the price of them doesn't even make them all that attractive as a budget option, because the cost of the 3000 series is fairly close but the performance is much better. Truthfully, waiting for the new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs if you have to wait anyhow, is the best idea because the prices are probably going to go down quickly in response to Intel's next release which they are trying to rush to early 2021, January-ish, and it's likely that AMD is going to take the single core performance crown away so that they will have better gaming performance for single and multi core operations.

And, it's further likely that might also push down the cost of the 3000 series units a little more as well. Probably towards the end of November or into December sometime.

 

[damric]

You could get something like this, and for WoW it will be great. Otherwise it's not future proof at all, but it is a huge upgrade over what you have.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i3-10100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($114.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock H410M-HDV/M.2 Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard ($66.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: GeIL EVO SPEAR Phantom Gaming 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($53.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $235.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-26 09:00 EDT-0400

The CPU is 4 core and has Hyper Threading. The RAM will only run at 2933MT/s on this board but since GEIL always uses Samsung B die even for cheap kits, the timings can certainly be tightened down.

Quite frankly the AM4 socket is still the way to go, but since better CPUs are around the corner and I've seen the R5 3600 going for $160 already this year, I would either wait it out or get one of the R3s to hold you over.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($118.99 @ B&H)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($94.99 @ B&H)
Memory: GeIL EVO SPEAR 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $271.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-26 09:11 EDT-0400

I strongly agree with Darkbreeze to save up cash until ~January-February and see what you can get as new toys are launching imminently and also that drives down price of current generation stuff. So if you can save $800-1200 you can have the whole thing including NVMe drive, Graphics card, PSU, Case, ect. Start donating that plasma now 😀

 

[Joshua Fredricks]

You could get something like this, and for WoW it will be great. Otherwise it's not future proof at all, but it is a huge upgrade over what you have.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i3-10100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($114.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock H410M-HDV/M.2 Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard ($66.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: GeIL EVO SPEAR Phantom Gaming 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($53.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $235.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-26 09:00 EDT-0400

The CPU is 4 core and has Hyper Threading. The RAM will only run at 2933MT/s on this board but since GEIL always uses Samsung B die even for cheap kits, the timings can certainly be tightened down.

Quite frankly the AM4 socket is still the way to go, but since better CPUs are around the corner and I've seen the R5 3600 going for $160 already this year, I would either wait it out or get one of the R3s to hold you over.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($118.99 @ B&H)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($94.99 @ B&H)
Memory: GeIL EVO SPEAR 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $271.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-26 09:11 EDT-0400

I strongly agree with Darkbreeze to save up cash until ~January-February and see what you can get as new toys are launching imminently and also that drives down price of current generation stuff. So if you can save $800-1200 you can have the whole thing including NVMe drive, Graphics card, PSU, Case, ect. Start donating that plasma now 😀

I would totally agree with you considering the Ryzen 9 5950X is right around the corner i could get a board with a AM4 socket and future proof the system for many many years to come even if I got a 3600 for the next 4 years then get something newer the socket will be the same

 

[SamirD]

Since you have a 2500k, I would try overclocking the cpu--if it works well you can get as much of a performance boost as a cpu upgrade. If your motherboard doesn't have the options, try using throttlestop.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Gains from overclocking the 2500k would be minimal. Certainly NOT worth the additional expense you'd incur by having to also probably buy a better cooler, improve case cooling, potentially needing a better motherboard. There just isn't a lot to be gained by overclocking the 2500k unless you already have all those things AND if you DO, you are probably ALREADY overclocking it anyhow, for what that's worth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of overclocking when there is something substantial to gain from it, but in this case I do not believe that there IS something SUBSTANTIAL to be gained from it, especially not if additional expenses are required to do it unless it's a temporary stopgap and you intend on repurposing those cooling parts in a newer platform anyhow.

Besides which, aside from using the system bus, you can't overclock on that H61 platform anyhow and overclocking using the system bus is not only not a great idea, the gains will be even FAR less than from using the multiplier on an unlocked system.

As to the "socket will be the same for the next 4 years", no, it won't. The Ryzen 5000 series processors are the LAST Ryzen processors that are going to be AM4 according to AMD. So anything you buy into on the AM4 platform now in terms of motherboard support is going to END with the Ryzen 5000 series. That means if you already have a 5950X there is almost certainly not going to be anywhere to go from there without replacing the entire motherboard and CPU once again, but, that itself should be good for at least five years, if not longer, depending on what you do and what comes out down the road.

 

[SamirD]

You will never get 'substantial' gains from any OC--otherwise the cpus weren't clocked high enough from the factory to begin with.

The 2500k has the potential to be able to match the speed of the 3770 using throttlestop. And if so, it would be worth the extra cooling--which could be as simple as just setting all the fans to 100% as most cooling is running sub-par when trying to be 'quiet', and that's free too. This would be a temporary stopgap and a cheap and effective one at that. Plus if it doesn't work, can go back to stock without an issue. I don't see any harm in trying this at all.