Question Upgrading my PC

[Captain-Give-A-Hand]

I've had my PC for almost a year now and while I'm not in a hurry to upgrade parts at the moment, I definitely want to in the future.

However I am not tech savvy enough to know what parts would be considered an upgrade from what I have now. Would anyone have any recommendations?

These are the specs I currently have:

• Processor: Intel Core i5 Six Core Proecessor i5-900F (2.9GHz) 9MB Cache
• 
  
• Motherboard: ASUS H310M-A R2.0: Micro-ATX, DDR4, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs
• 
  
• Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2400MHz (2 x 4GB)
• 
  
• Graphics Card: 4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1650 - HDMI
• 
  
• 1st Storage Drive: 1TB SEAGATE BARACUDA SATA - III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache
• 
  
• 1st M.2 SSD Storage Drive: 256GB ADATA SX6000 Pro PCle M.2 2280 (2100 MB/R, 1200 MB/W)
• 
  
• Power Supply: CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES VS-350 Power Supply

I'm looking to be able to run modern games as well as any new games to come out for the foreseeable future.

Any recommendations are much appreciated and thanks for taking the time to read this.

Stay safe out there.

 

[cdrkf]

I've had my PC for almost a year now and while I'm not in a hurry to upgrade parts at the moment, I definitely want to in the future.

However I am not tech savvy enough to know what parts would be considered an upgrade from what I have now. Would anyone have any recommendations?

These are the specs I currently have:

• Processor: Intel Core i5 Six Core Proecessor i5-900F (2.9GHz) 9MB Cache
• 
  
• Motherboard: ASUS H310M-A R2.0: Micro-ATX, DDR4, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs
• 
  
• Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2400MHz (2 x 4GB)
• 
  
• Graphics Card: 4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1650 - HDMI
• 
  
• 1st Storage Drive: 1TB SEAGATE BARACUDA SATA - III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache
• 
  
• 1st M.2 SSD Storage Drive: 256GB ADATA SX6000 Pro PCle M.2 2280 (2100 MB/R, 1200 MB/W)
• 
  
• Power Supply: CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES VS-350 Power Supply

I'm looking to be able to run modern games as well as any new games to come out for the foreseeable future.

Any recommendations are much appreciated and thanks for taking the time to read this.

Stay safe out there.

There are quite a few possible upgrade options - These are the things I would change (in order of priority):

1: Upgrade to a stronger PSU - the one you have is fine for the parts installed, but it's not going to handle more powerful parts so this would be a good one to start with. Something like a Corsair CS or CX series ~ 500W to 600W range would give you lots of headroom for more powerful graphics cards and cpu options.

2: Graphics card. With a stronger PSU in the system you can then swap to a better gpu - this will give you the biggest performance jump in games as your cpu is pretty good. It depends what resolution and settings you are after, for maxed out 1080p gaming the Radeon RX 5600 XT and Geforce 2060 Super are both good choices (these will also handle 1440p at slightly reduced settings no problem). Your system would also be fine with the next tier up of gpu - RX 5700 series or RTX 2070 cards for maxed out 1440p gaming.

3: Ram - 8gb is enough for most games, but there are a few titles out now where it will hold the machine back a bit. 16gb would be a worthwhile upgrade (I haven't checked how many ram slots your motherboard has, if it has 4 slots then getting an extra pair of 4gb modules would be best value option).

4: Storage - the HDD is quite slow and will cause slow loading times and some pop in in certain games that load data on the fly from the drive. If you could switch this out to an SSD (a sata ssd would be fine) you would get better performance in games.

5: CPU / motherboard- a 6 core 6 threads i5 is fine for all current games, this might change in future and your motherboard does support up to 8 core, 16 thread cpus . The other reason to look at the cpu is the clock speed on the 9400F is fairly low, which means it won't be the best option if you are looking for very high frame rate gaming (e.g. for a 240hz screen). In that case though you would need a new cpu and a Z series motherboard so that you can overclock to get the very best performance.

 

[Captain-Give-A-Hand]

There are quite a few possible upgrade options - These are the things I would change (in order of priority):

1: Upgrade to a stronger PSU - the one you have is fine for the parts installed, but it's not going to handle more powerful parts so this would be a good one to start with. Something like a Corsair CS or CX series ~ 500W to 600W range would give you lots of headroom for more powerful graphics cards and cpu options.

2: Graphics card. With a stronger PSU in the system you can then swap to a better gpu - this will give you the biggest performance jump in games as your cpu is pretty good. It depends what resolution and settings you are after, for maxed out 1080p gaming the Radeon RX 5600 XT and Geforce 2060 Super are both good choices (these will also handle 1440p at slightly reduced settings no problem). Your system would also be fine with the next tier up of gpu - RX 5700 series or RTX 2070 cards for maxed out 1440p gaming.

3: Ram - 8gb is enough for most games, but there are a few titles out now where it will hold the machine back a bit. 16gb would be a worthwhile upgrade (I haven't checked how many ram slots your motherboard has, if it has 4 slots then getting an extra pair of 4gb modules would be best value option).

4: Storage - the HDD is quite slow and will cause slow loading times and some pop in in certain games that load data on the fly from the drive. If you could switch this out to an SSD (a sata ssd would be fine) you would get better performance in games.

5: CPU / motherboard- a 6 core 6 threads i5 is fine for all current games, this might change in future and your motherboard does support up to 8 core, 16 thread cpus . The other reason to look at the cpu is the clock speed on the 9400F is fairly low, which means it won't be the best option if you are looking for very high frame rate gaming (e.g. for a 240hz screen). In that case though you would need a new cpu and a Z series motherboard so that you can overclock to get the very best performance.

Ah cheers for this! Upgrading a PC is just as jarring as getting one for the first time; no idea where to start without outside help.

I'll start searching for these components or ones like them once I get the chance.

Does it matter what case they're put into or is that purely a cosmetic thing that has no real effect on the performance? I only ask as I'm considering a new casing as well.

 

[cdrkf]

Ah cheers for this! Upgrading a PC is just as jarring as getting one for the first time; no idea where to start without outside help.

I'll start searching for these components or ones like them once I get the chance.

Does it matter what case they're put into or is that purely a cosmetic thing that has no real effect on the performance? I only ask as I'm considering a new casing as well.

The main considerations for a case (aside aesthetics) are 1: physical room (lots of compact or small form factor cases won't fit with lager graphics cards and coolers for example) and 2: air flow - need decent airflow with higher end parts to make sure temps are good (if temps get too high parts will start to thermal throttle which will reduce performance).

Provided your current case is a full size atx tower style case, room shouldn't be a concern, as for airflow it's a good idea to have at least one case fan to help increase airflow (most cases come with at least one exhaust fan on the back which will be fine for most hardware if running at stock settings).