Upgrading pc question

stickas

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This is my current pc. I'm interested in gaming, mostly rpg,arpg,mobas and action adventure. I built it in 2011 and only changed the gpu (had gtx 660 iirc) and ram (one of the two broke down and got new ones from warranty) since then. It's doing fine but I think it's close to needing another upgrade. My guess is I need to change cpu (and mobo?). I don't have a budget for now and not in a rush to buy the upgrades, just wanna plan ahead.

RAM - CORSAIR VENGEANCE LP 8GB (2X4GB) PC3-12800 DUAL CHANNEL KIT
PSU - SEASONIC S12II-620 BRONZE 620W
SSD - MUSHKIN CHRONOS DELUXE 2.5" SATA3 120GB
HDD - WESTERN DIGITAL 1TB CAVIAR BLUE SATA3
MOBO - ASROCK H77M
CPU - INTEL CORE I5-3470 3.20GHZ LGA1155
GPU - GIGABYTE GEFORCE GTX 960 4GB WINDFORCE
 
Solution
Ok, so here's the skinny on that. AMD used to be way behind Intel when it came to single core performance. They weren't even close. They had terrible IPC (Instructions per clock/cycle) on their CPUs.

Ryzen changed that. Now they are only slightly behind Intel on single core performance, but they have more cores on any similarly priced CPU now, for the most part, so in anything that can utilize those additional cores WELL, they tend to win the performance battle. Things that rely heavily on only single core performance, they still lose, slightly.

Core for core though, AMD is cheaper on both the price of the CPU and the motherboard, generally. If you are not overclocking you can do well with the included Wraith coolers on Ryzen. For...
you could do the quickie upgrade of an i7 3770, everything will just work. You'll get may an extra 20% going for a 4 core 8 thread modern CPU, add another 50% overall for the extra 2 cores of coffee lake, but not for most games.

With regards to planning ahead, don't bother RAM will be reducing in price, 9000 series intel will upset prices, ryzen gen 2 will do more, in short anything you think about now will be different by the time you get there.
 
Wait. I'd wait and see what the reviews look like for the 9th gen Intel CPUs that are supposed to launch in October look like. That might actually be a paper launch, with the actual products coming a little further down the road, but last time that happened review sites still got review samples way before the actual products were available so at least then you'll have something to compare with current platforms.

If you have no plans at all to overclock, which will be one of the big factors with those 9th gen CPUs since they will be returning to solder between the die and heat spreader, then I'd say any of the current 2nd Gen Ryzen or 8th gen Intel CPUs would likely be a boost from what you have now. Even a Ryzen 3 or Coffee lake i3 would be a moderate improvement.
 

stickas

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I forgot to mention that my motherboard has a problem with its sound sockets. They don't seem to make connection all the time resulting in intermittent sound (incoming or outgoing) and I'm not sure if that's the first step to its breakdown.
 


In that case, plan to go the whole hog.
 

theRTT

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Well you can keep your ssd and hdd's obviously. PSU also seems alright and the same counts for your GPU. Although if I was you, I'd go for a complete new setup. Here's why:

I'm assuming you are not going to overclock it, that's why I choose the non 'k' processors.

Your CPU is in most need of an upgrade and going for the newest intel generation is the best and most future proof option. Take a look at the i5 8400, 8500 or 8600.

A new motherboard is also required. You'd need a motherboard with a b360 or h360 chipset.

If you upgrade your CPU, you also need new RAM: DDR4. Get 16GB's, that's pretty much the standard nowadays.

And if you have the money, upgrade your GPU as well, get a 1060 or 1070. If you don't upgrade your GPU, you can still do that later, if you've bought one of the 8th gen CPU's. I wouldn't go lower than an i5 tho. (which are great and future proof)

In this build I went for the "cheaper" options, purely because I don't know your budget. But if you're not in a rush, you can save more money to get a good and new pc.

 
Any idea what kind of budget you might be wanting to throw at this when you do pull the trigger?

@theRTT, don't make assumptions, they rarely work out. And if you're going to post in a thread that already has two extremely veteran members in it, you might want to bring your A game. Just sayin'. :)
 

stickas

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Won't be a hefty amount of money for sure. Was planning inside my head to change only cpu and maaaaaybe mobo in case it was going bad. Dunno about the RAM thing but will check it. Won't be changing any of the rest tho. They seem to be working fine to change them that soon.
I just want a decent cpu to pair up with the gpu so I can have smooth gameplay in the aforementioned genres. Usually don't play the latest titles but even old games (and mostly online ones) tend to follow the trend of upgrading graphics heavily nowadays.
Would assume a decent mobo would cost like close to 120€ and a decent cpu around 170-250€ probably but might be wrong.
 
Little more than you suggested, but something to think about. This would pretty well crush your current configuration or anything you could upgrade it to on the same platform into smithereens.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor (€158.89 @ Mindfactory)
Motherboard: ASRock - Fatal1ty B450 GAMING K4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (€105.89 @ Alternate)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (€140.06 @ Mindfactory)
Total: €404.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-21 18:12 CEST+0200
 
Ok, so here's the skinny on that. AMD used to be way behind Intel when it came to single core performance. They weren't even close. They had terrible IPC (Instructions per clock/cycle) on their CPUs.

Ryzen changed that. Now they are only slightly behind Intel on single core performance, but they have more cores on any similarly priced CPU now, for the most part, so in anything that can utilize those additional cores WELL, they tend to win the performance battle. Things that rely heavily on only single core performance, they still lose, slightly.

Core for core though, AMD is cheaper on both the price of the CPU and the motherboard, generally. If you are not overclocking you can do well with the included Wraith coolers on Ryzen. For Intel, if it is to be a gaming machine or if it will be making extensive use of applications that use AVX instructions, I would advise not using an Intel stock cooler. In fact, I probably wouldn't anyhow, since they suck. They are ok for really vanilla mainstream machines.

The only real problems Ryzen has had are with memory compatibility and those have mostly been ironed out with newer bios updates and the release of Ryzen second gen CPUs.

The biggest thing really is that all upcoming Ryzen CPUs will be supported on current motherboards, until about 2020 or thereabouts, and visa versa. There is backwards and forwards compatibility so if you choose to upgrade the CPU or motherboard it will be supported for a while still, unlike Intel that seems to require new hardware every other gen or in some cases, even from gen to gen.
 
Solution
As an expansion on the IPC status, the FX series had an IPC and clockspeed that made 60fps gaming difficult to maintain as their single core capabilities were not good enough. Meanwhile Intel had more instructions per clock and a higher clock speed and could therefore feed high frame rates to the GPU (if it could cope).
Ryzen 1 improved on the and took them to about the 100fps level leaving intel as being the system of choice for very high FPS, but Ryzen 1 was more than capable for what most peoples monitors could cope with.
Ryzen 2 has gone further than this. For gaming at 'normal' fps there's nothing in it any more, for gaming where single thread speed doesn't matter and multicore can help it's slightly biased towards AMD now.