[SOLVED] What to upgrade?

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LegoLoco45

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Nov 20, 2016
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Howdy!
Me getting some extra cash i've decided that i'd like to upgrade my ol' game rig and get him some new superpowers or something.
Anyways, I'm currently thinking if I should get a new cpu, more ram or just get a better gpu. Probably mobo could be outdated as hell.
My build:
MOBO : GA-F2a68hm-s1
CPU: AMD Athlon X4 845 (Isn't OC'd.)
GPU: Asus rx 460 2gb OC
RAM: 2x4GB Hyperx DDR3 (I think it was 1333MHz)
HDD : An old 1TB HDD, (don't plan to upgrade)
SSD: ADATA SU 650 240GB
PSU: EVGA 430W 80+

I'm running on budget here. I'll probably be buying some used parts, but I'd like to know on what should I focus on.
Thanks in advance.
 
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What you have is not much money and a platform that isn't kind to upgrades. Heck, even getting something new like an Athlon 200GE, a worthwhile AM4 board, and RAM would hit pretty close to your budget.

Now, you've mentioned buying used, and that is a good way to get more performance for less. Between the i5 4670 and the i7 2600 (assuming it is a non-K version) the i5 is going to be a little faster but it isn't going to be worth that much extra. So, if you went with the i7 you could reuse your RAM, get a supported motherboard, then slot in something like a used RX 470 or 570, you could conceivably come out of this with a fairly capable gaming machine. Failing finding an RX 470 in your price range there are other options. You could try to dig up something like an older Radeon R9 GPU, anything 270x or higher would be a good performance boost for you. On the NVidia side a GTX 960 or 770 would be a good upgrade. Anything less wouldn't be worth considering as it would perform worse than your RX 460 or wouldn't be worth the upgrade.
 
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justin.m.beauvais said:
What you have is not much money and a platform that isn't kind to upgrades. Heck, even getting something new like an Athlon 200GE, a worthwhile AM4 board, and RAM would hit pretty close to your budget.

Now, you've mentioned buying used, and that is a good way to get more performance for less. Between the i5 4670 and the i7 2600 (assuming it is a non-K version) the i5 is going to be a little faster but it isn't going to be worth that much extra. So, if you went with the i7 you could reuse your RAM, get a supported motherboard, then slot in something like a used RX 470 or 570, you could conceivably come out of this with a fairly capable gaming machine. Failing finding an RX 470 in your price range there are other options. You could try to dig up something like an older Radeon R9 GPU, anything 270x or higher would be a good performance boost for you. On the NVidia side a GTX 960 or 770 would be a good upgrade. Anything less wouldn't be worth considering as it would perform worse than your RX 460 or wouldn't be worth the upgrade.
Click to expand...

Actually, If I'd be getting new parts I could sell the ones I have. What price would be adequate for cpu, mobo and ram?
 
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That is hard to say specifically, I'm basically guessing at your local prices based on what I've seen from other forum posts from people in your region. If you could get another 60-80 or so euro you'd be in the ballpark of something like a Ryzen 2200G, a cheap AM4 motherboard, and 8 GB of RAM, but I'd check the pricing on that before you commit. It would also leave you nothing for a GPU upgrade. I'd expect the Ryzen upgrade to run about 250 euro. Going with the Athlon 200GE you'd be able to knock around about 50 euro off that price though.

All that said, the RX 460 isn't a horrible GPU. It is probably being held back a bit by your current CPU. So, if I were in your position, I'd look at what it would cost for the 200GE, an AM4 motherboard (preferably a B450, but if you need to go cheaper an A320 is an option), and 8GB of DDR4 3000 (or faster), then see how far apart you are from budget. Your current hardware isn't going to be worth a lot. You should be satisfied if you can get 50 euro out of it. If you can manage it, the 2200G is going to be quite a bit faster than the 200GE and you should really consider it, but if it isn't in the budget the 200GE is a capable CPU and much faster than what you have.

I was about to give you bad advice... I just looked up the performance of the 200GE vs the Athlon X4 845... the difference is 9%. That isn't a worthwhile upgrade at all. Look up local prices for the Ryzen 3 2200G, an AM4 motherboard (A320 or B450), and 8GB DDR4 (anything 2666 or faster). If you can sell your current hardware to make up the difference between what you have and what you need, then go that route. If not, those Haswell i5s are not bad CPUs and will give you similar performance to the 2200G, and you can reuse your RAM.
 
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Even an R3 1200, or 2200g, would be a vast improvement, over what you have, and get you on a more modern platform with some upgrade potential. That might get you within budget, if getting a ryzen 1600 is not doable. An R5 1400 is another possibility. Might want to check the used market too, local and/or Ebay. With people upgrading to Ryzen 3000, there may be some good 1st gen ryzen deals out there.
 
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So, I've just surfed the market and I've accepted the price being 200euros. If I buy Ryzen 5 1600 with Asrock B450M-HDV 4.0 and HyperX Fury 3200MHz 8GB. Is it the best I could get?
 
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LegoLoco45 said:
So, I've just surfed the market and I've accepted the price being 200euros. If I buy Ryzen 5 1600 with Asrock B450M-HDV 4.0 and HyperX Fury 3200MHz 8GB. Is it the best I could get?
Click to expand...
That is probably the best you are going to get as far as price to performance. The 1600 is going to be a huge upgrade for you. It is a couple years old at this point but still an extremely capable CPU.

Also... more of what logainofhades said. Dual channel is best. Also, if you need to save a bit more money, check prices on the B350 motherboards. They are perfectly fine for the 1000 series Ryzen chips, mostly because they were made for each other... literally.
 
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justin.m.beauvais said:
That is probably the best you are going to get as far as price to performance. The 1600 is going to be a huge upgrade for you. It is a couple years old at this point but still an extremely capable CPU.

Also... more of what logainofhades said. Dual channel is best. Also, if you need to save a bit more money, check prices on the B350 motherboards. They are perfectly fine for the 1000 series Ryzen chips, mostly because they were made for each other... literally.
Click to expand...
Well about the B350 MOBO. I just checked and there is this Biostar B350ET2 mobo that is 5 euros cheaper than the B450. Soo, should I better get that one instead of the b450 for the ryzen? And will it be compatible with the ram aswell? May I know why would it be bad to run with a single stick of ram?
 
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LegoLoco45 said:
Well about the B350 MOBO. I just checked and there is this Biostar B350ET2 mobo that is 5 euros cheaper than the B450. Soo, should I better get that one instead of the b450 for the ryzen? And will it be compatible with the ram aswell? May I know why would it be bad to run with a single stick of ram?
Click to expand...
Ryzen as a platform works best with as much RAM speed as possible. I'm not totally sure why on the architectural level, but it loves RAM bandwidth. Running in dual channel theoretically doubles the bandwidth of the RAM, which makes for better performance. It allows the two sticks of RAM to run as one. There are quite a few articles and benchmarks that document this quirk very well. Performance can change drastically based on RAM configurations.
 
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LegoLoco45 said:
GA-A320M-S2H V2
Click to expand...
The A320 would be ok... but it doesn't allow for overclocking. In general the B350 or B450 are preferable as they are more tuneable. You can overclock, use faster RAM, and there are usually other features enabled on the B model boards.

If you don't want to overclock then the A320 chipset is fine. That said, this particular board has the same issue the B450 one does, only 2 RAM slots.

If you can't find another board for less that has 4 RAM slots that is fine. It is more of a convenience thing for future upgrades. If you are planning on future upgrades the B450 would be the safer bet anyways. You'd just have to replace the RAM outright instead of adding more later.
 
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LegoLoco45 said:
Then rises the next quetion... 😀
Should I OC the Ryzen?
Click to expand...
You can, you could, if you should is up to you. I'll tell you one thing though, if you plan on clocking it past what the 1600X is set as stock, you should get a better cooler. The CPU cooler that comes with Ryzen CPUs is pretty good, but for anything more than a few hundred MHz it isn't enough to overclock comfortably. So the stock speeds are 3.2GHz with a 3.6GHz boost... I wouldn't go past an overclock of 3.6GHz to 3.7GHz on all cores. Anything more and it might get too toasty for the stock cooler. With a good cooler you should be able to hit 3.8GHz pretty easily with the possibility of reaching 4GHz... but that depends on luck.
 
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