Question What's a good upgrade for an Intel Core i5 3450?

[Wires1001]

So I have a system that's showing it's age, power supply fan is making noise, hard drive seems to be failing, and I need to upgrade the OS- not to mention it's about 7 years old. So I was thinking about building a system myself this time.

However, I can't seem to find a viable replacement for my Intel core i5 3450- that is- despite there being more cores, the clockspeed seems to be much slower (I currently have a 3.1 GHZ quad core CPU), a lot of intel core i5s seem to have 2.8 GHZ, or 2.9 GHZ.. even with two more cores I feel it's not much of an upgrade. I looked at AMD Ryzens but they're a lot more expensive, so I want to know if I'm really worrying about nothing or not and if I should just get an i5 8600 perhaps or something like that? Any other recommendations are fine, go for it! Thanks for your help @_@

 

[ThatVietGuy]

Budget?

 

[Wires1001]

For the system? about $1000. I can go a bit over that if need be. I was considering just getting a pre-built system but, nothing I see really seems all that ..good..

 

[ThatVietGuy]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($169.99 @ Walmart)
Motherboard: MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($149.99 @ Samsung)
Storage: Western Digital - RE 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($68.33 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 GB GAMING Video Card ($292.83 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($49.99 @ B&H)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($99.39 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1030.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-03-10 23:35 EDT-0400

 

[DSzymborski]

What's the status of case and GPU? You've already said you're having power supply and storage issues, so those are no gos in a new build, but if you have a quality aftermarket case or have upgraded the GPU at some point, those are candidates to be moved to a new build.

 

[SHMILY]

Ryzen 2600 + B450M + RX588 will cost 382$ in China

 

[Wires1001]

What's the status of case and GPU? You've already said you're having power supply and storage issues, so those are no gos in a new build, but if you have a quality aftermarket case or have upgraded the GPU at some point, those are candidates to be moved to a new build.

This is the sad part, I currently have a GTX Geforce 1050 Ti SC- that I just purchased a few months ago so it's still relatively new. As for my case, it seems to still be in rather good shape. It's the dell XPS 8500 case, so it has USB 3.0 and what not- I think it has 4 in the front with an audio jack and a media card reader. The DVD drive seems to be okay but I haven't used it that much. Like I said it's about 7 years old though. I haven't really found any kind of replacement for the case and I'm not very interested in making it look super shiny/dancy with fancy lights.

I have an extra drive but it has a lot of information on it that I don't want to format. So to an extent I kind of have a lot of parts already available. However, I'm not too keep or interested to venture into water cooling, because I don't know very much about it, and the idea of me making a mistake and possibly electrocuting myself has made me somewhat paranoid.

 

[rubbertoe]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($169.99 @ Walmart)
Motherboard: MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($149.99 @ Samsung)
Storage: Western Digital - RE 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($68.33 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 GB GAMING Video Card ($292.83 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($49.99 @ B&H)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($99.39 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1030.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-03-10 23:35 EDT-0400

I agree with this but you should get a used GTX 1070 (Kijiji/Craigslist)

 

[Karadjgne]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($169.99 @ Walmart)
Motherboard: Asus - PRIME B450M-A/CSM Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($79.99 @ B&H)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial - MX500 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($69.95 @ Adorama)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6 GB XC BLACK GAMING Video Card ($274.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Corsair - Carbide Series 88R MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($49.99 @ B&H)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($99.39 @ OutletPC)
Total: $884.28
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-03-11 00:47 EDT-0400

Sell the 1050ti for whatever you can get for it, put OS on the ssd, then add your other important data drive. You'll be hard pressed to reuse the Dell case as the front connectors for power button, hdd lights etc are proprietary to Dell motherboards. The pc above will keep you happy for the next 7 years. You can even reuse the DVD if you wish, that at least is aftermarket compliant mounting.
The gtx1660ti is stronger at 1080p than a gtx1070, considerably stronger than a more expensive gtx1060-6gb.
You'll want to reuse at least 2x (or purchase separately) 120mm fans for the front intake. This is common for many aftermarket cases.