[SOLVED] Where to upgrade PC next ??

[RCFlire]

Hi all,

With spending so much time around the house I’ve wanted to boost my PC performance that little bit more as I’m starting to notice some lagging in general day to day performance and tasks. I mainly use my rig for work and productivity based workloads, however game occasionally (at least once a week). I got a new GPU a little bit ago to support a new 4k monitor I picked up (got both for cheap) but was wondering where to from here, as I get some stuttering and general slowness periodically when working and using the computer.

I built the PC probably 5-6 years back, and have upgraded it over the years somewhat, but the CPU, mobo and boot drive all remain the same (I had real trouble trying to get windows onto my SSD).

My current specs are:
CPU: i5-6500
CPU Cooler: bequiet! Pure Rock
GPU: 5700 XT
RAM: 64GB 2400Mhz DDR4 (was buy 1 get 1 free at the time so went a bit titf here lol)
Mobo: Asus H170-Pro
Boot drive: 1Tb WD black 7200rpm
Other drives: 250Gb 850 evo SSD; 4Tb 7200rpm barracuda
PSU: 850W Antec HCG-M

At the moment I’m debating what to do, either get an m.2 SSD to use as a boot drive, or go all out and grab a new CPU and motherboard (I was eying up the Ryzen 5 3600), but wasn’t sure what path to go down, or if there were any other better suggestions out there.

I don’t wanna be spending crazy money, but also don’t see the point in not investing in a quality rig for work - I’m hoping that this last round of upgrades will last me another 5+ years before thinking of upgrading again.

Thanks all in advance !

 

[kevinburrow]

M.2's aren't much faster than a good SSD - the boot difference can be measured in a second or 2 usually.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3AMz-xZ2VM&t=20s
It seems a waste to have an ssd and not really be using it but I know switching Windows can be a nightmare.


You'll see much better peformance from an improved mobo-cpu combo. And in doing so you would be advised to go AMD, as they have great price to pefomance atm. The new 3300x and 3100 are both great budget options, particularly the former, which performs similarly to the 3600 in terms of gaming performance. Having said that, you haven't really set a budget so I don't know if the total cost of a CPU + b550 or b570 board would be too much but that would be best in terms of future proofing.

 

[cdrkf]

Hi...,

when you say "productivity" can you be a bit more specific? I'm wondering if you would benefit from something with higher core count (say if you are doing video encoding, rendering and such) or if single thread performance is more important.