Willing to spend up to $300 to upgrade my PC, what should I get?

[MrMitchMan04]

Looking to improve my computer's performance in gaming, been having some lag on games like Battlefield V and PUBG on medium graphics. Willing to spend like 150-300 dollars on any parts to improve gaming performance on my PC.

My PC: AMD Ryzen 5 1400, AMD Radeon RX 580 4gb, MSI B350M Bazooka motherboard, 8gb ram
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberpowerpc-gamer-ultra-desktop-amd-ryzen-5-1400-8gb-memory-amd-radeon-rx-580-1tb-hard-drive-black/5833100.p?skuId=5833100

Thanks for the help!

 

[norcalsc]

If you have a single stick of ram you are seriously hampering ryzen's potential, get you self a second 8gb stick or sell the one you have and get a 16gb matching set. Dual channel ram will make a big difference (2 sticks) preferably 3200mhz or better. You cpu and gpu are a decent match the ram config you have Is biggest issue I see

I looked at photos you do have only one stick

 

[asgerh]

As far as I can see on the spec sheet for the PC, it is equipped with two sticks.
I've been playing PUBG for a long time with 8 GB RAM, on i5-4670k, 8GB, 1060-6GB, and after having upgraded to 16GB, I see no higher avg. FPS. But the main advantage of more RAM, for me, has been the reduction of occasional stutters, when loading new content, e.g. when entering a room. In my experience, PUBG is very playable with 8GB.
I'm not that much into the AMD platform, but if RAM speed has a big impact on performance, you could consider getting faster RAM or just see if you can OC the RAM you've got already.
I see no reason to upgrade your RX580, as it would take quite an investment to achieve a substantial lift of performance. It is already a very capable card.

As far as I can see on various tests, an upgrade to a faster CPU seem like the most likely place to gain performance. To get a hint about the load on the CPU, you can launch task manager and watch the load on the cpu. Right click on the graph and choose "Logical processes" to see if one or more cores are maxed out. If this is the case, it is almost guaranteed that a faster CPU will help.
The R5 2600 or 2600X should provide you with enough oompf to deliver a consistent high fps output to your GPU. (Higher GHz, more cores and larger cache than your current CPU. All are things that matter)

If, of course the new CPU isn't being held back by slow RAM. But hten again, I can't really brag about being that much into the Ryzen/RAM speed performance.
And of course you have to be aware of the usual spuspects, such as not gaming over WiFi and not having stuff running in the background.
Also be aware that instead of just choosing a general "Medium" setting in the game, play around with the individual settings.

Note:
The above is about getting max FPS from your system, not necessarily the most beautiful graphics.

Edit:
All the above relates to playing at 1080p. If you play at 1440x2560 or 4k then a faster GPU will definitely help.

 

[MrMitchMan04]

If you have a single stick of ram you are seriously hampering ryzen's potential, get you self a second 8gb stick or sell the one you have and get a 16gb matching set. Dual channel ram will make a big difference (2 sticks) preferably 3200mhz or better. You cpu and gpu are a decent match the ram config you have Is biggest issue I see

I looked at photos you do have only one stick

Yup, I only got 1 stick of 8gb DDR4 RAM. Never really thought RAM improved FPS, but I can see what your saying now. Plus RAM doesn't cost a ton, I'll get another stick. Thanks so much for the help!

Edit: Is it fine if I have two different brands of RAM?

 

[MrMitchMan04]

As far as I can see on the spec sheet for the PC, it is equipped with two sticks.
I've been playing PUBG for a long time with 8 GB RAM, on i5-4670k, 8GB, 1060-6GB, and after having upgraded to 16GB, I see no higher avg. FPS. But the main advantage of more RAM, for me, has been the reduction of occasional stutters, when loading new content, e.g. when entering a room. In my experience, PUBG is very playable with 8GB.
I'm not that much into the AMD platform, but if RAM speed has a big impact on performance, you could consider getting faster RAM or just see if you can OC the RAM you've got already.
I see no reason to upgrade your RX580, as it would take quite an investment to achieve a substantial lift of performance. It is already a very capable card.

As far as I can see on various tests, an upgrade to a faster CPU seem like the most likely place to gain performance. To get a hint about the load on the CPU, you can launch task manager and watch the load on the cpu. Right click on the graph and choose "Logical processes" to see if one or more cores are maxed out. If this is the case, it is almost guaranteed that a faster CPU will help.
The R5 2600 or 2600X should provide you with enough oompf to deliver a consistent high fps output to your GPU. (Higher GHz, more cores and larger cache than your current CPU. All are things that matter)

If, of course the new CPU isn't being held back by slow RAM. But hten again, I can't really brag about being that much into the Ryzen/RAM speed performance.
And of course you have to be aware of the usual spuspects, such as not gaming over WiFi and not having stuff running in the background.
Also be aware that instead of just choosing a general "Medium" setting in the game, play around with the individual settings.

Note:
The above is about getting max FPS from your system, not necessarily the most beautiful graphics.

Edit:
All the above relates to playing at 1080p. If you play at 1440x2560 or 4k then a faster GPU will definitely help.

Yeah I play at 1080p. Definetly will do that helpful CPU test you gave me. Likely what I will do is get another 8gb stick of ddr4 ram so I have 16gb ram total, and upgrade to a better CPU. But I'll see how that test goes first. Yeah my graphics card is good, but it is only the 4gb one instead of the 8, not sure if that is a big difference though. Also I'm a little nervous about getting a new CPU, I mean I'm gonna have to remove the fan, remove like the old CPU paste, I'm really not familiar with that kind of stuff but I am familiar slapping a new stick of ram in.

Edit: Also what do you mean by "not gaming over wifi and having stuff running in the backgound"?

 

[fastcompany2]

you should always match ram. If you can't find an identical stick of what you have sell it and buy a matched pair. gaming over wifi you deal with lower speeds than wired and increased latency which comes across as lag. you should also look for other processes running on your machine to make sure that resources are not being pulled.

 

[MrMitchMan04]

you should always match ram. If you can't find an identical stick of what you have sell it and buy a matched pair. gaming over wifi you deal with lower speeds than wired and increased latency which comes across as lag. you should also look for other processes running on your machine to make sure that resources are not being pulled.

The ram I have is 8gb ddr4 Potenza ram, but EVERYONE gives Potenza shit reviews (I linked some below). Should I just sell it and get 16gb of brand new ram that gets better reviews?
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820158039

Also should I hook my PC up to my wifi with an ethernet cable for better performance? Like how much better will it be then wireless?

Also I can't think of any processes running on my machine, just a few tabs of random things open, discord open, and steam or origin open.

 

[fastcompany2]

I can't speak for how reliable that ram is. I have had good luck with gskill and kingston. I like them to have a lifetime warranty. Not because I can get it replaced buy usually companies do that when they think their product is reliable. And check task manager at idle and while you have a game up to see what's running and what's being used. If you see something is maxing out it can be your bottleneck. If it's pulling a lot at idle you need to see what is causing it.

 

[asgerh]

By "not gamin over Wifi" I mean use an ethernet cable if possible. The data stream can be quite unstable for gaming over WiFi.
Stuff running i then background: Stuff; E.g. browsers with open tabs can consume quite a lot of CPU resources, so close those. You may like to have a youtube playlist running in the background while gaming. This will consume resources.
Windows 10 has a gaming feature that supposedly will prevent Windows from doing certain things in the background while gaming. E.g. virus scans and updates. See if this helps. Winds-Key + G while in the game should bring up the on/off switch.

From what I can read from the other comments, you should upgrade your RAM first. Just putting in another 8GB stick, might not work, as some motherboards and RAM combinations won't allow maximum performance with mixed specifications. So selling your stick and buying a kit of 2 sticks is your safest bet. Opt for faster RAM, but don't spend all your 300$ on the absolutely fastes RAM you can get. Do a bit of googling to find the sweet spot.
If you still need to upgrade the CPU, it is not rocket science to swap it. Just do your home work (youtube) before beginning to take things apart. The new CPU will have a fan included, so I don't think you'll have to mess with thermal grease. (the Ryzen X models typically have better fans than the non-X models)

By the way, if you change both RAM and CPU, there's a chance that Windows will "feel" that is is now running on a new computer (because of major hardware changes) and might prompt you for reactivation. If this happens, typically a phonecall to Microsofts automated activation service can reactivate. But maybe other folks in here has more experience than me in how many changes to hardware might trigger reactivation. Anyone?

Regarding VRAM, I don't think that there's any difference in horsepower between the RX580 4 and 8 GB. In my experience with PUBG anything below a texture quality setting of Ultra can perfectly fit int 4GB. Texture quality is typically the one setting that has the largest impact on VRAM usage. You can actually monitor VRAM usage in task manager as well, under the GPU tab. Here you can also see (just like with the CPU) the work load of the GPU. Being aware of the load on both the GPU and CPU while gaming, can help very much in pinpointing bottlenecks. You can also download the utility GPU-Z to get more detailed information of the load on the GPU.

 

[MrMitchMan04]

UPDATE: After using MSI afterburner, my CPU was consistently getting around 90% on Battlefield V medium settings, my GPU was spiking from like 20% to 90% to 40%, I'd say it was consistent around 70%, and my ram I beleive was at 6,900 mb. Judging by these stats, should I still go for upgrading the CPU and ram?