Build help required

LeeMaher92

So my girlfriend wants to upgrade her little brothers pc as a birthday gift, the problem is from I can see everything looks pretty dated
He’s running a gigabye am3+ mobo, 8gb of ddr3 ram, an rx460 2gb gpu and I have no idea what kinda cpu as its prebuilt and underneath a fan.
Is every part completely redundant now and would require a complete overhaul or would it be possible to build onto the current mobo with a ram, gpu and cpu upgrade? She doesn’t wanna break the bank but wants to make sure its a worthy upgrade so if anyone has any part suggestions I’m all ears! Thanks in advance boys

TerrorFirmer

What's the budget?

AM3+ is a very old and outdated platform, the 'best' processors for that socket are really poor by modern standards. The RX460 is also a fairly low end GPU, and DDR3 ram is not compatible with a new build either.

The only thing you can really do in this case is sell the current PC and build a new one. €500 would get you a decent budget up-to-date machine.

LeeMaher92

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

What's the budget?

AM3+ is a very old and outdated platform, the 'best' processors for that socket are really poor by modern standards. The RX460 is also a fairly low end GPU, and DDR3 ram is not compatible with a new build either.

The only thing you can really do in this case is sell the current PC and build a new one. €500 would get you a decent budget up-to-date machine.

I assumed the entire build would be redundant by now lol
She’s looking to spend around €500-600 altogether if you have any parts you’d recommend?

K.O.Kiki

The other main issue with pre-builts is they almost invariably ship with junk/fire-hazard PSUs.

Can you run DXdiag to identify the processor?
€500-600 I'll spec a build for you.

LeeMaher92

He’s got an evga 600w 80 plus psu, would you recommend replacing it?
And in terms of DXdiag I don’t actually have access to the pc at the minute but I’m just assuming that the cpu will be pretty dated and incompatible with whatever kinda upgrades she’ll be getting

K.O.Kiki

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£98.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard (£79.97 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£47.58 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Kingston - A400 240 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£24.58 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB GAMING Video Card (£205.45 @ Aria PC)
Case: Cooler Master - MasterBox MB511 RGB ATX Mid Tower Case (£59.25 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: EVGA - 600 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply (Purchased For £0.00)
Other: (old HDD) (Purchased)
Total: £515.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-04-22 15:15 BST+0100

You'd be looking at a 200-300% uplift in performance with something like this.
For Windows, backup the old data, then fresh install Win10 64-bit to the SSD & download StoreMI to fuse the SSD & old HDD into 1 partition.

If you want a nicer cooler, AMD Wraith Max (£30) has a lovely RGB fan (didn't include as it would blow budget).

TerrorFirmer

Solid core but I'd probably get a 2600 processor and drop the GPU down to an RX570 8GB. Same price, obviously GPU has less power but significantly more CPU power, more cores and higher core clock.

Down the line, the CPU will last longer and it's way easier to replace a graphics card if/when needed rather than the CPU, especially for a non-tech savvy person.

RX570 8GB would still be a huge upgrade on the RX460. Could probably squeeze a 2600 and RX580 into a very similar budget.

K.O.Kiki

That's a fair point.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Ldfm9J
Ryzen 2600 + RX 570 8Gb.

GTX 1650 releasing sometime soon too; might be on the same level / better than RX 570.