Rise from the ashes or start afresh

whampiri

Afternoon all,

You guys on the boards did such a great job on helping me build my PC 8 years ago, I'm back. Now I'm well out of the loop on all this but I'm wondering if this is even worth upgrading or am i looking at a totally new build?

8GB-Kit A-Data Value PC3-1333 CL9
ASRock H61M-HVS (B3), Sockel 1155, mATX
Intel Core i3-2120 Box, LGA1155
Samsung SH-222AB bare schwarz SATA
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB, SATA II (HD502HJ)
Sapphire HD6770 1G GDDR5 PCI-E
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W


1. What is your budget? 1200

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? General use and gaming (Star wars Squadrons and better)

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Assume Yes, but I may be able to get a copy through work.

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? See above. Also have a case but tbh, buying a new case isn't a deal breaker.

5. Do you need a monitor? No

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? [1440*900, 1680*1050.] [2 Moitors]

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [Keyboard/Mouse/Wireless Card/Card Reader/Speakers/etc.] Nope

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay? Bank Transfer/Laser]

9. When are you purchasing? Before the end of the year

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? N/A

Thanks again for the help.

Overheal

The AMD hype is justified this season. New CPU and GPU launches put them ahead of both Intel and Nvidia for Gaming (and for well, most everything).

https://newegg.io/3a99ae6

This is what I slapped together from a US site here, which is a good starting off point to customize to your fancy. The RTX 3070 is a good card, but also a placeholder for the AMD RX 6800 which is launching this month, at that price, which should run a bit better, especially with a Ryzen 5600X (new feature, called Smart Access Memory, gives an AMD Zen3 CPU more direct control over an AMD RDNA2 CPU, for about a 3-10% performance lift). For similar reasons you'll want at least 1 NVME SSD. The AMD cooler that comes with the CPU is really not that bad if you're looking for stock performance (which is still great, turbo boosting, etc) and will handle some mild overclocks. AMD is very compatible with all sorts of RAM, you will see better performance with better RAM, but on a budget that's not where I'd shove forward. (I way overshot my budget, I haven't even bought the GPU :eek::pac:)

There are faster motherboards (X570 Chipset) and Storage (PCIe 4.0) but for your budget this is solid and gives you room to push the needle here or there: faster RAM, a sexier case, an aftermarket cooler, etc.

You'll also need Windows 10, but there are CD Key sites out there reportedly where you can grab an OEM license for dirt.

Edit: This is my build (With a RX 6800 placeholder & a be Quiet! Dark Rock, equivalent, cooler from Amazon). Don't show this link to my fiance.

https://newegg.io/3a99ae6

whampiri

Wow, that's some rig you've put together. I spend that much and I'll be divorced in a week.....then again. 😉

You're saying that my system isn't suitable to be upgraded I'm guessing as you didn't mention it as an option?

The rig you've put together comes to $1900 which is too rich for me, do you expect some of these prices to drop as part of cyber Monday?

BloodBath

Overheal it's a 1200 euro budget. A 5600x and a 6800 is gonna cost 900+ alone so no. Have you seen his monitors as well? Anything powerful is gonna need an expensive monitor upgrade as well.

Op now is a pretty bad time to be buying. There's new stuff out but it's only the high end atm and availability is terrible. A lot of the older stuff has stock and price issues as well.

You would probably have to wait until the new year to get the new mid range parts.

Homelander

Yeah, I was going to say you might consider a pre-built as well. The value is good there and some retailers are allocating short-supply stock to pre-builds.

EG change this to 16GB 3200Mhz Ram and 1TV NVME and it's within budget really.

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-220t-rgb-ryzen-5-3600-six-core-rtx-3070-8gb-pc-for-gaming.html

However as mentioned above you really would want to be upgrading those monitors to get the most of a new build.

To answer your question about upgrading your current machine - it could be done as a stop-gap if you want to wait until the new year to build a new machine when the dust has settled with all the new parts that are either in short supply or yet to hit the market.

i7-2600 - Said he will take €50

Radeon RX570 - would probably take €80-90

With those upgrades for €140-150 you could play most new games like Squadrons at ultra settings on that monitor no problem and worry about a new PC next year. Your PC would also be worth way more 2nd hand so it wouldn't be wasted money either.

In its current form you would struggle to get €100-150 for it, with an i7-2600 and RX570 it would be easy enough get €250 or more.

whampiri

Thanks for that. A few bits to mull over.

Samuel T. Cogley

You may want to consider an SSD, might speed it up a bit in day to day use but won't do anything for games.

Burning Eclipse

The people talking about monitors have hit the nail on the head.

It can't be overstated; the first question (and it's key for budget) you should be asking yourself is are you going to upgrade your monitor(s)? If the answer is yes, consider the impact to your budget and what resolution you're targeting. If the answer is no, then there's zero point in spending €1,200 on a gaming PC that your monitors will 'bottleneck' in a substantial way.

Overheal

BloodBath wrote: »

Overheal it's a 1200 euro budget. A 5600x and a 6800 is gonna cost 900+ alone so no.

Dead right ignore me and just putting in a new GPU that will be bottlenecked by that i3 isn't going to be ideal - well, maybe? 1440p shouldnt be as CPU bottlenecked?

I don't know how much this helps but I have the HD5770 in my Zen3 build right now and.... it's running Apex Legends. Not beautifully, texture quality is garbage on a 4GB card, but the framerate is buttery smooth. So I mean, if you wanted to just update your CPU+Mobo, or just update your GPU, there's a real good chance you will experience much better QOL trying to game.

Homelander

It's a 2nd gen i3 from 2011 worth about €3. No matter what you do it is time to move on. Most new games will struggle to hit 20-25fps on it. Even Overwatch runs at 30-50fps.

Also are you sure you mean a HD5770? That card is from 2009 and had 1GB vram as standard, I can say with 100% confidence there is no way it would run Apex unless it was the lowest possible resolution and settings @ 30fps.

In fact here's a guy with a HD5770 and a 3700X, even running at 640x480 low settings it runs like ass (understandably)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBrimXUvWm4

minitrue

To give you an idea of what you might get right now with the €1200.

I popped the budget by maybe €50 but included a 1440p75 freesync monitor and I'm sure you could get at least that €50 for your old machine with one of the monitors for someone who just needs something basic

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£189.97 @ Box Limited)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£87.66 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory (£69.59 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Crucial P2 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£84.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB DD Video Card (£373.00 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£36.02 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic CORE GM 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£77.58 @ Amazon UK)
Monitor: Philips 275E1S/00 27.0" 2560x1440 75 Hz Monitor (£185.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1104.81

Or you could drop back to 1080p going full ATX and putting money in your cooler, case and a pair of matching monitors

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£189.97 @ Box Limited)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler (£59.99 @ Box Limited)
Motherboard: MSI B450-A PRO MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard (£79.98 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory (£69.59 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Crucial P2 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£84.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card (£215.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P400A Digital ATX Mid Tower Case (£79.99 @ Box Limited)
Power Supply: SeaSonic CORE GM 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£77.58 @ Amazon UK)
Monitor: LG 24MP59G-P 23.8" 1920x1080 75 Hz Monitor (£116.43 @ Amazon UK)
Monitor: LG 24MP59G-P 23.8" 1920x1080 75 Hz Monitor (£116.43 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1090.94

I'm not saying either of these builds are right (I'm not even sure if Box are back delivering to Ireland, they stopped in the early covid days) but just trying to give you a little perspective on the sort of things you might do with your budget if you went building "today".

Overheal

Homelander wrote: »

It's a 2nd gen i3 from 2011 worth about €3. No matter what you do it is time to move on. Most new games will struggle to hit 20-25fps on it. Even Overwatch runs at 30-50fps.

Also are you sure you mean a HD5770? That card is from 2009 and had 1GB vram as standard, I can say with 100% confidence there is no way it would run Apex unless it was the lowest possible resolution and settings @ 30fps.

In fact here's a guy with a HD5770 and a 3700X, even running at 640x480 low settings it runs like ass (understandably)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBrimXUvWm4

Keep in mind I'm on 1080p. And you say that runs like ass, but if you're on that hardware, that's playable, you aren't losing a match because of dropped frames and his video seems fairly consistent. 169 FPS he was at! Could have easily tried 720p

It's a Sapphire, Radeon, Vapor-X HD 5770. And it was running Apex a little while ago,at quite a low resolution (1200x800 default) and settings default mind you, but at very buttery, competitive framerates. 2 of these crossfired together got me Fus Rho Da'd through Skyrim. Mind you, it ran the Firestrike basic bench at a blistering slideshow framerate. I say 4GB because I think I saw that somewhere, could be paging it from somewhere though was something I saw on my screen I only passively recall, but yes it's a 1GB card.

Put the R9 390 in now, and it's running FS Extreme very respectably, Apex and NMS at full settings.

Homelander

Overheal wrote: »

Keep in mind I'm on 1080p. And you say that runs like ass, but if you're on that hardware, that's playable, you aren't losing a match because of dropped frames and his video seems fairly consistent. 169 FPS he was at! Could have easily tried 720p

It's a Sapphire, Radeon, Vapor-X HD 5770. And it was running Apex a little while ago,at quite a low resolution (1200x800 default) and settings default mind you, but at very buttery, competitive framerates. 2 of these crossfired together got me Fus Rho Da'd through Skyrim. Mind you, it ran the Firestrike basic bench at a blistering slideshow framerate. I say 4GB because I think I saw that somewhere, could be paging it from somewhere though was something I saw on my screen I only passively recall, but yes it's a 1GB card.

Put the R9 390 in now, and it's running FS Extreme very respectably, Apex and NMS at full settings.

Ah come on now, what video are you watching??

Guy had to play at 640x480 to get the best but still god awful 20-50fps average experience with stutters.

That's literally 480p resolution. He said himself 800x600 was too many frame drops.

Which is exactly what anyone would expect from a 5770, I mean it's literally impossible for that card to run the game any better than that

Overheal

Homelander wrote: »

Ah come on now, what video are you watching??

Guy had to play at 640x480 to get the best but still god awful 20-50fps average experience with stutters.

That's literally 480p resolution. He said himself 800x600 was too many frame drops.

Which is exactly what anyone would expect from a 5770, I mean it's literally impossible for that card to run the game any better than that

I feel like you're challenging me to put it back in.

All I can tell you is that, paired with the 5600X, it ran competitively at 1200x800.

Homelander

Not challenging anything, think we just have very different ideas of what constitutes competitive and buttery smooth.

I don't think most people would think drops to 15 fps and 30-40fps average at low settings/res when they think of those phrases when playing online shooters

I thought my second pc with a rx560 at 720p medium locked at 60fps was just about OK for apex.

Overheal

Homelander wrote: »

Not challenging anything, think we just have very different ideas of what constitutes competitive and buttery smooth.

I don't think most people would think drops to 15 fps and 30-40fps average at low settings/res when they think of those phrases when playing online shooters

I thought my second pc with a rx560 at 720p medium locked at 60fps was just about OK for apex.

No doubt. I first played Crysis on a laptop well below reccomended settings, cloaked and punched my way through 10 FPS jungles. I'm no stranger to living on the rotting edge of performance 60 frames on ass quality settings sign me up hurray for the 5770.

SeanW

If I read your initial system specs correctly, you are still using a mechanical hard drive as your main system drive. About the only upgrade I can recommend to your current machine is to replace it with a Solid State Drive (SSD).

Something like this:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/480gb-kioxia-exceria-25-ssd-sata-30-6gb-s-tlc-flash-555mb-s-read-540mb-s-write-retail
or a Samsung EVO SATA drive between 250 and 500 GB.

This won't turn your existing computer into a modern gaming rig, but it will make it feel snappier and faster doing its day to day business. As such, it should tide you over until next year when AMD will most likely release mid-range parts in their Ryzen 5000 and Radeon RX 6000 series. There's little point in trying to upgrade anything else in that system, unfortunately.

BloodBath

The 1% lows are the real killer. It's all fine and dandy having 60fps average but if there's constant dips to 30-40 fps or lower spikes it really kills the game. Especially fps games.

I wouldn't bother buying an ssd for that old system as your'e forced to use sata.

You could start building something new now like the builds linked earlier and get an NVME SSD instead. The 3600 is still a great cpu and exceptional value. I wouldn't fancy spending €400 on a 5700xt at this point though. While it is still a very good card that's the same price it was near 18 months ago at launch and the new mid range cards are on the way.

Black friday sales are already happening so you could get deals on some of the parts like SSD's in the coming weeks and whatever other parts you can get. I'd grab something like a second hand 5700 or 5700xt, 2060s or 2070, 2070s.

You could probably squeeze a 75hz 1440p monitor or a 144hz 1080p monitor in there as well then.

K.O.Kiki

Overheal wrote: »

Keep in mind I'm on 1080p. And you say that runs like ass, but if you're on that hardware, that's playable, you aren't losing a match because of dropped frames and his video seems fairly consistent. 169 FPS he was at! Could have easily tried 720p

It's a Sapphire, Radeon, Vapor-X HD 5770. And it was running Apex a little while ago,at quite a low resolution (1200x800 default) and settings default mind you, but at very buttery, competitive framerates. 2 of these crossfired together got me Fus Rho Da'd through Skyrim. Mind you, it ran the Firestrike basic bench at a blistering slideshow framerate. I say 4GB because I think I saw that somewhere, could be paging it from somewhere though was something I saw on my screen I only passively recall, but yes it's a 1GB card.

Put the R9 390 in now, and it's running FS Extreme very respectably, Apex and NMS at full settings.

Inside the second: A new look at game benchmarking

You're starting to sound like the "eyes can't see above 30fps!" crowd now...

Overheal

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Inside the second: A new look at game benchmarking

You're starting to sound like the "eyes can't see above 30fps!" crowd now...

I'm not saying it's not a massive improvement to play at high refresh rates (why else would I be so particular about the speccing and OC of my build?) but I've made myself acclimated to plebian screen specs - and I have *multiple* spare LCD/LED monitors around the house, it will be ages before I could justify buying another TBF. The TV was another matter. Hitting the refresh rate of these screens (60) is good enough for me, then I V-sync because I hate tearing.

SeanW

BloodBath wrote: »

The 1% lows are the real killer. It's all fine and dandy having 60fps average but if there's constant dips to 30-40 fps or lower spikes it really kills the game. Especially fps games.

I wouldn't bother buying an ssd for that old system as your'e forced to use sata.

You could be right, but I think it depends on the OPs circumstances. Two factors would come into play:

1. How long will the OP continue to use their existing system? There's likely to be some serious goodies for mid-range enthusiasts in the new year. Nvidia Ampere 3050 and 3060, maybe a Radeon RX 6700-something and some more mid range Ryzen 5000s like a 5600. The OP may want to consider getting a little more out of their current system for now and building new in Q1 or Q2 next year. On the other hand, the OP may decide to build now with current gen (and available) tech, e.g. Ryzen 3000 CPU and nVidia GeForce 2000 or Radeon RX 5000 series graphics card.
2. Will the existing system be used after they've built a new one? The OP may have a secondary use for the old system, e.g. a home office, a computer for a family member, something like that, it will be much faster with an SATA SSD. Of course, they could just be planning to chuck in it a skip.

BloodBath

SeanW wrote: »

You could be right, but I think it depends on the OPs circumstances. Two factors would come into play:

1. How long will the OP continue to use their existing system? There's likely to be some serious goodies for mid-range enthusiasts in the new year. Nvidia Ampere 3050 and 3060, maybe a Radeon RX 6700-something and some more mid range Ryzen 5000s like a 5600. The OP may want to consider getting a little more out of their current system for now and building new in Q1 or Q2 next year. On the other hand, the OP may decide to build now with current gen (and available) tech, e.g. Ryzen 3000 CPU and nVidia GeForce 2000 or Radeon RX 5000 series graphics card.
2. Will the existing system be used after they've built a new one? The OP may have a secondary use for the old system, e.g. a home office, a computer for a family member, something like that, it will be much faster with an SATA SSD. Of course, they could just be planning to chuck in it a skip.

Op said he wanted new stuff before the end of the year. He could be waiting until January or February for new mid range parts.

There's nothing more to get out of his current system. Putting any more money into it would be a waste.

whampiri

Right, decision made. Just going to grab the basic elements for a new build during black friday eg case, hard drive, ssd etc. and grab the graphics card in the new year.

Thanks all.

K.O.Kiki

FYI but most sites just do "Black Friday" deals for the whole month now :pac: