Solved Need to upgrade PC but don't know what to add next

[DeathByMayson]

My PC specs are in my profile. I need a better PC for the latest games and other things like rendering videos, but I'm not an expert with PC upgrading and such.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Not nearly enough info provided.

Budget? What specific games? At what resolution? Rendering videos 6 hours a day, week, month, or year?

The standard advice is to upgrade the graphics if your CPU is at least in the ballpark, unless you have a budget large enough for both CPU, graphics card, motherboard, and maybe new RAM.

That AMD processors scores 4300 on the Passmark benchmark. By comparison, a 6 (?) year old Intel i5-2500 scores 6233; a 1 year old Intel i-5 6600K scores 7849; and the current expensive Intel i7-6900K scores 17528. It's around $1000; the 6600K is about $245.

The Passmark benchmark isn't highly correlated to gaming performance, but it gives you an idea of overall horsepower.

If video rendering speed is highly important, you probably would want an Intel i-7 unless you are restricted by budget.

I'd guess most would tell you to replace your CPU unless your budget is highly restricted. You'd need to replace the motherboard also if you go with Intel.

Most would also tell you to add an SSD for anywhere from $50 on up, depending on how much space you need on the C partition.

I'm not sure how far you can upgrade the CPU if you stay with your current AMD motherboard. Others will know.

So--provide more details about tasks and your budget.

Do you intend to rebuild yourself or have it done or buy an entirely new PC?

 

[DeathByMayson]

I'm on a budget of around 500 dollars and I can do it myself or to be safer, have a skilled guy I know do it. I want a little more of everything but of course I can't buy the high end processors. I believe my graphics card is good enough for now.

 

[DeathByMayson]

Not nearly enough info provided.

Budget? What specific games? At what resolution? Rendering videos 6 hours a day, week, month, or year?

The standard advice is to upgrade the graphics if your CPU is at least in the ballpark, unless you have a budget large enough for both CPU, graphics card, motherboard, and maybe new RAM.

That AMD processors scores 4300 on the Passmark benchmark. By comparison, a 6 (?) year old Intel i5-2500 scores 6233; a 1 year old Intel i-5 6600K scores 7849; and the current expensive Intel i7-6900K scores 17528. It's around $1000; the 6600K is about $245.

The Passmark benchmark isn't highly correlated to gaming performance, but it gives you an idea of overall horsepower.

If video rendering speed is highly important, you probably would want an Intel i-7 unless you are restricted by budget.

I'd guess most would tell you to replace your CPU unless your budget is highly restricted. You'd need to replace the motherboard also if you go with Intel.

Most would also tell you to add an SSD for anywhere from $50 on up, depending on how much space you need on the C partition.

I'm not sure how far you can upgrade the CPU if you stay with your current AMD motherboard. Others will know.

So--provide more details about tasks and your budget.

Do you intend to rebuild yourself or have it done or buy an entirely new PC?

I'm on a budget of around 500 dollars and I can do it myself or to be safer, have a skilled guy I know do it. I want a little more of everything but of course I can't buy the high end processors. I believe my graphics card is good enough for now.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

If your graphics card is good enough, then play around with this:

New Intel motherboard 150--Asus, Asrock, or Gigabyte; either H170 or Z170 chipset.

New Intel i5 CPU; 200 to 250; a K model only if you intend to overclock. Something in the range of i5-6400 to i5-6600K.

SSD: 50 to 100, depending on size.

Probably 8 GB new DDR4 RAM: 50

That's off the top of my head and assumes you don't need Windows, a case, monitor, or hard drives other than the SSD.

 

[DeathByMayson]

Not nearly enough info provided.

Budget? What specific games? At what resolution? Rendering videos 6 hours a day, week, month, or year?

The standard advice is to upgrade the graphics if your CPU is at least in the ballpark, unless you have a budget large enough for both CPU, graphics card, motherboard, and maybe new RAM.

That AMD processors scores 4300 on the Passmark benchmark. By comparison, a 6 (?) year old Intel i5-2500 scores 6233; a 1 year old Intel i-5 6600K scores 7849; and the current expensive Intel i7-6900K scores 17528. It's around $1000; the 6600K is about $245.

The Passmark benchmark isn't highly correlated to gaming performance, but it gives you an idea of overall horsepower.

If video rendering speed is highly important, you probably would want an Intel i-7 unless you are restricted by budget.

I'd guess most would tell you to replace your CPU unless your budget is highly restricted. You'd need to replace the motherboard also if you go with Intel.

Most would also tell you to add an SSD for anywhere from $50 on up, depending on how much space you need on the C partition.

I'm not sure how far you can upgrade the CPU if you stay with your current AMD motherboard. Others will know.

So--provide more details about tasks and your budget.

Do you intend to rebuild yourself or have it done or buy an entirely new PC?

If your graphics card is good enough, then play around with this:

New Intel motherboard 150

New Intel i5 CPU; 200 to 250

SSD: 50 to 100, depending on size.

Probably 8 GB new DDR4 RAM: 50

That's off the top of my head and assumes you don't need Windows, a case, monitor, or hard drives other than the SSD.

What Intel motherboard and SSD do you reccomend? Also will getting a new CPU mess up my computer in any way?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

What Intel motherboard and SSD do you reccomend? Also will getting a new CPU mess up my computer in any way?

If you get an Intel CPU, you will also have to replace the motherboard and probably RAM. Those 3 things are the primary components of the PC, should be compatible with your case, monitor, hard drives, keyboard, mouse, Windows, etc.

I don't use video cards, so I'll let others comment on that.

Most Intel processors include graphics capability that is good enough for non-gamers like me and for some people who do mid-level gaming also.

Here are some good SSD brands: Crucial, Intel, and Samsung.

Before choosing an SSD, you need to decide how much capacity you need. My C partition uses only about 40 GB, so I'm fine with a 128 GB SSD that costs about $75.

If you have 500 GB occupied on C, you'd need a much larger SSD than me.

But maybe you can do what a lot of people do: use the SSD just for Windows and applications. Put all personal data on a regular internal hard drive. If you do that, maybe you don't need a big SSD.

Motherboard: if you want to overclock, you'd likely need an ATX motherboard with a Z170 chipset. If not, an H170 chipset is fine.

Look around for that from Asus, Asrock, and Gigabyte in the $120 to $170 range. There's a bunch of them and the difference will be mostly in features--that you may or may not need. Depends on if you have a lot of peripherals that need to be plugged in or have a lot of doo-dads or want to do serious overclocking. I've never spent over $160 on a motherboard.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

You have a "Cyberpower" PC now. It's possible that it has a peculiar case that is not compatible with normal PC components, but that's unlikely.

If your power supply is 5 or 6 years old, you might consider replacing it too for $60 or $80.

Good brands: Seasonic, EVGA, and some from Corsair or Coolermaster.

 

[DeathByMayson]

What Intel motherboard and SSD do you reccomend? Also will getting a new CPU mess up my computer in any way?

If you get an Intel CPU, you will also have to replace the motherboard and probably RAM. Those 3 things are the primary components of the PC, should be compatible with your case, monitor, hard drives, keyboard, mouse, Windows, etc.

I don't use video cards, so I'll let others comment on that.

Most Intel processors include graphics capability that is good enough for non-gamers like me and for some people who do mid-level gaming also.

Here are some good SSD brands: Crucial, Intel, and Samsung.

Before choosing an SSD, you need to decide how much capacity you need. My C partition uses only about 40 GB, so I'm fine with a 128 GB SSD that costs about $75.

If you have 500 GB occupied on C, you'd need a much larger SSD than me.

But maybe you can do what a lot of people do: use the SSD just for Windows and applications. Put all personal data on a regular internal hard drive. If you do that, maybe you don't need a big SSD.

Motherboard: if you want to overclock, you'd likely need an ATX motherboard with a Z170 chipset. If not, an H170 chipset is fine.

Look around for that from Asus, Asrock, and Gigabyte in the $120 to $170 range. There's a bunch of them and the difference will be mostly in features--that you may or may not need. Depends on if you have a lot of peripherals that need to be plugged in or have a lot of doo-dads or want to do serious overclocking. I've never spent over $160 on a motherboard.

So you're saying if I got an Intel CPU then some of my other components would not work?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

What Intel motherboard and SSD do you reccomend? Also will getting a new CPU mess up my computer in any way?

If you get an Intel CPU, you will also have to replace the motherboard and probably RAM. Those 3 things are the primary components of the PC, should be compatible with your case, monitor, hard drives, keyboard, mouse, Windows, etc.

I don't use video cards, so I'll let others comment on that.

Most Intel processors include graphics capability that is good enough for non-gamers like me and for some people who do mid-level gaming also.

Here are some good SSD brands: Crucial, Intel, and Samsung.

Before choosing an SSD, you need to decide how much capacity you need. My C partition uses only about 40 GB, so I'm fine with a 128 GB SSD that costs about $75.

If you have 500 GB occupied on C, you'd need a much larger SSD than me.

But maybe you can do what a lot of people do: use the SSD just for Windows and applications. Put all personal data on a regular internal hard drive. If you do that, maybe you don't need a big SSD.

Motherboard: if you want to overclock, you'd likely need an ATX motherboard with a Z170 chipset. If not, an H170 chipset is fine.

Look around for that from Asus, Asrock, and Gigabyte in the $120 to $170 range. There's a bunch of them and the difference will be mostly in features--that you may or may not need. Depends on if you have a lot of peripherals that need to be plugged in or have a lot of doo-dads or want to do serious overclocking. I've never spent over $160 on a motherboard.

So you're saying if I got an Intel CPU then some of my other components would not work?

I said this. Did you read it?

"If you get an Intel CPU, you will also have to replace the motherboard and probably RAM. Those 3 things are the primary components of the PC, should be compatible with your case, monitor, hard drives, keyboard, mouse, Windows, etc."

The key words in that are "should be compatible".

Unless you have a weird case (unlikely) or a weird power supply (also unlikely).

I'm not making any comments about the video card since I don't use them.

 

[DeathByMayson]

If you get an Intel CPU, you will also have to replace the motherboard and probably RAM. Those 3 things are the primary components of the PC, should be compatible with your case, monitor, hard drives, keyboard, mouse, Windows, etc.

I don't use video cards, so I'll let others comment on that.

Most Intel processors include graphics capability that is good enough for non-gamers like me and for some people who do mid-level gaming also.

Here are some good SSD brands: Crucial, Intel, and Samsung.

Before choosing an SSD, you need to decide how much capacity you need. My C partition uses only about 40 GB, so I'm fine with a 128 GB SSD that costs about $75.

If you have 500 GB occupied on C, you'd need a much larger SSD than me.

But maybe you can do what a lot of people do: use the SSD just for Windows and applications. Put all personal data on a regular internal hard drive. If you do that, maybe you don't need a big SSD.

Motherboard: if you want to overclock, you'd likely need an ATX motherboard with a Z170 chipset. If not, an H170 chipset is fine.

Look around for that from Asus, Asrock, and Gigabyte in the $120 to $170 range. There's a bunch of them and the difference will be mostly in features--that you may or may not need. Depends on if you have a lot of peripherals that need to be plugged in or have a lot of doo-dads or want to do serious overclocking. I've never spent over $160 on a motherboard.

So you're saying if I got an Intel CPU then some of my other components would not work?

I said this. Did you read it?

"If you get an Intel CPU, you will also have to replace the motherboard and probably RAM. Those 3 things are the primary components of the PC, should be compatible with your case, monitor, hard drives, keyboard, mouse, Windows, etc."

The key words in that are "should be compatible".

Unless you have a weird case (unlikely) or a weird power supply (also unlikely).

I'm not making any comments about the video card since I don't use them.

Sorry I was just making sure. My case is pretty normal and I just had a power supply failure so I had to replace it with one that I had in another PC of mine. The new one is a good brand though (I can't remember the brand name). So if I got an Intel CPU, a gigabyte motherboard, and Corsair or Crucial RAM would they work together?

 

[DeathByMayson]

If you get an Intel CPU, you will also have to replace the motherboard and probably RAM. Those 3 things are the primary components of the PC, should be compatible with your case, monitor, hard drives, keyboard, mouse, Windows, etc.

I don't use video cards, so I'll let others comment on that.

Most Intel processors include graphics capability that is good enough for non-gamers like me and for some people who do mid-level gaming also.

Here are some good SSD brands: Crucial, Intel, and Samsung.

Before choosing an SSD, you need to decide how much capacity you need. My C partition uses only about 40 GB, so I'm fine with a 128 GB SSD that costs about $75.

If you have 500 GB occupied on C, you'd need a much larger SSD than me.

But maybe you can do what a lot of people do: use the SSD just for Windows and applications. Put all personal data on a regular internal hard drive. If you do that, maybe you don't need a big SSD.

Motherboard: if you want to overclock, you'd likely need an ATX motherboard with a Z170 chipset. If not, an H170 chipset is fine.

Look around for that from Asus, Asrock, and Gigabyte in the $120 to $170 range. There's a bunch of them and the difference will be mostly in features--that you may or may not need. Depends on if you have a lot of peripherals that need to be plugged in or have a lot of doo-dads or want to do serious overclocking. I've never spent over $160 on a motherboard.

So you're saying if I got an Intel CPU then some of my other components would not work?

I said this. Did you read it?

"If you get an Intel CPU, you will also have to replace the motherboard and probably RAM. Those 3 things are the primary components of the PC, should be compatible with your case, monitor, hard drives, keyboard, mouse, Windows, etc."

The key words in that are "should be compatible".

Unless you have a weird case (unlikely) or a weird power supply (also unlikely).

I'm not making any comments about the video card since I don't use them.

Sorry just making sure. So If I got an Intel CPU, a gigabyte motherboard, and Crucial or Corsair RAM would they work?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

So If I got an Intel CPU, a gigabyte motherboard, and Crucial or Corsair RAM would they work?

Those are good brands.

BUT.................you can't just buy any Intel CPU and any Gigabyte motherboard and any Crucial or Corsair RAM.

Some motherboards will NOT take an Intel CPU. Motherboards are divided into "AMD compatible" and "Intel compatible". You need an Intel-compatible board if you want an Intel CPU.

The current generation of Intel CPUs requires DDR 4 RAM, not DDR 3 or DDR 2.

Some DDR 4 RAM is slower than others. Some DDR 4 RAM won't work in certain motherboards,

Etc etc.

You have to study and plan or know someone who can guide you through the choices.

Off the top of my head, these 3 things should be compatible with each other.

Intel Core i5-6400 6 MB Skylake Quad-Core 2.7 GHz LGA 1151 65W BX80662I56400 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 530 - Newegg.com


GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GA-H170-Gaming 3 (rev. 1.0) LGA 1151 Intel H170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com

Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2133 (PC4 17000) Desktop Memory Model CT2K4G4DFS8213 - Newegg.com

Total cost probably around $350.

Maybe add an SSD and a new power supply to get the total around $500.


But there's a lot of other ways to go.

 

[DeathByMayson]

So If I got an Intel CPU, a gigabyte motherboard, and Crucial or Corsair RAM would they work?

Those are good brands.

BUT.................you can't just buy any Intel CPU and any Gigabyte motherboard and any Crucial or Corsair RAM.

Some motherboards will NOT take an Intel CPU. Motherboards are divided into "AMD compatible" and "Intel compatible". You need an Intel-compatible board if you want an Intel CPU.

The current generation of Intel CPUs requires DDR 4 RAM, not DDR 3 or DDR 2.

Some DDR 4 RAM is slower than others. Some DDR 4 RAM won't work in certain motherboards,

Etc etc.

You have to study and plan or know someone who can guide you through the choices.

Off the top of my head, these 3 things should be compatible with each other.

Intel Core i5-6400 6 MB Skylake Quad-Core 2.7 GHz LGA 1151 65W BX80662I56400 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 530 - Newegg.com


GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GA-H170-Gaming 3 (rev. 1.0) LGA 1151 Intel H170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2133 (PC4 17000) Desktop Memory Model CT2K4G4DFS8213 - Newegg.com

Total cost probably around $350.

Maybe add an SSD and a new power supply to get the total around $500.


But there's a lot of other ways to go.

Alright thank you very much. I will ask this guy I know who has made a bunch of PCs.

 

[Megahertz07]

Recommend this
Model US$ Newegg code

GA-Z170-HD3P $116 9SIA24G3KG3274
i5-6600K $220 N82E16819117561
F4-3000C15D-8GVR $63 N82E16820231897
PNY CS1311 2.5" 120GB $40 N82E16820178966
EVGA 650 GQ $70 N82E16817438059

Total US$ 509

 

[DeathByMayson]

Recommend this
Model US$ Newegg code

GA-Z170-HD3P $116 9SIA24G3KG3274
i5-6600K $220 N82E16819117561
F4-3000C15D-8GVR $63 N82E16820231897
PNY CS1311 2.5" 120GB $40 N82E16820178966
EVGA 650 GQ $70 N82E16817438059

Total US$ 509

Thank you too, I will look those parts up.

 

[Megahertz07]

Buy a SSD. You have no idea what it can do for you.
As mentioned, you don't need a big SSD. I have a 120G SSD with Win 7 and Lubuntu and there is still a lot of space on it.
You install Win 7 and programs on the SSD and move (sysprep) \users to the HDD.

As new MB doesn't have USB2 and Win 7 doesn't have the USB3 drivers, you will have to add them (and also SATA drivers) into the Win 7 installation disk.
Let me know what you buy and I'll guide you.

 

[DeathByMayson]

Buy a SSD. You have no idea what it can do for you.
As mentioned, you don't need a big SSD. I have a 120G SSD with Win 7 and Lubuntu and there is still a lot of space on it.
You install Win 7 and programs on the SSD and move (sysprep) \users to the HDD.

As new MB doesn't have USB2 and Win 7 doesn't have the USB3 drivers, you will have to add them (and also SATA drivers) into the Win 7 installation disk.
Let me know what you buy and I'll guide you.

So if I got an SSD and did what you said, my computer would run faster?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

It would start up faster, load applications faster, and do anything related to the hard drive faster---such as a virus scan.

But it would NOT cause the CPU to run faster.

The most notable advantage of SSDs is boot speed. You might be ready to go in 20 or 30 seconds rather than a minute.

It has little effect on gaming.

Some people don't think they are worth the extra cost. Don't expect "night and day" differences.

But they are generally worthwhile for most people unless you are in a severe budget jam.

They are about triple the price of regular hard drives and used to be 5 or 6 times as expensive--per gigabyte.

 

[DeathByMayson]

It would start up faster, load applications faster, and do anything related to the hard drive faster---such as a virus scan.

But it would NOT cause the CPU to run faster.

The most notable advantage of SSDs is boot speed. You might be ready to go in 20 or 30 seconds rather than a minute.

It has little effect on gaming.

Some people don't think they are worth the extra cost. Don't expect "night and day" differences.

But they are generally worthwhile for most people unless you are in a severe budget jam.

They are about triple the price of regular hard drives and used to be 5 or 6 times as expensive--per gigabyte.

Okay I will consider buying one because it does take a minute to boot up my PC which is annoying when I need to just do something quick. Thanks again for the help.