Looking for guidance on upgrading

[Whitter]

It's been 11 years since I've called upon this great forum for advice on a PC upgrade. With the guidance of you guys the components that I settled on have served me well (and still are, but are getting old) and hoping to do the same again.

My current setup is:

• CPU - Intel Core i7 920
• Mobo - Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
  
• RAM - 12GB DDR3
• GPU - Gigabyte Nvidia 1080 GTX
  
• CPU Cooler - Noctua NH-U12P
• HDDs - Mix of hard drives, some SSD's
• PSU - Antec CP-850
• Case - Antec P183

With what I have above I'm just looking at upgrading the base system CPU, RAM and motherboard. Also thinking on repurposing the CPU cooler I have as well.

My first pass at picking the components:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2B32= £89.99
• 1 x Noctua NM-AM4 Mounting Kit= £6.49
• 1 x Gigabyte B450 AORUS PRO (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £116.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £179.99

Total: £403.96 (includes shipping: £10.50)​

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Also had a look at an Intel option, excuse the mounting kit being the wrong one, Overclockers does not seem to stock the Intel version.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2B32= £89.99
• 1 x Noctua NM-AM4 Mounting Kit= £6.49
• 1 x Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro Intel Z390 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £189.95
• 1 x Intel Core i5-9600K 3.7GHz (Coffee Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £239.99

Total: £536.92 (includes shipping: £10.50)​

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Been out of the loop so long I'm not sure which direction to go in (AMD or Intel)

 

[Whitter]

May want to consider a new PSU too if your current one is 11 years old

Can't actually remember how old the PSU is, could not find the receipt for it, but yeah it is at least 9 years old. Yeah was shocked a bit at the price of the Intel chips, can jump the Ryzen to a 7 and still come out cheaper than the i5 setup.

 

[Whitter]

Something to bear in mind is there is a rumoured refresh coming for ryzen chips in July (3600XT, 3800XT, 3900XT) if you can wait that long. You can always upgrade later too as B450 boards should support the 4000 series of chips due at the end of the year by means of a BIOS update

Been reading up on all the backwards compatibility this afternoon. Really nice that they are support the AM4 socket for so long. Wondering whether it's worth bumping up to an X570 chipset to future proof a little with the PCIe 4 support etc...

Have a read of this:

https://noctua.at/en/nm-i115x-mounting-kit

https://noctua.at/en/nm-am4-mounting-kit-order-form

I did the latter. got the mounting kit in the post about 2 weeks later.

Yeah did noticed they hand them out for free with proof of purchase. Just need to settle on which upgrade I'm going with.