Need upgrade/replacement suggestions plz.

Little*Freak

Little*Freak

Little*Freak

Associate
Joined
31 Jan 2014
Posts
484
Hiya, my motherboard has slowly been failing, onboard sound died 6 months after i got it, then some of the Sata ports stopped working, it won't now see one of my SSHD Drives & now it won't access a USB stick. Also sometimes my mouse gets disconnected & same for my usb headset.


As I've got 8GB of DDR 2400 i could buy an i5-8400 & ASUS TUF B360-Plus Motherboard for about £280 (after Jan Sales Prices), or more if i get an after market cooler & then get another 8GB of Ram at the start of March.

Or i could get an AMD 2600, ASUS TUF B450M-Plus and 8GB of 3000MHz Team Group for about £320 an then get another 8GB again at the start of March.

Money is very tight atm & i can't make my mind up on what to do. Ideally i'd like to spend as little as possible of course. Any thought's, comments or suggestions will be very welcome

Other parts i have is a NZXT H440 Case, Super Flower 500W Gold PSU, GTX 1080, Crucial 250G GB SSD,
2 X 1TB SSHD's. Original stuff is a Z97 Sniper G1 M/B, i5-4690K & 16GB of 2400MHz DDR3 Ram.

I did think of trying to find a replacement motherboard but i understand the Haswell i5 bottleneck's the GPU anyway or so I've been told.
 
Hiya, 1080p atm but want to get a good 1440p monitor in the next couple of months. I don't stream or anything but generally play FPS games.

I got the GTX 1080 as it was a good deal at the time.
 
Just looked at the Bottleneck Calculator, think i might need an AMD system if that thing is accurate, even a K type chip gives more of a bottleneck.

Less of a bottleneck with a Ryzen 5 2600.

Q. Will the 2600 be ok with 2400MHz Ram or does it really need faster Ram?

If yes then i could save money by using that Ram i already have....
 
If you have a Z97 motherboard that means that your 2400mhz memory is DDR3 and cannot be reused. All current platforms require DDR4 so that's going to add a significant cost increase to any upgrade. If you onboard sound died after 6 months why didn't you RMA the board? That board has a 3 year warranty so is it older than 3 years? The cheapest option for you right now would be to try to pick up a replacement Z97 motherboard and get that 4690k overclocked. The problem is that you are limited to whatever comes up second hand on the likes of Ebay. Just don't pay over the odds as a lot of the boards on there are being sold for more than they were when new. Read the advert carefully as well!!
 
I didn't RMA it as i just didn't want to have to rip it all apart & be without a PC for weeks or more. Even though i was absolutely gutted at the time.
I just disabled the soundcard in the Bios & used one i had lying around.

Will check about the warranty, i think it's still in date but being without a PC would drive me nuts. I don't have a TV cause i have a PC.

I did look at Ebay, not totally sure I want to risk it though. Never really used them if you know what i mean.

I have an 8GB kit of DDR4 here somewhere. Is only 2400MHz though.

Thanks for the idea's :)
 
I wouldn't read too much into that site. It takes no notice of memory speed, which SSD you have or even overclocks without clicking on the advanced tab. I just ran it with my setup and it says that my cpu is bottlenecking my GTX1070. Crap!! It seems to be a site solely created to drive sales.
 
Thanks for that pastymuncher, strangely it seemed to be bit biased to AMD for once :)

Really not sure what to do, Hex core i5 or Hex core Ryzen with SMT.....

I need to make a decision by Friday afternoon, then maybe i can get Saturday or Sunday delivery.

Just checked, Z97 is out of warranty now.
 
I really wouldn't buy into Ryzen with replacement boards and cpu's with more performance coming along in the middle of the year. I have had a look on Ebay and there are a few decent Z97 boards for sale under £100. Should you decide to buy one from there and then upgrade to Ryzen when the new cpu's and boards launch you will more or less sell the Z97 board on Ebay for what you paid for it. Buy from a established seller, check feedback and pay by Paypal and you are pretty much covered should things go wrong. They almost always side with the buyer in disputes.
 
Thnx orbitalwalsh but my board is now out of warranty. Will get a board from the bay on Friday & see how it goes.

If it's bad then next month I'll get new stuff.....

If i have to do that what would you suggest? Hex core i5 + M/B using the ram i already have or get faster ram?

Hex core Ryzen with SMT + M/B with the ram i already have or faster ram ?
 
As I said in post #5, you can't re-use your ram. All current platforms use DDR4 which is another reason I said to get a replacement Z97 board. If you were to change to a new Ryzen or Intel build a good kit of DDR4 is going to bump the budget considerably. If you do end up going for a new build you want DDR4 of 3000mhz or more.
 
Hi again, i do already have an 8GB DDR4 2400MHz kit that i could use.

Current PC has 4x4GB sticks of DDR3 2400. I didn't mean to suggest that i could re-use this in a newer build.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom