Upgrade advice

[Mike cone]

Hi,

I'm looking at upgrading my system, I've got around 1.5k to 2k and I'm just wondering where that money would be best put. I play a wide variety of games from fps to single player like rdr2 and looking at cyberpunk.

Current specs are;

R5 2600
Rtx2060
B450 elite
16gb ram 3200mhz
1tb ssd
256gb ssd

Thanks

 

[EsaT]

Zen+ architecture CPU is clearly behind in per core performance and six cores is really base level for heavy games.

But depending on resolution GPU can become bottleneck, though their pricing isn't very good.
And if you have don't have modern resolution monitor, very expensive GPU can go to waste in most games.

Also in FPS games and many others good sound is part of immersion.


So do you have 2560x1440 monitor?
Anyway those don't cost much.
MSI OPTIX 27" G273QF 2560x1440 IPS 165Hz 1ms FreeSync/G-Sync Widescreen LED Backlit Gaming Monitor= £258.95
(pretty much current top choise gaming IPS panel, but cheap stand)


And do you have some decent surround speaker set?
If you can't fit/use them, good headphones and HRTF can give really nice immersion for similar price.


For CPU upgrades that board has support for Zen3s, but B450 board VRMs are in general (except MSIs) garbage good only for 65W TDP CPUs.

 

[Mike cone]

Hey,

I was looking at upgrading the cpu but I'd have to flash the mobo which I'm not really sure how to do it. I dont mind upgrading both as the mobo is getting a bit outdated now.

I've currently got a pixio 144hz 1080p monitor so that could be a good jump in visuals as well.

Currently no room for speakers I'm in a bit of a tight area.

I was maybe thinking a b550, r5 5600x and a rtx3070? Would a 600w psu be enough?

Thanks for the help

 

[EsaT]

Very competent B550 boards don't cost much.
MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard= £119.99
That VRM handles any AM4 CPU easily.

No need for and sense in expensive GPUs for medieval 1920x1080, which I consider bad even for web surfing.


Both good closed design (needed if having noisy environment) and open design headphones can be gotten for £100-150.
Open design is more comfortable:
Besides being unable to insulate noise, it also lets heat through more easily lowering risk of ears sweating.

Beyerdynamic DT990 would also have above neutral bass for good "fun factor".
Bass neutral headphones tend to have problems in that part of immersion.
And it works really nicely with binaural sound simulation.
If your headshape is close to average, besides directionality there's also sense of distances.
Won't really miss speakers with that immersion.
Though with sound being the part which has been neglected in many games for dozen+ years, sound card is often needed for binaural sound simulation.
But compared to graphics cards very good sound cards are semi free. Like Creative having Sound BlasterX G6 £75 in b-stock.


Good 650W PSU would be starting point for current high end cards.