Upgrade Advice

[NotoriousBlob]

Hello,

I'm trying to figure what is the best upgrade I can make for about £300 for gaming and 3D animation (Blender) on an ultrawide monitor. I've been going round in circles on this for days so think it's time to ask the pro's...

This is my current spec (bought second hand a few years ago, I put the NVME in recently):

• Ryzen 7 1700 (with some kind of generic looking cooler)
• Asus Prime B450M-A (micro ATX)
• 16GB DDR4 (4x4GB, CPU-z says it's at 1500MHz)
• Geforce GTX 1080
• Corsair MP600 NVME 1TB
• AOC CU34G2XP 34"

Games I'm playing are Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Aliens Dark Descent and will be getting Space Marine 2. Since I bought the Ultrawide monitor, games have been struggling a little bit with the extra pixels and I've noticed frames dropping. It kills me to drop quality levels on games to compromise for an acceptable frame rate (60-80 is good enough for me), I don't need the fastest PC ever but I would like to see the games looking as good as I can get.

I'd really appreciate your advice on what you think what would give me the best upgrade, I'd prefer new, but content with second hand or to wait a few months if there are any big releases on the horizon.

Is £300ish likely to get a reasonable upgrade at the moment? I think I need to upgrade everything eventually, but where do I start?

Thanks

 

[Tetras]

Is £300ish likely to get a reasonable upgrade at the moment? I think I need to upgrade everything eventually, but where do I start?

Not really. A CPU would definitely help, especially with the newer games you mention, but the 1080 needs an upgrade too for playing AAA @ 1440p (I'd be looking at a 4070 non-Super as a minimum) and you can't afford both.

 

[Quartz]

Ryzen 5800X3D or 5700X3D or 5950X3D

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D Eight Core 4.1GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-01799) = £188.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Cache Eight Core 4.5GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3D0-AM) = £289.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Sixteen Core 4.9GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3C9-AM) = £359.99

Total: £838.97 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

The only one in stock is the 5700X3D. That will give you £100 towards a new GPU.

 

[mickyflinn]

5700x3d CPU is what I would upgrade .

 

[Craig_d1]

Ryzen 5800X3D or 5700X3D or 5950X3D

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D Eight Core 4.1GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-01799) = £188.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Cache Eight Core 4.5GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3D0-AM) = £289.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Sixteen Core 4.9GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3C9-AM) = £359.99

Total: £838.97 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

The only one in stock is the 5700X3D. That will give you £100 towards a new GPU.

for £100 cheaper than the 5800x3d, it's the only 1 I'd go for
@NotoriousBlob 16gb ram for modern games can also be a limiting factor, and can cause stuttering is nome demanding ram hogging games...I'd look to swap those out for 2x16 3200c16 or 3600c18 rather than 4x4 that you have
vid below going thru ram size..16gb saw 1% lows dipping a lot more than the 32gb and above

 

[NotoriousBlob]

Wow thanks for the quick responses, appreciate it.

I'll see if I can raid the piggy bank a bit more then! But will start with that new processor and ram and see if I can bag a bargain on a 3070 in the near future.

Cheers for the vid link, super helpful!

 

[Gray2233]

I think there's actually potential for CPU bottleneck on your 1700 with a 1080, probably not much but still. The most viable solution within your budget is a CPU upgrade and for mixed use coming from such an old chip I'd opt for the £200 5700X3D without a second thought.

Save the extra and add it to the pool for a future GPU upgrade, there's new chips releasing next year and even if you don't buy new there should be an influx of second hand options.

 

[mickyflinn]

Wow thanks for the quick responses, appreciate it.

I'll see if I can raid the piggy bank a bit more then! But will start with that new processor and ram and see if I can bag a bargain on a 3070 in the near future.

Cheers for the vid link, super helpful!

Just a reminder you will need to update the bios on your motherboard so the new CPU will work if not already updated to a compatible version.