Upgrade current setup - budget up to £1200

Martin MacDonald · 17 Mar 2020 at 16:05

Hey,

I was looking to upgrade my current setup which is

Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 AMP Edition 8192MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Samsung 960 EVO Polaris 250GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive
Phanteks Eclipse P400 Midi Tower Case - Gun Metal Window
Intel Core i5-6600K 3.9GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail
Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK8GX4M2A2400
Seagate BarraCuda 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD

looking for some recommendations on what i should focus on. I was thinking add more ram, maybe 16 or 32gb. Add a larger SSD and upgrade the CPU?

PC is used for web development and for games, currently im playing the witcher.

Thanks,
Martin

Gray2233 · 17 Mar 2020 at 16:10

What monitor do you use?

What's your power supply?

Martin MacDonald · 17 Mar 2020 at 16:16

Monitor - Asus PB287Q 28" 3840x2160 TN 4K 60Hz 1MS Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor
power supply - Super Flower Leadex II 650W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply

Gray2233 · 17 Mar 2020 at 16:18

I would say this would be a good start:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core 4.4GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £269.99
1 x Patriot Viper Steel 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS432G320C6K)= £128.99
1 x WD Blue SN550 1TB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0C)= £129.95
1 x MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £103.99

Total: £632.92 (includes shipping: £0.00)

Save the rest and see what the new Nvidia/AMD cards are like later this year.

I'd suggest selling your current cpu/mobo/ram.

Martin MacDonald · 17 Mar 2020 at 16:27

Nice one, do you think it should be pretty easy to swap everything over?

Gray2233 · 17 Mar 2020 at 16:29

It shouldn't be a problem really.

If you've built a system before it's just more of the same, if not there's plenty of step by step guides on youtube that you can check out.

EsaT · 17 Mar 2020 at 16:37

Your current platform is complete dead end for upgrades with no really better CPUs available.
(because of artificial limitations caused by Intel's greed)
Changing motherboard is only way to get proper upgrade.

While more memory could help in some things, 4 core/4 thread CPU is simply very low end by today's standards.
With 8 cores/16 threads being normal high end and real high end starting from 12 cores/24 threads...

PSU is good for continuing.

Martin MacDonald · 17 Mar 2020 at 16:40

So do you agree with the recommendations above? or is there anything else you would change?

Danny75 · 17 Mar 2020 at 16:48

Martin, will you re-use the existing 250GB NVME besides a new one?

EsaT · 17 Mar 2020 at 17:00

Martin MacDonald said:
So do you agree with the recommendations above? or is there anything else you would change?

3700X is the current bang per buck king.
And with some case cooling that motherboard could also feed 12 core upgrades.
Though it has only one M.2 slot.
For more M.2 slots you really need X570 board.
(in those MSI is crap for money)

And if wanting good return for money and future proofness it's definitely best to wait later this year until upgrading graphics card.
By then we hopefully have more CPU like competition in them.

Quartz · 17 Mar 2020 at 17:39

Martin MacDonald said:
Nice one, do you think it should be pretty easy to swap everything over?

Theoretically you should be able to just plug the old drives into the new motherboard.

@Gray2233 's build is good, though you'll have to reinstall Windows on the new M2 drive. You might want to add on a premium CPU cooler but the AMD one is supposed to be pretty good.