Upgrade recommendations

arjgrundy

arjgrundy

arjgrundy

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Joined
10 May 2012
Posts
386
Hello guys
It’s been a long time since I’ve ventured into PC gaming and I’m looking to get back into it. I last purchased PC parts from OCUK in 2017 which are listed below. My budget it is around £1000 currently. I was rocking a Ryzen 1700 and really want to continue with AMD.
Advice / options please.


Gigabyte GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 AMD B350 (Socket AM4) DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard
EVGA Supernova GS 550W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply
Gigabyte Aorus GeForce GTX 1080Ti "Xtreme Edition" 11264MB GDDR5X PCI-Express Graphics Card
Team Group Night Hawk LED 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Red Light
AMD Ryzen 7 Eight Core 1700 3.70GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail
Corsair Gaming K70 RGB Cherry MX Red Mechanical Keyboard (CH-9000118-UK)
Phanteks Enthoo Evolv Micro-ATX Glass Case - Gunmetal Grey
NZXT Kraken X52 AIO Water Cooling Unit - 240mm
AOC AGON AG241QG 24" 2560 x 1440 TN G-Sync 165Hz Widescreen LED Multimedia Monitor - Black/Red
 
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Quartz said:
Update the motherboard BIOS and drop in a Ryzen 5700X3D or 5800X3D for an instant boost. And your 1080Ti is still a decent gaming GPU even today - as long as you don't require ray-tracing.
Click to expand...
That’s good advice for saving some £. One stupid thing I failed to mention was I no longer own the 1080ti which I regrettably sold
 
My basket at OcUK:

Total: £963.91 (includes delivery: £0.00)​
​
If you want the Nvidia equivalent you'd be looking at the 4070ti Super, but that would set you back another £100 or so.​
​
Also make sure these cards will fit into your case, they're pretty damned large.​
 
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D Eight Core 4.1GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail
PRO-AMD-01799
£240 (incl. VAT)
£189 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Kingston Fury Beast 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit
MY-295-KS
£60 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black
POW-PHK-02517
£85 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Last edited:
Gray2233 said:
My basket at OcUK:

Total: £963.91 (includes delivery: £0.00)​
​
If you want the Nvidia equivalent you'd be looking at the 4070ti Super, but that would set you back another £100 or so.​
​
Also make sure these cards will fit into your case, they're pretty damned large.​
Click to expand...

Much appreciated. If i'm retaining the MB, is it still up to standard? I mean DDR4 vs DDR5 is there a significant increase in performance?
 
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D Eight Core 4.1GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail
PRO-AMD-01799
£240 (incl. VAT)
£189 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Kingston Fury Beast 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit
MY-295-KS
£60 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black
POW-PHK-02517
£85 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
arjgrundy said:
Much appreciated. If i'm retaining the MB, is it still up to standard? I mean DDR4 vs DDR5 is there a significant increase in performance?
Click to expand...

The 5700X3D is still very competitive, and the X3D chips aren't overly fussed about ram speed. Your board doesn't support DDR5 anyway, you'd need to do a full platform update which would heavily eat into your GPU budget.

For raw gaming, I'd argue the above is by far your best use of a grand.

I'd also consider investing into a nice big SSD if you're short on storage, NvME's are dirt cheap at the moment per TB.
 
Gray2233 said:
The 5700X3D is still very competitive, and the X3D chips aren't overly fussed about ram speed. Your board doesn't support DDR5 anyway, you'd need to do a full platform update which would heavily eat into your GPU budget.

For raw gaming, I'd argue the above is by far your best use of a grand.

I'd also consider investing into a nice big SSD if you're short on storage, NvME's are dirt cheap at the moment per TB.
Click to expand...

Thanks. The tower is looking lonely sat in the garage at the minute. Just never got around to doing anything with it over the last few years so that’s good advice. I’m in the middle of sorting a desk out.
Totally out of the loop with PC components at the mo, I was always researching etc before the little one arrived lol £ is a bit tighter these days!
 
arjgrundy said:
Totally out of the loop with PC components at the mo, I was always researching etc before the little one arrived lol £ is a bit tighter these days!
Click to expand...
arjgrundy said:
That’s good advice for saving some £. One stupid thing I failed to mention was I no longer own the 1080ti which I regrettably sold
Click to expand...
Big shame that you sold the 1080 Ti, because it would have been a decent PC for getting back into gaming.

The 1700 is a bit slow for modern games, so a 5600/5600X/5700X or 5700X3D as suggested would fix that.

1080 Ti is roughly equivalent to an RX 7600, so not too expensive to replace, but ideally for 1440p I'd look at a 6750 XT as a minimum (£300).
 
Big shame that you sold the 1080 Ti, because it would have been a decent PC for getting back into gaming.
Click to expand...
Yeah totally, i might be slightly ashamed to mention what I sold it for too *console, cough* lol I'm a PC gamer at heart though, honest!
Good to know certain aspects I had from 2017 are still ok. Might consider a different case just so it feels "new" if that makes some sense
 
arjgrundy said:
Yeah totally, i might be slightly ashamed to mention what I sold it for too *console, cough* lol I'm a PC gamer at heart though, honest!
Good to know certain aspects I had from 2017 are still ok. Might consider a different case just so it feels "new" if that makes some sense
Click to expand...

No harm in blinging things up a little, you can get some really nice cases for £50-100 too tbh, and given the size of some of the modern cards it might be necessary anyway.

These are my go-to recommendations for M-ATX builds:

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £109.94 (includes delivery: £0.00)​
 
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personally this is what i'd spend the budget on:
1) 5700x3d (need a mobo bios update before you drop the new cpu in)
2) 2x 16gb (32gb) ddr4 3200mhz
3) 4070 super - this is much more power efficient than the radeon equivalent and so you don't need to get a new power supply...also, dlss/cuda/rtx if those matter to you, downside is only 12gb ram
4) a nice large 1/2tb nvme ssd if you don't already have one (you haven't listed your whole spec)
 
tamzzy said:
personally this is what i'd spend the budget on:
1) 5700x3d (need a mobo bios update before you drop the new cpu in)
2) 2x 16gb (32gb) ddr4 3200mhz
3) 4070 super - this is much more power efficient than the radeon equivalent and so you don't need to get a new power supply...also, dlss/cuda/rtx if those matter to you, downside is only 12gb ram
4) a nice large 1/2tb nvme ssd if you don't already have one (you haven't listed your whole spec)
Click to expand...

Funnily enough there was a 4070S knocking around for £430 earlier today, they're like hens teeth though and go out of stock very quickly.

You'd need to set a stock alert, and obviously they aren't on OCUK either.
 
The 5700x3d is probably neck-neck or maybe just slightly slower than the 7600 (non-x) on average. If you play MMOGs or flight sim then the x3d chips are better.

If you're not going to upgrade often then it is likely that whatever Ryzen AM5 chip you get now will be the last for the board and you'll have the same dilemma when you next upgrade (to get the best AM5 chip or to jump to AM6/intel equivalent).

Whereas if you get the 5700x3d, your next future upgrade would be a full platform upgrade.
 
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tamzzy said:
The 5700x3d is probably neck-neck or maybe just slightly slower than the 7600 (non-x) on average. If you play MMOGs or flight sim then the x3d chips are better.

If you're not going to upgrade often then it is likely that whatever Ryzen AM5 chip you get now will be the last for the board and you'll have the same dilemma when you next upgrade (to get the best AM5 chip or to jump to AM6/intel equivalent).

Whereas if you get the 5700x3d, your next future upgrade would be a full platform upgrade.
Click to expand...
That’s a sensible way of looking at it. I’ve been out of pc gaming for a few years at least but hoping to get back into some games. Arma 3, MSFS stuff like that. RDR2 etc. I’m assuming the 5700x3d is good for those. I will get chance to look at it in more depth but interesting to listen to views of others too
 
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