Worth buying a bundle or second hand PC to replace Haswell?

[sastusbulbas]

One of my lads has an old pc and wants to upgrade as he games online with friends and his PC is struggling.

His PC is an old Haswell i3 mini ITX build with 16gb of 2400Mhz DDR3 and a 1050ti 4gb GPU.

Two other kids have 4770k with 16gb DDR3 and 8gb GPU's from AMD, 580 and 590 but play less demanding games and no complaints as such.

I suggested ge looks at motherboard/cpu/memory bundles and later a GPU.

But he has the opportunity to get a working PC with a Ryzen 3700x with 16gb of 3200Mhz DDR4, 2tb of M.2 storage and the RTX 2060 6gb GPU. For under £500.

Any advice or suggestions please?

 

[Tetras]

a working PC with a Ryzen 3700x with 16gb of 3200Mhz DDR4, 2tb of M.2 storage and the RTX 2060 6gb GPU. For under £500.

Any advice or suggestions please?

Gaming performance would be fairly similar to the following new build, so it is not bad, but not great either:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i3-12100F 3.30GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AS-IN) = £73.99
• 1 x Gigabyte B760M DS3H AX DDR4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BZ-GI) = £109.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (SKU: MY-0AJ-TG) = £56.00
• 1 x PowerColor Radeon RX 6600 Fighter 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-1AD-PC) = £179.98
• 1 x KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 2TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TSH-00982) = £92.99
• 1 x Kolink Unity Meshbay Performance Midi Tower Case - Black Mesh (SKU: CA-081-KK) = £42.95
• 1 x Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02517) = £84.95

Total: £640.85 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[Tetras]

His PC is an old Haswell i3 mini ITX build with 16gb of 2400Mhz DDR3 and a 1050ti 4gb GPU.

Two other kids have 4770k with 16gb DDR3 and 8gb GPU's from AMD, 580 and 590 but play less demanding games and no complaints as such.

You could get another 4770K and a RX 6600. If it still isn't enough then do the CPU too?

Edit: oops, double posted.

 

[Threepwood]

how much under £500, and , what games?
my old 3700 system was rock solid for gaming, with a comparable graphics card to the 2060, but with 8GB vram
for under£ 500, I say Buy it, and look for a

"RX 5700 XT 8GB" second hand, elsewhere if you want more video ram or more fps​

my 3700 with that card was hitting 120fps in PUBG, no problem​

 

[freddie64]

One of my lads has an old pc and wants to upgrade as he games online with friends and his PC is struggling.

His PC is an old Haswell i3 mini ITX build with 16gb of 2400Mhz DDR3 and a 1050ti 4gb GPU.

Two other kids have 4770k with 16gb DDR3 and 8gb GPU's from AMD, 580 and 590 but play less demanding games and no complaints as such.

You could get another 4770K and a RX 6600. If it still isn't enough then do the CPU too?

You can get a 4770k from the high street second hand shop for £28.

 

[sastusbulbas]

Thankyou all,


My lad has decided against the Ryzen 3700X and 2060 after seeing the i3 comparisons. But he still undecided between an old system or going for a newer platform.
He has now been offered another PC. Latest offer is an i7 8700K on an MSI Z370 Pro motherboard with 16gb of DDR4 and a Zotac Mini GTX-1080 GPU for £300.


I am aware the 4770k and 8700K offer no support for Windows 11 and that is playing in my head. I would expect a year or two from these old PC's due to lack of Windows 11 and so forth. I am assuming an 8700K is a bit of a sideways step and feel £300 is a rather good chunk of money towards a cpu/motherboard/ram bundle.

As good as the 8700K and 1080 were, would he get better performance and longevity and value from a new platform and would be better off saving for new? I am thinking a Ryzen 7 5700X3D or similar would be a lot better than the 4770K and a small step up from the 8700K, and that the RX 6600 is a better performing GPU than the old 1080 while consuming less power? But I have been out of touch with PC for some years.

From talking to him his most irritating game is Helldivers, with it being unplayable. It isn't a game I have played.


I was thinking a Ryzen 7 5700X3d with a MicroATX B550 motherboard and 32gb of 3600Mhz DDR4 would be a great upgrade at around £380, with the RX-6600 GPU later for £200, and then he can upgrade his storage to M2.

Would this be preferable to an older 8700K with a micro 1080?

 

[Tetras]

My lad has decided against the Ryzen 3700X and 2060 after seeing the i3 comparisons. But he still undecided between an old system or going for a newer platform.
He has now been offered another PC. Latest offer is an i7 8700K on an MSI Z370 Pro motherboard with 16gb of DDR4 and a Zotac Mini GTX-1080 GPU for £300.

For games those two would perform really similar, likely indistinguishable in actual gameplay.

and that the RX 6600 is a better performing GPU than the old 1080 while consuming less power?

From what I'm aware, the 6600 is around 120 and the 1080 around 170, so the difference isn't huge (they were pretty power efficient for their time).

I am aware the 4770k and 8700K offer no support for Windows 11 and that is playing in my head. I would expect a year or two from these old PC's due to lack of Windows 11 and so forth.

Windows 11 is officially supported by the 8700K (CPU support is from 8th gen onwards), though you do need to enable the firmware TPM and secure boot.

I am assuming an 8700K is a bit of a sideways step and feel £300 is a rather good chunk of money towards a cpu/motherboard/ram bundle.

It depends on the game, of course, but in older games a 4770K won't be much different. The 8700K does have 2 more cores which can help in newer games. There's not really anything the 8700K can't play, but I can't say how it does with Helldivers.

I was thinking a Ryzen 7 5700X3d with a MicroATX B550 motherboard and 32gb of 3600Mhz DDR4 would be a great upgrade at around £380, with the RX-6600 GPU later for £200, and then he can upgrade his storage to M2.

Would this be preferable to an older 8700K with a micro 1080?

A 5700X3D is on a different level of performance to the 8700K, but if you're pairing it with a 6600 then only some games (the ones that love the cache) will show big gains versus the 8700K, because you'll be hitting a GPU bottleneck.

Since the 4770K can be had for £30, I'd suggest going with that and the RX 6600, which you can carry over in a year or two.

 

[tamzzy]

I was thinking a Ryzen 7 5700X3d with a MicroATX B550 motherboard and 32gb of 3600Mhz DDR4 would be a great upgrade at around £380, with the RX-6600 GPU later for £200, and then he can upgrade his storage to M2.
Would this be preferable to an older 8700K with a micro 1080?

that's a terrible waste of money in my humble opinion
if that were my £500, this is what i would get: ryzen 7500f, asrock b650M-HDV/M.2, 32gb ddr5 6000
for the above core components, if you look at the correct places, would cost less than £300 new
that would leave you with £200 and that could get you a 3060ti/6700xt if you bought a preowned specimen
(all assumes you don't need to change the other parts (case, psu, cooler) and that you are going to reuse the storage)

 

[sastusbulbas]

Thankyou Tamzzy, I will bear that in mind, like I may have mentioned earlier I have been out of the loop for some time, years. So still trying to assess what is the best budget processor that offers a significant performance upgrade over the old Haswell systems. That is now going to be three Haswell 4770k systems with 16gb of memory and RX 580/590 GPU's to potentially replace in future.

I have taken the advice on getting another 4770K to replace the i3 4130 he has, but I also on a whim picked up an RX-580 8gb GPU for pretty cheap as it was in a highstreet second hand store window, installed that today for him. CPU hopefully at end of the week as they only had stock online.

I just need to work out what cooler I can give him, his motherboard is the old Z97 Mini ITX Asus model, with 16gb Corsair Vengeance in gold to match the motherboard, running a low profile Noctua NH-L9i cooler.
That cooler isnt recommended with the 4770k, but I have the Noctua NH-U9S cooler somewhere, as well as a BeQuiet 120mm fan model which may be too big for his mini ITX board especially with the ram height. His PSU is a BeQuiet 630w model.

 

[im4gine3]

since you have access to MM, i have a 5800x, Asus Crosshair Impact and 64Gb memory available for sale