What should I improve on my PC?

[Raiden]

Hey guys,

Got £400+ cash planned up to splash on an upgrade for my PC, I'm going to post my specs below:

Spoiler: Specs

What should be my main priority in upgrading? The CPU is six cores, but I didn't think that was the main thing I should be looking at.

My card is dated as well but I'm looking more towards my Storage all being SATA instead of SS harddrives which is what I was considering getting next, but wanted to be sure.

Any thoughts? If I've missed anything at all too, let me know

 

['77 East]

radeon series isn't really my thing, might want to talk to someone like @Harrier on that front
no sense upgrading your existing motherboard unless you're rebuilding a shitload of components

16GB of RAM is a bit dicey, might want to upgrade to 32GB

as for storage I dunno, terabyte hard drives have come down in price considerably, depends on what you think you'll need + what you can cram in to your PC

 

[Harrier]

if you wanna go for amd check the 6600 xt since that seems more fitting for your price range. don't bother with the 6500 xt, it's shit and you're better off buying a 3050 instead assuming you can find one at msrp or close to msrp. for nvidia check the 3060/3060 ti, friend of mine in NI bought one for 400 quid the other day but that'll just waste all of your budget

 

[Andrew]

if you pirate things get a 1tb hdd
buying the current-gen amd cards could be a powermove, like a 6800
RAM is fine but see why is it says unknown on it, and make sure your BIOS is dialed in to its speed right
and make sure the ram is dual-channel
if your motherboard has a tiny spot for those stick-thing hard drives get one
if you pirate anything else hard drives are always cheaper but SSD's are always good and low-maintenance
file-storage get a hard drive though

 

[avralwobniar]

get more and faster ram

get a new graphics card too. the polaris architecture that the RX 500 series uses has some major bugs in the drivers, ive been struggling with it for a few years now on my RX 580. they marked down the bugs to be known issues in the patches following the introduction of each bug, but instead of fixing them they have just left them for about 2-3 years now. they're only adding more as time goes on.

at one point they actually accidentally dropped support for the RX 500 and you couldn't install drivers for about a week

so far, I hate every single minute im using this card and dont plan to buy AMD ever again. replace it ASAP (TDR means timeout detection and recovery)

Spoiler: other bugs ive encountered

the card literally just doesnt work on virtual machines if you open it a 2nd time before a reboot

the drivers timeout on gpu heavy games. installing the 20.9.1 drivers gets around it, but when the drivers would crash it instead makes your game crash

sometimes videos cause your computer to black screen and then crash your drivers. reverting to the 21.2.3 driver version gets rid of the issue

using hardware acceleration in the amd app actually makes the card perform worse

while installing a game overnight, I woke up to find my GPU had been running at 100% power for god knows how long. when I tried to run the game my graphics drivers completely corrupted, and I had to reinstall them from scratch

my current issue is that despite having the latest version of both their app and graphics drivers, im completely locked out of tweaking my settings

 

[Andrew]

get more and faster ram

get a new graphics card too. the polaris architecture that the RX 500 series uses has some major bugs in the drivers, ive been struggling with it for a few years now on my RX 580. they marked down the bugs to be known issues in the patches following the introduction of each bug, but instead of fixing them they have just left them for about 2-3 years now. they're only adding more as time goes on.

at one point they actually accidentally dropped support for the RX 500 and you couldn't install drivers for about a week

so far, I hate every single minute im using this card and dont plan to buy AMD ever again. replace it ASAP (TDR means timeout detection and recovery)

Spoiler: other bugs ive encountered

the card literally just doesnt work on virtual machines if you open it a 2nd time before a reboot

the drivers timeout on gpu heavy games. installing the 20.9.1 drivers gets around it, but when the drivers would crash it instead makes your game crash

sometimes videos cause your computer to black screen and then crash your drivers. reverting to the 21.2.3 driver version gets rid of the issue

using hardware acceleration in the amd app actually makes the card perform worse

while installing a game overnight, I woke up to find my GPU had been running at 100% power for god knows how long. when I tried to run the game my graphics drivers completely corrupted, and I had to reinstall them from scratch

my current issue is that despite having the latest version of both their app and graphics drivers, im completely locked out of tweaking my settings

rx580 user here
works on my machine

 

['77 East]

so far, I hate every single minute im using this card and dont plan to buy AMD ever again.

don't buy an AMD GPU again you mean

my 3950x has been the best CPU I've ever used

if your motherboard has a tiny spot for those stick-thing hard drives get one

NVME's

honestly aren't worth the price unless you're prepared to pay mad markup value, if you have to buy one get it for your OS partition

 

[avralwobniar]

don't buy an AMD GPU again you mean

my 3950x has been the best CPU I've ever used

that is what I meant yeah. I just upgraded to a 5600x and its fantastic

rx580 user here
works on my machine

youre one of the lucky few

 

[verTix]

Hey guys,

Got £400+ cash planned up to splash on an upgrade for my PC, I'm going to post my specs below:

Spoiler: Specs

What should be my main priority in upgrading? The CPU is six cores, but I didn't think that was the main thing I should be looking at.

My card is dated as well but I'm looking more towards my Storage all being SATA instead of SS harddrives which is what I was considering getting next, but wanted to be sure.

Any thoughts? If I've missed anything at all too, let me know

what games/tasks are you performing and what is your power supply

firstly i would recommend a good SSD if you don't have one yet. 2.5in is fine but i'd recommend M.2 NVMe. it's a simple install and your motherboard is compatible with it. get one with PCIe gen 3 because your motherboard doesn't support gen 4 so it would be a waste of money. you can get a good 1TB SSD for around 100-120 USD.

your CPU and GPU are old but they work great together with negligible bottleneck at 1080p and you should be able to run most games. if you were to upgrade one of them you would have to upgrade the other one because a newer part will certainly bottleneck an older part. not the end of the world but it's something to consider. one thing you HAVE to consider if you're going to upgrade GPU and CPU is the wattage/quality of your power supply because it may not be able to pump out the necessary power that better PC parts need to operate

16GB of RAM is still considered perfectly fine for most tasks and will suit you well unless you're one of those people that likes to leave open 35 Chrome tabs. however, 1399MHz is VERY slow and I would recommend picking up a kit of at least 3000MHz RAM from a reputable brand like corsair or g.skill. motherboard and cpu should support that speed but i would double check on pcpartpicker just in case

 

[avralwobniar]

1399MHz is VERY slow

its DDR4 so double that number and you have his actual ram speed
2800mhz

 

[verTix]

its DDR4 so double that number and you have his actual ram speed
2800mhz

might not be running at that speed though he'd have to check in the BIOS. also would be good to know what brand it is

 

[avralwobniar]

might not be running at that speed though he'd have to check in the BIOS. also would be good to know what brand it is

the program hes using doesnt display xmp profiles, it's 2400mhz
if you enter

wmic memorychip get devicelocator, speed, manufacturer, serialnumber

into cmd you'll get all the information on your memory pretty quick

 

['77 East]

16GB of RAM is still considered perfectly fine

4x4x4x4GB sticks should be thrown out, most of those suck ass
even if 16GB is a 'workable' situation it doesn't mean the RAM's great

source: lived with ancient DDR3 4x 4GB sticks for a decade

 

[avralwobniar]

4x4x4x4GB sticks should be thrown out, most of those suck ass
even if 16GB is a 'workable' situation it doesn't mean the RAM's great

source: lived with ancient DDR3 4x 4GB sticks for a decade

ages ago I ran with 2 DDR3 1.2gb sticks, it was awful
I saved them and stuck them in a box somewhere, I ran bf2 on that ram my whole childhood

theres no reason to use 4 sticks like that anymore, its the same if not more money than just running 2 8 sticks if youre matching performance

 

[verTix]

yeah 4x4 is bad especially now with dual channel. luckily ryzen and the mobo support dual channel and he said he has dual channel so

 

[avralwobniar]

yeah 4x4 is bad especially now with dual channel. luckily ryzen and the mobo support dual channel and he said he has dual channel so

even so that leaves potential for performance drops, they'll be negligible but xmp probably wont boost as high as it does with just 2 slots

 

[verTix]

even so that leaves potential for performance drops, they'll be negligible but xmp probably wont boost as high as it does with just 2 slots

yeah he should get an 8x2 or 16x2 kit of DDR4 3000 or 3200. you could definitely buy a 4-pack but then you run into issues with timing (the more sticks you have the more likely they are to have inconsistent timings)

 

[Raiden]

your CPU and GPU are old but they work great together with negligible bottleneck at 1080p and you should be able to run most games. if you were to upgrade one of them you would have to upgrade the other one because a newer part will certainly bottleneck an older part. not the end of the world but it's something to consider. one thing you HAVE to consider if you're going to upgrade GPU and CPU is the wattage/quality of your power supply because it may not be able to pump out the necessary power that better PC parts need to operate

So I’m thinking of upgrading to the Ryzen 9 5900x processor, as its within my budgeg

i do only have a 550 watt powersupply, would this be an issue?

 

[avralwobniar]

So I’m thinking of upgrading to the Ryzen 9 5900x processor, as its within my budgeg

i do only have a 550 watt powersupply, would this be an issue?

shouldnt be until you upgrade other parts, but you'd basically have no more room for upgrades until you got the new power supply after this

 

[Raiden]

shouldnt be until you upgrade other parts, but you'd basically have no more room for upgrades until you got the new power supply after this

What psu would you suggest, if you have any suggestions?

Also - how much of an issue is my slow RAM? I’m basically trying to prioritise and build from there