Advice needed for new PC

[Thibsie]

Hi,

Finaly posting here after reading a lot about Ryzen. So Hi everybody

I finally decided I needed a new PC, the old one being about 10 years old. I also have a nice laptop but despite its Quad Core i7, its GPU (Quadro K2100) is really useless for modern games.

The current old thing is as follows:

* Antec 380W Bronze PSU
* Asus P5Q Pro + Core2 Duo e7500 + mainstream cooling
* HDD but SSD available from the laptop
* Radeon HD6870
* 8GB RAM

I want, slowly ('cos... well, money) evolve to Ryzen (5 or 7, will see).
The main question is: is it even interesting in any way to upgrade the current old chap with little money as long as the hardware is hardware I will use in the new PC ?

Summary: an overclock QuadCore (Q6600 or Q8200, have access to both for free) and adequate cooling + GPU such as RX580 (or equivalent nVidia) would be, although minimalist, OK to play (again minimalist conditions) modern games or is this just wasted energy ?
I guess, that way I may have something useable for 300€ max. If it is worth it.

Thanks for your thoughts

EDIT: local situation is Belgium.
Buying will probably be mainly Amazon FR/DE

 

[aigomorla]

: is it even interesting in any way to upgrade the current old chap with little money as long as the hardware is hardware I will use in the new PC ?

no... Other then HDD, however u probably would want to upgrade that too for a M.2 SSD.
You would need an entire new set of parts.

1. Your system is a C2D which uses DDR2 ram.
*Ryzen uses DDR4 ram, and even then its sort of picky on what ram it can use, so you can not upgrade your ram for your C2D and expect to recycle it to Ryzen*

2. The HDD you can recycle, however Ryzen has M.2 support, so your best off getting a M.2 Boot drive.
What is M.2? its a SSD which is insanely fast. Its about the size of a chewing gum, but it has reads and writes which mechanically HDD's can only dream about.

3. Any GPU you get right now would be severly limited by the CPU. You can get a new GPU... if your on budget like a RX580, or a 1060 GTX, however it will be severely cpu limited that you would not get the full benefits of the card.

So your basically stuck at the bottom end since your refresh periods are so long.
I would just recommend you save up and get 1 big purchase, then trying to mikey mouse the current system you have with recent parts.

 

[Thibsie]

Thank you for your faster than light answers

1. Indeed, don't intent to upgrade that part, that would be a total waste.
2. That's Ok, I have a proper SSD I can recycle and HDDs too. Of course on the Ryzen mobo, I'd upgrade to M.2/NVME
3. I get that, otherwise there would be no point at all to upgrade the whole thing. But limited to what point? It is clear that if o/c a quad + GPU investment equals No playable (I mean playable, not shiny playable) Dishonored 2, there's not much point in this. And I know Dishonored 2 is indeed a heck of a power user, GPU and CPU.

The whole purpose, as a first step is not to get something not limited anywhere but to get something acceptable without losing money.
If the result here is playable and the GPU is good enough (debatable I suppose) to be reused in the Ryzen config, then I do not have a single misplaced €.
If not, indeed, well...

The thing is, a new build is of course expensive. And this mean I won't be able to buy the whole thing at once (since it hovers around 1000€ ++), the updated GPU will be the last expensive element to come. Not helping my gaming problem until quite later.
Moreover I'd like Ryzen platform to settle a bit.

 

[whm1974]

Yeah my advice to simply build a completely new system. The Ryzen 5 1600 and 7 1700 seems to be the sweet spot for performance and value. These basically are workstation CPUs on the cheap.

 

[Thibsie]

Thank you both.
I'll update with components I intend to buy (unless it is better I create another thread)..

 

[Valantar]

I don't agree 100% with the posts above, but in the end it all comes down to your budget and the period in which you plan to upgrade. I have been squeezing every last ounce of life/performance/usability out of my 9-year-old Core2Quad rig, and all in all I would say it's still quite useable, although that depends on the workload. Most games run fine, but some (most recently for me: Fallout 4) are rather abysmal.


My CPU is a Q9450, that I've been running at 3.52GHz for around two years now (before that, I used the motherboard's built-in OC profiles at 3 or 3.2). I use a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo for cooling, which is more than sufficient with my overclock (and a horriby hot-running X48 motherboard). If I run OCCT for more than half an hour the CPU goes above 85C, but it usually stays in the 50s-60s while gaming. If you want to try OCing (which you really should - C2Qs mostly OC easiliy), get a 212 Evo, and you can bring it with you for your next upgrade. Ideally, I would recommend a Cryorig H7 instead, but it sadly needs a mounting kit to work on LGA 775. The Cryorig H5 might be an option, although it's a bit more expensive and big.

My rig has seen three GPUs: Crossfire'd HD 4850s, a 6950, and most recently a Fury X. When I went for the Fury X, my reasoning was that even if I was CPU limited in most/all situations, I was going to replace the CPU (and everything else) within around half the lifetime I expected to get out of it, and performance would still be plenty good. This has proven to be exactly true - I can play most games just fine at 2560x1440 without reducing graphics settings much. But then again, Fallout 4 frequently dips into the 20s in towns, dense ruins and settlements. Which is why I have a 1600X on the way, as soon as the store can get a hold of my motherboard of choice.


Still, if you can get a C2Qfor free, I would go for it, no questions asked. I would say that a Core2Duo is nigh on unusable today (2c2t like a low-end Pentium or Celeron, but with far worse IPC and lower clocks to boot), while a Core2Quad at decent clocks is still acceptable (low-end Core i3-ish). If you'll be able to afford a CPU+mobo+RAM upgrade within the next year or so, I wouldn't hesitate to buy a good GPU either. You won't see its full potential, but you'll still get far better performance from, say, an RX 580 than your current 6870, and you'll get a "free" GPU performance boost with your platform upgrade in a year or so.

If you won't be able to upgrade the rest of the rig in that timeframe, I wouldn't put as much as $200-250 into the GPU. Still, even an RX 460 should be a ~80% performance improvement from your current GPU, and it supports DX12, Vulkan, and all kinds of modern niceties that your current GPU lacks (like hardware video decoding).

One addendum: if your PSU is as old as the rest of the rig, I would replace it before you do anything else. Capacitor degradation and general wear makes it very likely that any added load beyond what you're currently putting on it would make it fail. Get something good in the ~500W region, that will provide you with plenty of power for even an 8-core Ryzen 7 and something like an RX 580.

Oh, and get an SSD for your operating system and games.


Tl;dr: Get a new PSU, and one of the free C2Qs. If you can upgrade the mobo+CPU+RAM within a year, get an RX 580 or similar. If not, get an RX 460/560 or similar. And get an SSD.

 

[Thibsie]

Components I currently have on my radar:

Thermaltake Versa U21
Corsair TX550M
Gigabyte GA-AB350-GAMING 3
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
G.Skill 16 Go (kit 2x8) DDR4-2666 CL15
Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 8GD5
Samsung 850 EVO 250 Go

Overclocking planned but reasonable. Silence preferred to any extreme measures.

 

[Thibsie]

I don't agree 100% with the posts above, but in the end it all comes down to your budget and the period in which you plan to upgrade. I have been squeezing every last ounce of life/performance/usability out of my 9-year-old Core2Quad rig, and all in all I would say it's still quite useable, although that depends on the workload. Most games run fine, but some (most recently for me: Fallout 4) are rather abysmal.
[...]
Tl;dr: Get a new PSU, and one of the free C2Qs. If you can upgrade the mobo+CPU+RAM within a year, get an RX 580 or similar. If not, get an RX 460/560 or similar. And get an SSD.

Thanks for your input Valantar. This is mostly what I had in mind.
I fear the RX460/560 would be money wasted going later with a Ryzen. But I might be completely wrong.
Thanks for tip on cooler to chose, this is quite annoying to research those things.

Anyway I go, looking at components already is IMO good idea so I put a list of what I may buy in the end. Lot of things may change till then though...

thanks again.