Question Do I bother upgrading or should I start a fresh build?

[Roosti3]

Been plodding along with my old PC for a while now but new baby has ment it hasn't had much love and attention other that adding more drives to backup baby photos. Wanted to see if i can give it a boost, but it's been a long time since i've looked at benchmarks so wanted your feedback. Will another 2x4 or 2x8 DDR3 keep me satisfied or do i need to start planning a new build???

Spec
Battered and bruised P180 Antec Case
Asus M5A78L-M/USB3
X3 445 3100Mhz
Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR5
Samsung SSD 830 ~118GB
2x2GB CMD4GX3M2B1600C8 Dominator DDR3 1600mhz GB 8-8-8-24
2TB Barracuda HD
Zalman GoldRock ZM650-XG
3 x external USB3 WD 4TB Passports
BENQ XL2739-B


Currently used for general use, a little gaming and hopefully home video processing in the future. I noticed i cant play the latest games and home videos are stuttering when i try to play back from the various drives i have connected.

Thanks Roo

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, the gaming, don't try to play much beyond 2016-2017 AAA games on that rig, it's below minimum requirement on most new games. (Might still be able to play some e-sports games.)

Only 4GB of RAM is REALLY low these days, even the craptop/netbooks have 4GB now, and they are barely usable for browsing in that amount of memory.

You could invest in a 2x8GB (16GB kit) of DDR3-1600 (I tend to stick with GSKill for DDR3, but Corsair is probably OK too.)

But spending $50-60 on DDR3, could go towards a $92 kit of 32GB of DDR4-3000 (for the lowest budget branded RAM on Newegg currently on sale), which, when combined with a decent AM4 mobo and a Ryzen CPU, take your pick, 3600 for $155-195, 2600 for $100-130, 1600 for $100, all three generations of 6C/12T (what I'm currently running right now, except for the 2600), which are plenty powerful for both gaming and video-editing, and of course basic desktop / browsing tasks.

With both RAM and SSD, and also somewhat, CPU prices LOW (especially on 1st- and 2nd-gen Ryzen CPUs), and BF around the corner, I think that you would be best-off spending whatever you choose to spend, on a NEW system.

Even with current low prices and BF sales, it will probably cost $500 or so for all-new parts for the new rig (could re-use GPU, case, PSU, HDD, which would reduce that price).

Edit: I am a little concerned, are those three 4TB external HDDs, desktop or portable models? And are they backups of one another, or just archival storage, without any backups? I'm thinking that you could be in the market for a NAS unit. Basically, a little box that holds HDDs, purpose-built, to store files, and play back media, over your local LAN. Generally a little safer, and less likely to be "banged around" than portable external HDDs. Of course, they can also be a bit pricey.

Edit: If you wanted to do this piecemeal and keep using your existing system, I would suggest upgrading the RAM first, 2x8GB at least. Then either the CPU, or the GPU, if gaming is a priority. Neither of them is really "good" these days, as far as gaming goes. Hard to say. Even a Phenom II X6 struggles a bit.

Does your mobo take AM3+ (AM3 plus) processors like the FX-8320E, or FX-8350? Those might improve your gaming a bit.

GPU-wise, consider a GTX 1650, or an RX 570/580 (used), or wait for the GTX 1650 Super or RX 5500 (or XT variant) to be released, sometime before the end of the year, hopefully by/around BF.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You're in luck! I looked up the CPU support list, your mobo IS an "AM3+" mobo, that supports 140W TDP CPUs.

That means that you could use an FX-8350 8-core (4-module, dual threads per module, whether they qualify as true "cores" is arguable, but they are marketed as such), which is still respectable in gaming, in many cases (though not all). Games that need high speed cores won't do as well as games that are able to take care of "many cores".

I looked on ebay, brand-new ones are going for $200. I do have a BNIB one that you could have for a better price. Unfortunately, you can't PM me until you hit 25 posts.

I also have a used, originally factory-refurb Sapphire RX 580 4GB Nitro+ (takes 6+8 pin) that would go good with that CPU. You can get those on ebay used for $110 or so at the cheapest.

Edit: The thing is, you could get an AM4 B450 board for $70-90 for a micro-ATX, or $90-150 for an ATX (*excluding the really high-premium boards), 32GB of DDR4 for $100-120 for a reasonably decent name-brand, and a Ryzen R5 2600 CPU for $110-130, so like $350-400 for those, and then a used RX 570/580 off of ebay (there's one Gaming X on FS/FT here for $90 I think, and it looks like mint condition.) So you're looking at $500 total for this sort of upgrade.

Versus $360 or so for getting a 2x8GB kit of GSkill DDR3-1600 ($60), BNIB FX-8350 ($200), and a used RX 570/580 ($100), and sticking with your existing board and Windows installation (which is generally tied to the board).

It might be valuable to you not to have to do a fresh installation of Win10, which if you're on Win7 64-bit on your current board, you would have to upgrade to Windows 10, then transfer the drives over. (*)

(*) Better policy would be, to get Macrium Reflect Free, install on Win7, make a system image backup, to one of your external HDDs, make the USB boot stick, then upgrade to Win10 on the old system, get it activated, backup a second time (this time a system image backup of the Win10 install on the old system), and then either move the drives over, or get new drives if you go the entire new system route, and restore the Win10 system image backup to the new system's drive(s), and then re-activate Win10 on the new system.

Edit: Oh, and while Ryzen is awesome at video-editing chores, that's also one of the strong spots of the FX-8350 / FX-family CPUs as well. So I hear, I haven't tried it myself.

 

[Roosti3]

Thanks Larry,

It seems a no-brainer to go with the new build. I'll start the shopping list now and watch out for BF options.

Regarding NAS. Yes its also been on the cards for a long time now. The WD's passports are currently external backups duplicating whats on the 3.5" barracuda and photos dumped from phones and cameras.

Ideally i need a network solution that can sync my android/windows/nikon/gopro world with the wife's applemosphere!

Can i build that around the system above? Any suggestions on where to go for advice on that build?

 

[ao_ika_red]

Get into 2nd hand market and look for super cheap FX 8300 CPU and 2*4GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM. You'll be amazed by how small amount of money can get you so far.