HTPC to Living Room Gaming PC

[SMOGZINN]

I am looking to upgrade my HTPC to be able to do some mid level gaming on my big screen.


Here is my current HTPC:

CPU - Pentium G620 (65 Watt)
MB - BIOSTAR TH61 ITX LGA 1155 Mini ITX
RAM - G.Skill DDR3 1333 4GB x2
Case Fractal Design Array R2 (Mini ITX) (Max video card length 21.69")
SSD - ADATA - Ultimate SU800 1TB (just installed that this weekend - before I had a old small SSD)
Storage - Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB
GPU - EVGA - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB SC (got that a few weeks ago for a good price)
PSU - Corsair SF Series, SF450 (less than a year old)

This system runs games but the CPU is really holding it back. So, time for an upgrade.

I want to keep the case since my entertainment center is build around it, and also it is a really nice case.
The PSU is new, and the video card should be fine for 1080p gaming (I don't need everything maxed). SSD and HD are fine (I also have a external 6TB for backup and extra storage). That leaves me with needing CPU-MB-RAM.

This PCs first job is to be a HTPC, it needs to be able to stream 1080p video to the TV and HD audio to my receiver, but just about anything should be able to do that, so that means I'm building towards gaming. I want to consider that I'll probably upgrade to a 4k TV before I replace this build, so I would like it to be able to handle that with perhaps a GPU upgrade in a year or two.

I live in the US near a microcenter, I don't have a firm budget for this, I could easily go as high a $1000USD, but I'm a frugal individual and price/performance is important to me so I'm thinking $500 is probably more reasonable.

I'm thinking of going with a Ryzen 5 2600 and the ASRock B450M PRO4 Micro my main question is what sort of memory should I pair with that? I'm thinking probably 16gig of memory but could be convinced otherwise. I'm not a fanboi of anything, and I'm open to any comments or ideas.

 

[Ken g6]

The easy thing to do would be to drop in a used i7 3770 (after BIOS update). That won't make for the fastest system possible, but it's cheap.

 

[whm1974]

The Ryzen 2600 paired with 16GB of fast DDR4-3000/3200 memory should do the trick, along with that 1060 you already have.

 

[SMOGZINN]

The easy thing to do would be to drop in a used i7 3770 (after BIOS update). That won't make for the fastest system possible, but it's cheap.

I've thought about that. It would cost about $140 with the heat sink. I'm looking at $400 for the 2600 with MB and RAM. That means that I would be spending 2/3rds the cost of upgrading to a 2600 and getting a 6 year old used processor. I'm just not sure it is worth it. The benchmarks I've seen show the 2600 being about 40% faster than the 3770 on average, and absolutely crushing it in anything that can make heavy use of multiple threads, which includes a lot of HTPC functions (handbreak, plex, unrar).

The Ryzen 2600 paired with 16GB of fast DDR4-3000/3200 memory should do the trick, along with that 1060 you already have.

How much of a difference does DDR4-3000 vs. 3200 make? I know that Ryzen is somewhat dependent on fast memory. Can you point me at any benchmarks or articles that compare that? If you were buying it which would you choose?

Thank you both for your help.

 

[whm1974]

I've thought about that. It would cost about $140 with the heat sink. I'm looking at $400 for the 2600 with MB and RAM. That means that I would be spending 2/3rds the cost of upgrading to a 2600 and getting a 6 year old used processor. I'm just not sure it is worth it. The benchmarks I've seen show the 2600 being about 40% faster than the 3770 on average, and absolutely crushing it in anything that can make heavy use of multiple threads, which includes a lot of HTPC functions (handbreak, plex, unrar).



How much of a difference does DDR4-3000 vs. 3200 make? I know that Ryzen is somewhat dependent on fast memory. Can you point me at any benchmarks or articles that compare that? If you were buying it which would you choose?

Thank you both for your help.

Well the Ryzen 2600 officially support up to DDR4-2900 speeds but can be overclocked for faster memory but that can get rather expensive. If you are not going to overclock then DDR4-3000 should be fine. I've always used Crucial branded memory but I don't they make anything faster then DDR4-2666, but I could be wrong.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I'm trying to find 16 gig of DDR4-3000 memory for this build but I can't seem to find any of the memory that is on the QVL list of either the MB or RAM. How important is it for this chipset? Anyone have the ASRock B450M PRO4 Micro and can recommend some memory?