what to upgrade next?

[faza]

The parts I currently have in my build are;

• Ryzen 5 1500X @3.9ghz
• X370 MB
• 8gb ddr4 2133hz (2x4gb)
• GTX 1060 3gb
• 120gb SSD
• 1TB external HDD

I was looking at upgrading my CPU but I want some advice on whether that is the right thing to upgrade first.

 

[UsandThem]

We need more information to make an accurate recommendation.

Things such as your budget, why you want to upgrade a single component, and what you use your PC for would be important details to know.

 

[faza]

my budget is £300, i use my pc mainly for gaming. i was thinking of upgrading to the new zen+ 2700x. not sure if i need to get that one, or should i go with the 2600x. and get more ram to get up to 16gb ?

 

[UsandThem]

my budget is £300, i use my pc mainly for gaming. i was thinking of upgrading to the new zen+ 2700x. not sure if i need to get that one, or should i go with the 2600x. and get more ram to get up to 16gb ?

I personally would look at buying a larger SSD and faster RAM (Ryzen loves fast RAM).

Even if the 120GB SSD offers enough space for you, that small of a drive generally offers inferior performance compared to their larger siblings. Lastly, DDR4 2133 is too slow for your CPU. I'd look at getting 16GB of DDR4 3000 or so.

You can always upgrade the CPU if it's your bottleneck, but if you are a gamer, it should be more than enough for you right now (especially with a GTX 1060 3GB GPU). Even if you upgraded to the faster CPU today, you still would be held back by the first two items I mentioned.

 

[faza]

okay thank you for your replies. I will look into your suggestions

 

[UsandThem]

okay thank you for your replies. I will look into your suggestions

There are a lot of individual reviews out there testing the faster RAM on Ryzen, and you can look in the CPU sub-forum here and see users doing the same in threads like 'Ryzen Builders' master thread. I found several on Reddit, so maybe this one will get you started on your research:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6nwudy/i_compared_3200mhz_ram_vs_2133_in_12_games/

And one from a review site:

https://www.eteknix.com/memory-speed-large-impact-ryzen-performance/

 

[faza]

thanks again. what if i scrapped ryzen and went intel. i can get an i5 8600k for £200 and mb for around £100. Then would the 8gb 2133 be okay ?

 

[UsandThem]

thanks again. what if i scrapped ryzen and went intel. i can get an i5 8600k for £200 and mb for around £100.

I don't think for your use it would matter much. Honestly, if I were you I would maybe buy some faster RAM and and larger SSD, and ride it out for a few years. By that time Intel will have fixed their Spectre/Meltdown bugs at the hardware level (right now they fixed it via BIOS updates, but it decreases their performance), and AMD will be onto the next version of Ryzen (along with a likely die shrink from what I read).

Then you can just do a proper upgrade and go with which ever one is the best performing at the time. For gaming at 1080p with a GTX 1060 3GB, you aren't going to be CPU limited with your current CPU or the Intel 8600k.

 

[faza]

thank you very much i will go with a larger ssd and better ram,and upgrade in a yr or two