Question 10 Year old gaming system needs upgrades.

Surebrec

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I've had this PC for nearly 10 years now, and I think it's coming to the time where it needs a core upgrade.

I paid an online PC building company to build it to my specifications as a top end gaming PC, and it has served me well (albeit a few snags along the way).

over the years, I have made upgrades here and there to things like hard drives, GPU's power supplies etc, but I have not yet upgraded the motherboard, CPU or RAM. I think it's long overdue that I should be upgrading these parts to bring my PC into line with modern computers, and future proof it for at least another half-decade.

The parts I have now are:

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-960 (3.20GHz) 4.8GTs/8MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® P6X58D PREMIUM: DDR3, USB 3.0 & SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI

Memory (RAM)
12GB CORSAIR XMS3 TRI-DDR3 1600MHz 6 X 2GB (Only 10GB is detected now, somewhere along the line, either a card failed, or the slot did).


I've given myself a budget of about £500 with a couple hundred more if needed to make these upgrades, but I would like to come in under this as much as I can and spend what I have saved at a later date on things like a new GPU.

I've done my own research, and from what I have read, it appears that intel aren't the top dog they were when I had this system built, so I am considering a change to AMD and Ryzen. I'm looking for upgrades that will be overclockable, so I'd like that to be kept in mind.

I'd like the motherboard to be able to take advantage of all the latest standards.

RAM, well, I'm open to all suggestions, but I'm after a system that can house at least 64GB (2x16GB to start with, and then the same added again at a later date). Advice on clock speed would be helpful too.

Also, I would be appreciative on suggestions for CPU coolers, with preference towards mechanical coolers if possible. I don't want to take on a legit liquid cooling system as I don't think I could trust myself not to screw something up somewhere.

The last bit, and probably the most important, is where to buy online. Which places are most reputable, and which has the best customer support.

That's all I can think of right now, so if I can think of anything else, I'll add it here later.

Thanks.
 




Ryzen 3600 cpu £173
16gb Patriot 3200MHz ram £65
MSI B450 Tomahawk Max £95
XFX RX590 8gb £170
Total = £503

That's the recommendation of most people on these boards over the last couple of weeks for that kind of budget. I'd go with Amazon too as if any parts are defective they'll not only replace it with no postage costs but they'll actually send the new part out before receiving the old one back.
 
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thanks for the suggestions. what sort of performances would I be able to get out of them?
 
That's a 1080p 60fps at ultra settings build. The gpu is the limiting factor and that system could perform really well with a higher end card. Pairing it with an RX5700 would bump that up to 144Hz if you have a suitable monitor. Moving up to the RX 5700XT or 2070 Super would be good for 1440p but the budget is really moving up by that point. What gpu do you have currently btw?
 
If you want it to last a good 5+ years, I would avoid the Ryzen 5 if you can and stretch to a Ryzen 7 3700. Also having a x570 board, while more expensive, has gen 4 pcie which again could future proof you. Both of those things, however, will take you very close to the top end of the budget.

The items duncfunk listed are great for today and the next couple of years, but they are already mid tier components so will obviously get outdated quicker.
With the next gens consoles on the horizon, specs for video games are going to increase (rumour is the next gen consoles are based on roughly a ryzen 7 chip and a 2070/80)
 
That's a 1080p 60fps at ultra settings build. The gpu is the limiting factor and that system could perform really well with a higher end card. Pairing it with an RX5700 would bump that up to 144Hz if you have a suitable monitor. Moving up to the RX 5700XT or 2070 Super would be good for 1440p but the budget is really moving up by that point. What gpu do you have currently btw?

I already have a GTX980ti which seems more than adequate for me right now. right now, I'm just focusing on the core components. the GPU can come a bit later in the year
 
If you want it to last a good 5+ years, I would avoid the Ryzen 5 if you can and stretch to a Ryzen 7 3700. Also having a x570 board, while more expensive, has gen 4 pcie which again could future proof you. Both of those things, however, will take you very close to the top end of the budget.

The items duncfunk listed are great for today and the next couple of years, but they are already mid tier components so will obviously get outdated quicker.
With the next gens consoles on the horizon, specs for video games are going to increase (rumour is the next gen consoles are based on roughly a ryzen 7 chip and a 2070/80)

I was actually looking at these as possible choices.

to be honest, I have enough to spend £750-800, so if I need to, I can always push the envelope up a little.

right now, I'm wanting to get at least 5+ good years out of it, so I'm looking at my options. I'm also keen on upgrading to an NVME drive from my SSD at some point, so I'd like to factor that into the mix.
 
Where to shop
A lot of people recommend PC Part Picker. It'll collate prices and delivery cost from various retailers.
Retailers that I've used and had good experience with:
- Amazon;
- CCL Computers;
- Aria PC Tech;
- Scan; and
- Ebuyer.

All have been around for a long time and are generally well-known.

Over the last three years, I've had good customer experience when I've had to return items with Amazon, CCL and Scan.


Spec in general
A tall order to future-proof for 5 years ;). You may have to target the upper-end of your budget, but it's a big bonus that you're not looking to immediately upgrade your graphics.

- For now, the top motherboards for AMD CPUs use the pricey X570 chipset. All of the boards come with a chipset fan, except for Asrock's watercooled (and OTT) AQUA. From what I hear - I don't have one - the fan doesn't spin that much and only when things get toasty. Not sure about its longevity over 5 years.

- Bear in mind that the X570 is built around the AM4 socket. AM4's successor is on the horizon but it's not expected until next year.

- For RAM, you'll be fine in terms of an eventual 4 x 16GB. I can only refer you to Google for advice on speed. A lot of people seem happy with DDR4-3200. There's an article from Tech Powerup (amongst others) and this bit of marketing from AMD (which you're free to add salt):

intro3.jpg


- If you want a cheap SSD right now, you should be able to find a decent 500GB drive for less than £60. Crucial usually make reliable budget models.


Spec 1
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
- be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4
- Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 2 X 16GB DDR-3200

Current price: £754.04

A decent processor for the next few years. be quiet!'s cooler is very well-regarded for cooling performance and low-noise but it can be tricky to fit.


Spec 2
- AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
- Noctua NH-D15 Chromax-black
- Asus PRIME X570-P
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 2 X 16GB DDR-3200

Current price: £806.92

Dropping to a more basic motherboard, this spec ramps up to a 12-core processor and air-cooling royalty. It won't help much in gaming but if you wanted the extra cores, they're yours for less than £450...

You can save roughly £12 if you're willing to swap Noctua's black trim for its signature (and divisive) beige and brown.
 
10 years is a long life for a PC. A lot of things can change in that span of time. I never built a pc. I always go store bought when that time comes .
 
Where to shop
A lot of people recommend PC Part Picker. It'll collate prices and delivery cost from various retailers.
Retailers that I've used and had good experience with:
- Amazon;
- CCL Computers;
- Aria PC Tech;
- Scan; and
- Ebuyer.

All have been around for a long time and are generally well-known.

Over the last three years, I've had good customer experience when I've had to return items with Amazon, CCL and Scan.


Spec in general
A tall order to future-proof for 5 years ;). You may have to target the upper-end of your budget, but it's a big bonus that you're not looking to immediately upgrade your graphics.

- For now, the top motherboards for AMD CPUs use the pricey X570 chipset. All of the boards come with a chipset fan, except for Asrock's watercooled (and OTT) AQUA. From what I hear - I don't have one - the fan doesn't spin that much and only when things get toasty. Not sure about its longevity over 5 years.

- Bear in mind that the X570 is built around the AM4 socket. AM4's successor is on the horizon but it's not expected until next year.

- For RAM, you'll be fine in terms of an eventual 4 x 16GB. I can only refer you to Google for advice on speed. A lot of people seem happy with DDR4-3200. There's an article from Tech Powerup (amongst others) and this bit of marketing from AMD (which you're free to add salt):

View attachment 1243371

- If you want a cheap SSD right now, you should be able to find a decent 500GB drive for less than £60. Crucial usually make reliable budget models.


Spec 1
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
- be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4
- Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 2 X 16GB DDR-3200

Current price: £754.04

A decent processor for the next few years. be quiet!'s cooler is very well-regarded for cooling performance and low-noise but it can be tricky to fit.


Spec 2
- AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
- Noctua NH-D15 Chromax-black
- Asus PRIME X570-P
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 2 X 16GB DDR-3200

Current price: £806.92

Dropping to a more basic motherboard, this spec ramps up to a 12-core processor and air-cooling royalty. It won't help much in gaming but if you wanted the extra cores, they're yours for less than £450...

You can save roughly £12 if you're willing to swap Noctua's black trim for its signature (and divisive) beige and brown.

thanks for that. all useful advice taken on board
 
10 years is a long life for a PC. A lot of things can change in that span of time. I never built a pc. I always go store bought when that time comes .

well to be fair, when I got it, it was a near top-end spec system, so I think that's helped in having it so long. also add to that, I have done several upgrades over the years including GPU, HDD to SSD. I think the time has come to do the core upgrade that will hopefully give me at least 5 years of good gaming.
 
Truth is the way technology works these days is the technology you have will be obsolete shortly after you buy it. I don’t mess with upgrading too much. I once had a Computer that completely died from upgrading. So I wish you good luck with this.
 
been a bit quiet on the PC upgrading, some other things have taken over my life recently, and I have been saving up a bit more money.

right now, I think I can stretch to the following parts:


it states that there are no compatibility issues, but I think it wouldn't hurt to get a few opinions from knowledgeable people on here first, as well as some other places.

my concern right now is RAM with regards to the MB.

I was also going to upgrade my case, but can't find anything that fits what I want. I don't really want to go down the RGB route because I think it's kind of tacky and I'd probably end up disabling it.

so for now, I am going to stick with my near 10 year old HAF-X.

maybe it would be a good idea to fit that into the overall component compatibility.
 
I built almost the exact same system a couple of months ago using an Ryzen 9 3900x (wow prices have come down!), an Asus ROG Crosshair Hero VIII, Noctua DH15 cooler and four sticks of Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3200Mhz ram. I agree with you about the RGB cases and was frustrated when I couldn't find a mid-tower case that wasn't RGB and had a decent number of hard drive bays and an optical drive bay. I went for a Fractal Define R6 which I'm really pleased with, I like the plain classy look and it takes four 3.5in HD's, two 2.5in drives and one 5.25in drive.

Ram compatibility was my main worry because Corsair didn't show the VIII at all and Asus only test kits you can buy so they didn't show the four 16GB sticks as compatible. You can check if your kit is on here:


I've had almost no problems at all with memory running at 3200Mhz (setting the bios memory speed to auto to apply the XMP profile), I say almost because one weekend on the first boot each day it failed to boot and showed an 8D error code which is possibly a memory issue. But this seemed to occur for others on different boards and memory and it's not happened since, from what I've seen the Corsair Vengeance LPX is recommended for Ryzen.

The Noctua cooler is huge and they've got a compatibility checker on their website although it may not have your case on it. The second fan was supposed to clear the Corsair memory but I had to move it up a little but it fits fine.

Other than those couple of failed boots the system has worked perfectly and I'm absolutely delighted with it. My intention is for this system to last a while so I chose parts the same as yours for probably similar reasons, I particularly like how it's almost silent running even under load.

This was my final full build including parts transplanted from the old system:

 
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my concern right now is RAM with regards to the MB.

Keep an eye on the Crucial Ballistix Ram page at Amazon. There's some cracking deals like £51 for 16Gb 3200Mhz which is what I bought for my recent 3900X build. 32Gb (2 x 16gb) was £110 yesterday.

It's the same height as Corsair Vengeance LPX so should fit with the Noctua cooler. But you might want to consider the Dark Rock 4 Pro cooler as the outer fan is 120mm.

I didn't think it was good value to spend £300+ on a motherboard so spent £200 on the "Asus X570 Prime Pro" which still had the good bits like Intel lan, quality audio, front panel USB-C and then I spent the money saved on a 1TB gen 4 nvme drive for my games.
 
I built almost the exact same system a couple of months ago using an Ryzen 9 3900x (wow prices have come down!), an Asus ROG Crosshair Hero VIII, Noctua DH15 cooler and four sticks of Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3200Mhz ram. I agree with you about the RGB cases and was frustrated when I couldn't find a mid-tower case that wasn't RGB and had a decent number of hard drive bays and an optical drive bay. I went for a Fractal Define R6 which I'm really pleased with, I like the plain classy look and it takes four 3.5in HD's, two 2.5in drives and one 5.25in drive.

Ram compatibility was my main worry because Corsair didn't show the VIII at all and Asus only test kits you can buy so they didn't show the four 16GB sticks as compatible. You can check if your kit is on here:


I've had almost no problems at all with memory running at 3200Mhz (setting the bios memory speed to auto to apply the XMP profile), I say almost because one weekend on the first boot each day it failed to boot and showed an 8D error code which is possibly a memory issue. But this seemed to occur for others on different boards and memory and it's not happened since, from what I've seen the Corsair Vengeance LPX is recommended for Ryzen.

The Noctua cooler is huge and they've got a compatibility checker on their website although it may not have your case on it. The second fan was supposed to clear the Corsair memory but I had to move it up a little but it fits fine.

Other than those couple of failed boots the system has worked perfectly and I'm absolutely delighted with it. My intention is for this system to last a while so I chose parts the same as yours for probably similar reasons, I particularly like how it's almost silent running even under load.

This was my final full build including parts transplanted from the old system:


which operating system are you using? if it's W10, did you have to do anything to reactivate it after installing the new components?
 
been a bit quiet on the PC upgrading, some other things have taken over my life recently, and I have been saving up a bit more money.

right now, I think I can stretch to the following parts:


it states that there are no compatibility issues, but I think it wouldn't hurt to get a few opinions from knowledgeable people on here first, as well as some other places.

my concern right now is RAM with regards to the MB.

I was also going to upgrade my case, but can't find anything that fits what I want. I don't really want to go down the RGB route because I think it's kind of tacky and I'd probably end up disabling it.

so for now, I am going to stick with my near 10 year old HAF-X.

maybe it would be a good idea to fit that into the overall component compatibility.

The Ballistix kits (look for AES in the product code) at 3200MHz CL16 have recently dropped to silly-low prices on Amazon (around £51 for 2x8GB kits), keep an eye on them via HUKD / 3Camels. This will give you 32GB over 4 slots, which is plenty for many years. Using Thaiphoon and Ryzen DRAM calculator, you'll quite easily be able to overclock them to 3600MHz CL16 which is a great point for Ryzen 3xxx CPUs. This is exactly what I'm running now, albeit with "only" a Ryzen 5 3600. I realise you want up to 64GB, there are also 2x16GB Ballistix AES-code kits that drop to just over £100; they're dual-ranked so the overclocking is a bit less, but they're still the most outstanding value for money / headroom kits around, highly recommended, and still low(er) profile. They might not be on the Motherboard QVL, but it's extremely unlikely that they won't work..!

I've got an old Noctua NH-D15 (same, but not black, and I had to get the AM4 kit separately), and I just have to lift the outside fan a little bit, no issues whatsoever.

I agree that your motherboard is overkill - look for something with the features you want, X570 if you want the PCIe 4.0 futureproofing, and decent VRMs & power distribution, but don't pay for "halo" features that you don't actually need. Rather, put that money into a better GPU or a better case or a better PSU, or even a better monitor!

PSU is important; the non-budget EVGA are good, Seasonic are good, and some others - since you're planning to keep this for many years, go for a good PSU. I don't really think you need more than 750W, go for quality, warranty and efficiency (Gold at a minimum) over outright power.

Case and fans are also very important - something like the new Fractal Design Define R7 and some decent Noctua fans.

The only other question is, do you want to build and forget, or are you willing to replace the CPU later on? If the latter, go for something like the 3600 now (possibly the best price/performance point in the Ryzen range right now, and maybe even compared to Intel), and in a year or two just swap for something better. You'd still be getting a massive performance increase right now, with the option of getting one of the later Ryzen designs towards the end of the platform.

This is what I've got, feel free to fire back any questions to any of us:
Ryzen 5 3600 / Noctua NH-D15
MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX
4x 8GB Ballistix 3200MHz CL16 (running at 3600MHz CL16)
Sapphire Pulse Vega 56
A couple of of SSDs and one NVMe (about 3.5TB in total... mmm, fast storage! :D)
Fractal Design Define R5
Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 750W
 

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