Upgrades on a budget

Daston · 22 Sep 2017 at 12:28

Hey guys,

It's been a long time since I did anything computer related as life has got in the way.

Normally I would do a fresh build and future proof myself but I now have a 7 month old Daughter who seems to be doing her best to empty my bank account! I understand it only gets worse lol!

So I am thinking of upgrading my ageing rig to ease the bottlenecks that appear in some games. The current spec is:

Asus Sabertooth Z77 Motherboard
Intel i5 3300 CPU
16Gb 1666mhz RAM
Gigabyte 1080GTX
1500W OCZ PSU

Looking about the cheapest upgrade would be to fit an 7700 i7 and an extra 16gb RAM. This comes to around £200-250 which is the price of a new motheboard so not too bad.

However part of me is wondering if its just worth going for the low spec 1151 or even 2066.

Just wondered what your thoughts were.

pastymuncher · 22 Sep 2017 at 13:24

You can't fit a 7700 in that board or DDR4 either. To upgrade to a i7 7700 you would need the cpu which is £350 by itself, a new motherboard and DDR4 which is all going to come to well over £500 even if you get a cheap B250 motherboard (no overclocking on those). A extra 16Gb of memory will achieve nothing for gaming. The only upgrade path you have for your current board is to pick up a second hand i7 3770k and overclock it but looking at sold items on Ebay the prices are ridiculous at £140-180 and most in the £150-160 bracket. That's just crazy for a cpu that came out in 2011.

If you are considering a new cpu/motherboard/memory I would forget Intel altogether and go for a AMD Ryzen build as you get so much more for your money. The 6 core/12 thread Ryzen 5 1600 is only £180 and all Ryzen cpu's and motherboards can be overclocked. This would give you a nice upgrade and AMD's socket is going to last for 4 years so you will be able to drop in a newer cpu in the future.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x AMD Ryzen 5 Six Core 1600 3.60GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £179.99
1 x Gigabyte GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 AMD B350 (Socket AM4) DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard= £87.95
1 x Team Group Dark Pro 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C15 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Red (TDPRD416G30= £139.99

ExoMale · 22 Sep 2017 at 13:35

might be worth selling the intel setup and get something like this?

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x AMD Ryzen 5 Quad Core 1400 3.40GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £149.99
1 x Gigabyte GA-AB350-Gaming AMD B350 (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £99.95
1 x Team Group Dark T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TDGED416G300= £119.99

Total: £380.43
(includes shipping: £10.50)

your locked i5 would be the bottleneck in your system

Daston · 22 Sep 2017 at 13:51

Oh bother, didn't check the socket types oops lol I did say I hadn't been doing PC stuff for a while

Good shout with AMD, not looked at their stuff in like 13 years, will do some research.

orbitalwalsh · 22 Sep 2017 at 13:57

sell yours and since you were looking at i7, might as well go ryzen 1700. ryzen 5 1600 will see the same performance for current games, but 1700 will last that little bit longer and hopefully more games over the next 2 years will make better use of more cores- specially now since intel have increased their mainstream core count .

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x AMD Ryzen 7 Eight Core 1700 3.70GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £269.99
1 x Team Group Dark T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TDGED416G300= £119.99
1 x Gigabyte GA-AB350-Gaming 3 AMD B350 (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £101.99

Total: £502.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)

rig sale should help cover the costs nicely , and 16gb so you dont have to buy later- and since theres a shortage of ram across of memory types, its not going to drop down in price any time soon

Daston · 22 Sep 2017 at 14:17

You guys have me sold! Just been looking at the CPU's so much bang for the buck! Will probably go 1700, is the X just more Ghz? if thats the case I could just OC the 1700 to match right?

Do any of the gaming motherboards come with bluetooth and wifi built in? Just thinking of controllers and LANs. Been an ASUS fan since I started building computers but thinking I might have a change as well

Also how does windows 10 like major hardware changes, we upgraded for free from 7 and there was a lot of talk that it would go **** up if you changed too much.

Disco_P · 22 Sep 2017 at 18:36

I've heard that if windows 10 is connected to your microsoft account then you can move it to a new system.

If you are tight on money, don't spend £80 on a copy. You can leave windows deactivated on the new system - the only thing that is different is a little watermark in the bottom right when looking at your desktop and there are some limitations on the desktop background.

Hardware upgrades above look sound. Maybe wait for coffeelake to be released as it might be reasonably priced or it could cause price drops elsewhere.

orbitalwalsh · 22 Sep 2017 at 19:35

Don't get the X, they are just binned for the better chip, you'll still hit 3.8Ghz . It's if you want the best board with the best ram and ram timings with low as possible voltage and to chase numbers .
Thread ripper is the best binned of the lot !
So your paying £100+ more which technically aren't the best binned because they are in a bigger chip set... Hehe

pastymuncher · 23 Sep 2017 at 10:43

Another thing about the X is that they don't come with a cooler so you would have to spend even more money on a cooler as well. The non-X cpu's come with the very good Wraith cooler which is even good enough for a mild overclock.