PC upgrade on £300-400 budget

[lukaszlegia1916]

Hi all.

I need advice on upgrading my 8-year old PC. The only change I made since I bought it was adding ssd drive (Evo 850) 250GB and changing video card to GTX 1060.


I can spend £300 for upgrade. I use my pc for:

1. Gaming (Football Manager 80% of time, other games 20%)
2. Editing video

PC spec:
GTX 1060 GAMING X 6GB
Msi H61mu-e35 1155 Matx (Msi H61mu-e35 1155 Matx)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 - hard drive - 500 GB - SATA-600
2x Kingston ValueRAM memory - 4 GB - DIMM 240-pin - 1333 Mhz DDR3 (Kingston ValueRAM memory - 4 GB - DIMM 240-pin - DDR3)
Xfx Pro 450w Power Supply Unit (core Edition) (Xfx Pro 450w Power Supply Unit (core Edition))
Intel Core i5 2300 / 2.8 GHz processor
1 x Cooler Master Centurion 5 II - mid tower - ATX/MicroATX (Coolermaster Rc-502 Centurion 5 Ii Midi-tower Case - No Psu

Couple questions:
1.If I need to add RAM is it advisable to buy 2x8GB of new RAM or I can just add another 8GB to existing one?
2. Is m.2 ssd drive a good idea?If yes but I would have to go over a budget of £300 I am willing to do so.
3. Will I need new power supply unit or current one will cope with new components?


Huge thank you for any suggestions,
Lukasz

 

[Danny75]

You'll be okay with current PSU if it's in good shape. Though some would go with new if 8 years old, especially if adding new components. It's your call, nothing bad might ever happen, just decreases some risk.

M.2 SSD could be of benefit as a scratch/cache disk for your editing work. But it's a bit of a luxury with that budget and the money right now ought to go on best CPU/board/RAM possible. Also, which program/s are you using for editing?

RAM is now DDR4 so if you were to buy modern CPU and board you'd need new RAM as well. I think because of needing new RAM, you'd be better off spending the max you'd have spent with an M.2.

Basically Ryzen 2600 + B450 board + 3200 16GB RAM for just under £400.

 

[Danny75]

You could also keep going with current system and wait for Ryzen 3 processors to arrive. Meanwhile RAM prices are expected to keep falling for time being.

 

[pastymuncher]

Hi and welcome to the forums.

If you are gaming at 1080p the GTX1060 is good enough and you have a SSD so if you can possibly hang on until the middle of the year AMD will be launching their new Ryzen 3000 cpu's and motherboards which could be a big leap forward in performance going by the hype surrounding them.

If you can't wait a AMD Ryzen cpu, B450 motherboard, 16Gb of memory and a new psu would be my suggestion. I would have gone for the R5 2600 but it's out of stock like a lot of the AMD stuff on here. You could drop the psu and swap the cpu to a 2600X although I would replace the psu sooner rather than later as that series was launched in 2011 so is getting on a bit now.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 Six Core 1600X 4.00GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £149.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD416G30= £99.95
• 1 x Bitfenix Formula Series 550W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply= £66.95
• 1 x MSI B450M Gaming Plus (Socket AM4) DDR4 mATX Motherboard= £77.99

Total: £405.98 (includes shipping: £11.10)
​

Alternate build using your current psu, R5 2600X and a better motherboard:-

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD416G30= £99.95
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 Six Core 2600X 4.20GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £199.99
• 1 x MSI B450 TOMAHAWK (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £104.99

Total: £415.43 (includes shipping: £10.50)
​

 

[orbitalwalsh]

intel side of things , i5 8400 + ssd

intel i5 8400 matches all core speed of 2600/2600x and slightly lower then 2600x for single core but greater then 2600. Though it has the stronger IPC so should be equal to 2600x

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i5/i5-8400

depending on the video editing programs, ryzen could come out on top but if your using additional programs like adobe aftereffects, they would heavily favour intel


https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...CC-2019-CPU-Roundup-Intel-vs-AMD-vs-Mac-1297/


My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Gigabyte B360M-D2V Intel B360 (Socket 1151) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard= £61.99
• 1 x Intel Core i5-8400 2.8GHz (Coffee Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - OEM= £169.99
• 1 x Gigabyte UD Pro 512GB SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Toshiba 3D NAND Solid State Drive= £68.99
• 1 x Cryorig M9I Single Tower Heatsink for Intel= £19.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD416G30= £99.95

Total: £431.41 (includes shipping: £10.50)​

​

would still side with ryzen but food for thought