What to upgrade first? (And some SSD questions)

Synattacks · 22 Oct 2020 at 21:28

System info: https://imgur.com/LobpxJA

I've attached a screenshot of "System Information". I'm running a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti .

I do game, but not particularly demanding games, and I doubt I'll have problems running games that are "a bit" more demanding than what I play most (CSGO), as I'm always ok not running "Ultra" settings, as long as I get decent FPS and games aren't on "low" settings entirely, I'm okay with that

I'm studying for an IT Degree, I program, I do some basic Unity projects, but mostly I'm just a tinkerer.

Running an i5-2500 @ 3.3GHz. So that's definitely on the table for an upgrade.

In task manager when I'm maxed out it's almost always Disk, as I don't have an SSD. I have a 2TB HDD to storage capacity wise, I'm fine, but clearly the read/write speed is limiting/

I'm most definitely going to upgrade to an SSD, just googled it and it won't be an expensive upgrade at all.

What's the difference between a regular SATA drive and NVMe SSDs? How do I know if my pc has the ports for NVMe cards. Just generally as much or as little detail as you're willing to go into on their difference & "need to knows".

After this, I would I assume want to upgrade my CPU, and i5-2500 CPUs are going for about £20-30 used. So i'm definitely capable of spending a few x more than that, any recommendations?

Also any other observations are more than welcome

Thanks for your help, in advance

4K8KW10 · 22 Oct 2020 at 21:40

Hi,

You can keep the graphics card since it's not of top priority for change now.

The motherboard with this Intel CPU does not support NVME PCIe SSDs.

You need a whole new motherboard - processor - memory - SSD configuration:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x AMD Ryzen 3 3300X Quad Core 4.3GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £128.99
1 x Team Group Dark T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Grey (TDGED4= £59.99
1 x Toshiba Kioxia RC500 Pro 500GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive= £68.99
1 x Gigabyte B550M S2H (AMD AM4) B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard= £84.95

Total: £353.42 (includes shipping: £10.50)

CFC-420 · 22 Oct 2020 at 22:17

Synattacks said:
What's the difference between a regular SATA drive and NVMe SSDs? How do I know if my pc has the ports for NVMe cards. Just generally as much or as little detail as you're willing to go into on their difference & "need to knows".

Maybe I misunderstood, do you mean differences between mechanical SATA and SATA NAND 2.5" SSD?
Between those two it's night and day, mechanical spindle/needle vs ram/nand chips. I believe that is one of the most significant advances over the last 30 years.

SSD vs M.2 NVMe is slightly more complicated. Mainly down to speed, price and convenience.

My PC has two 660p's by Intel.

Chaos666 · 23 Oct 2020 at 18:23

m.2 sata drive still has the same speed as normal 2.5" ssd but uses m.2 interface/form factor.
nvme is much faster then sata but you do not really need that kind of speed.
Considering that nowadays prices of nvme drives came down significantly i would go with nvme