buy a new pc or change current one's parts?

Author Topic: buy a new pc or change current one's parts?  (Read 4978 times)

so i've had my current pc for 4 years now and i feel like it's sort up showing it's age, and i'm currently debating myself if i should buy a new one or change some of the current one's parts

here's some of the specs for anyone curious:

GTX 1050 ti 4gb
AMD Ryzen 3 1200
8GB RAM (4x2)
1TB HDD
(can't remember what the motherboard was)

something else to keep in mind is that my current budget is not as big as of now to buy a new pc and that prices where i live (argentina) may be pretty different from where most of you are


well if you can get away with just upgrading parts ofcourse, but when I upgraded my pc about a year ago I had to basically upgrade every single part cause they were starting to get so old.


try to find cpu upgrades that work with your current motherboard and the find a gpu that works well with it

Get an m.2 drive if you can. Buy more ram that's faster

This will make your computer scream

try to find cpu upgrades that work with your current motherboard and the find a gpu that works well with it
i agree with this. there are many am4 cpu's that are still totally capable, plus used gpu prices have been dropping too. so a better cpu/gpu combo would do you well.

or, if you're not running a workload/games and just want the system to feel more responsive and be quicker, upgrade to an ssd. it will make worlds of a difference coming from a hdd.

i personally upgraded my computer last year (it was originally built in 2016) but i ended up replacing everything except power supply, ram, and a hard drive so at that point its kind of a ship of theseus issue. i also resold my old parts on ebay so i could get some money back on the whole thing

since you have an am4 motherboard you may be able to luck out and get a decent later gen ryzen without replacing the whole motherboard, however do note that you have to update the bios and check to make sure its compatible. i'd definitely upgrade the ram (8gb is rather low particularly for gaming nowadays, 16gb has become standard) and get an ssd for windows to sit on (its a night and day difference). the gtx 1050ti should still be decent at older titles but may be starting to show its age so it may be worth considering going straight for a 30 series rtx if possible particularly as they're in surplus right now

if u can afford it it would be way better just to get a new pc, you'd honestly have to replace the whole thing for it to not bottleneck imo


if u can afford it it would be way better just to get a new pc, you'd honestly have to replace the whole thing for it to not bottleneck imo
Yeah i think this is your best bet aswell. My last build from like 2014 with a gtx970 clocked to hell and back was still pretty capable, although extremely noisy.


Also this has the added benefit of splashing out a bit more on the build and not having to upgrade for a good while
« Last Edit: October 05, 2022, 06:35:33 PM by c[_] »

so i've had my current pc for 4 years now and i feel like it's sort up showing it's age, and i'm currently debating myself if i should buy a new one or change some of the current one's parts

here's some of the specs for anyone curious:

GTX 1050 ti 4gb
AMD Ryzen 3 1200
8GB RAM (4x2)
1TB HDD
(can't remember what the motherboard was)

something else to keep in mind is that my current budget is not as big as of now to buy a new pc and that prices where i live (argentina) may be pretty different from where most of you are
The 1050 ti is a solid GPU even still, but it lacks in VRAM which is becoming more crucial for many of todays demanding games and applications. It will still run most games and apps just fine, but will struggle running unoptimized and/or more demanding next-gen titles at high quality that require more video ram. The first thing you will want to look into upgrading for a better pc is your storage - get an SSD, or the better but more expensive option an M.2 NVMe SSD. A hard drive is light-years behind the speeds these drives can achieve, you will notice an immediate improvement in performance by upgrading your storage.

The next 2 things you'll want to do is upgrade that cpu and ram. Go for at least 16 GB of quality ram and make sure you have them in the right slots to utilize an XMP profile. Now, for the CPU - the Ryzen 3 1200 is a low-end PCIe 3.0 x16 cpu, with only 4 cores and 4 threads. More importantly, the cpu only spouts 384KB of L1 cache, 2MB L2 cache, and 8MB L3 cache. This CPU is the bottleneck of your system and I would highly recommend enabling hardware accelerated GPU scheduling to let the more powerful GPU processor handle the more demanding side of tasks until you are able to upgrade it. Also check that nvidia physx is utilizing the GPU and not the CPU.

Considering your motherboard supports socket AM4, there is still some life you could squeeze out of it. However, knowing your exact motherboard in this situation is important because socket AM4 has both pcie gen 3 and 4 motherboards. If you have a PCIe gen 3 board (as I suspect based on your CPU), it might benefit you to buy a new motherboard (like an x570 or equivalent) and transfer your components over to that until you can afford a better CPU and other upgraded components. It's generally more cost effective to upgrade over time than to drop a big lump sum on a whole new PC.

« Last Edit: October 05, 2022, 10:02:24 PM by Goth77 »

First off, get rid of that HDD and get a SSD, or at the minimum, use the HDD for data storage only and use the SSD for the boot drive. That'll give you the biggest quality of life improvement.

Second off, just upgrade everything, or at least the CPU/motherboard. Sure, your motherboard may support newer gen Ryzen processors, but BIOS updates are 100% required for that. If you want to just try upgrading your CPU, make sure to refer to the CPU support list for your motherboard. Even though AMD officially started supporting 5xxx series Ryzen processors on 1st gen motherboards about 6 months ago, it's up to your motherboard manufacturer if they want to push that support onto your specific motherboard. If your motherboard does happen to support newer processors, keep in mind that an older motherboard will never pull the full potential out of a processor newer than what it was designed for.

First off, get rid of that HDD and get a SSD, or at the minimum, use the HDD for data storage only and use the SSD for the boot drive. That'll give you the biggest quality of life improvement.

This is mostly true - it's a good idea to play games from a second storage device but only if it's not an overly demanding game - if you are playing a game or using an app from your slower HDD to save space on your primary operating system drive, you are most likely going to notice slower loading and saving of the game or other performance loss in the program since it's still pulling data from that weaker drive. I also try to reserve my primary NVMe to just the OS but there are certain games and apps you probably want running on your primary drive if it's the superior device.

Second off, just upgrade everything, or at least the CPU/motherboard. Sure, your motherboard may support newer gen Ryzen processors, but BIOS updates are 100% required for that. If you want to just try upgrading your CPU, make sure to refer to the CPU support list for your motherboard. Even though AMD officially started supporting 5xxx series Ryzen processors on 1st gen motherboards about 6 months ago, it's up to your motherboard manufacturer if they want to push that support onto your specific motherboard. If your motherboard does happen to support newer processors, keep in mind that an older motherboard will never pull the full potential out of a processor newer than what it was designed for.
indeed one must not forget about the bios update

some other notes:

gpu stuff:
-i personally wouldnt recommend amd gpus. this is anecdotal but i had a radeon 6600xt for a few months and while it had decent performance it had buggy drivers and i'd get issues with display flicker and eventually my entire system locking up to a green screen while playing games. i eventually sold it off and got an rtx 3060 instead and it hasnt had any issues. ive also seen several other people online discuss issues with amd's drivers so unless you use a non-windows operating system i wouldnt go for one. that being said your mileage may vary and there are plenty of success stories with these cards as well.
-intel just hit the dgpu scene with their arc series of cards, which do seem rather promising in terms of future improvement however be warned that these are first gen products that currently have several caveats (poor performance in dx9/11 titles, driver instability) and i wouldnt go for them right now

other stuff:
-considering you have first gen ryzen your motherboard is likely b350/x370. while these boards should according to amd work with newer ryzens i am going to reiterate what i and others have said in that you need to verify that your motherboard manufacturer has released a bios update for your board that adds support. additionally you will also be missing out on features in newer boards such as pcie 4 and resizable bar that can provide some performance benefit.
-ddr5 is starting to become prevalent however do note that it's not an absolute necessity; improvements to gaming performance are, at least currently, minimal versus ddr4. we are currently in a weird transitional state with cpus that support both ddr4 and ddr5 with whichever one you can use being motherboard-dependent. i personally went for a ddr4 board for my 12600k and its been fine, you also save a bit by being able to reuse your current ram
« Last Edit: October 06, 2022, 09:50:58 PM by Mr Queeba »

some other notes:

gpu stuff:
-i personally wouldnt recommend amd gpus. this is anecdotal but i had a radeon 6600xt for a few months and while it had decent performance it had buggy drivers and i'd get issues with display flicker and eventually my entire system locking up to a green screen while playing games. i eventually sold it off and got an rtx 3060 instead and it hasnt had any issues. ive also seen several other people online discuss issues with amd's drivers so unless you use a non-windows operating system i wouldnt go for one. that being said your mileage may vary and there are plenty of success stories with these cards as well.
-intel just hit the dgpu scene with their arc series of cards, which do seem rather promising in terms of future improvement however be warned that these are first gen products that currently have several caveats (poor performance in dx9/11 titles, driver instability) and i wouldnt go for them right now

other stuff:
-considering you have first gen ryzen your motherboard is likely b350/x370. while these boards should according to amd work with newer ryzens i am going to reiterate what i and others have said in that you need to verify that your motherboard manufacturer has released a bios update for your board that adds support. additionally you will also be missing out on features in newer boards such as pcie 4 and resizable bar that can provide some performance benefit.
-ddr5 is starting to become prevalent however do note that it's not an absolute necessity; improvements to gaming performance are, at least currently, minimal versus ddr4. we are currently in a weird transitional state with cpus that support both ddr4 and ddr5 with whichever one you can use being motherboard-dependent. i personally went for a ddr4 board for my 12600k and its been fine, you also save a bit by being able to reuse your current ram
one thing to note about the intel gpus is that in older titles that are not dx12 supported, performance is garbage compared to the competition and the results vary extremely from title to title

Buy a gun instead
This. Your pc is capable of gaming. You want more add a ssd drive and change your gpu. Cpu too if you feel like it bottlenecks you. Im sure your rig is more than good enough for blockland

Yea I have like a thinkpad or something that's probably like 8 years old and it runs blockland, so probably buy a gun ammo instead?