A extreme n00b needs advice

Hello everyone!
I’m the noobiest of the noobs, buuuuttt I’m hoping you guys can help me out.
I have a pc that I’m trying to upgrade to a decent (yet affordable rig)
I have a hard drive
And a power supply: Rosewill Gaming Power Supply, Arc Series 550 Watt (550W) 80 PLUS Bronze Certified PSU with Silent 120mm Fan and Auto Fan Speed Control, 3 Year Warranty - ARC550

And a graphics card: GIGABYTE GT 420 2GB 128-Bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x 16 ATX Video Graphics Cards GV-N420-2GI REV3

I will use windows 7 64

I need a processor, a motherboard and ram upgrade. We tried upgrading ram before, but I guess the motherboard has a crack? I’ve got someone to work on it, I just need cheap recommendations.

Like $300 (if that’s even possible)
I’m in the usa so usd
I’d prefer to order online
I’ll mostly use it for gaming and streaming, a little editing.
No overclocking?
No water cooling
I have my os
Fps and resloution im looking for is decent.
Mostly want my pc for older games, ones I can’t get on my console or silly ones

Thanks a ton!

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What is your current mobo and cpu? Just curious.

I’m sorry to say, I have no idea

I am the wrong guy to give advice regarding gaming. A couple of things we need to know though:

  • How much ram did you currently have and was it enough?
  • What CPU are you upgrading from? (What @CPUBG said)
  • Can you give us a couple of examples for games you play (older can mean a lot) and are there modern titles you plan on playing?
  • What monitor do you have (resolution and refresh rate) my guess is 1080p ?
  • What is the reason you want to upgrade the motherboard and CPU? You mentioned a crack.

If I am not completely mistaken you could use a GPU update too and in that case I would go with a Ryzen 2400G or 2200G. Together with motherboard and 16GB of RAM that should fit into your budget nicely.

Here you go, the integrated graphics on this is better than your current GPU, so you don’t have to repurpose that.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/VRYPKB

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At first impression I’d go with these:

Perhaps a tad over 300 bucks but decent hardware nontheless with some headroom for upgrades.

A big thank you to everyone, I passed all your questions and suggestions on to whos working on my pc, as soon as he tells me I’ll let you all know.

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You suggested a ryzen 1600 and ddr4 to a guy who’s computer is running a pcie 2.0 gpu.

Wat.

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@angels_calamity Before proceeding, please look into the compatibility issues between Ryzen based or even recent Intel based platforms and Windows 7. Support on these newer platforms is not official and you may have to jump through hoops to get it to work. I would suggest a slightly older Intel platform like something z170 or prior with integrated graphics. You may be able to find such a system on ebay or craigslist.

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AMD has official drivers for Win7. The trick is to get to the point where the drivers are useful (internal DVD drive is recommended as USB won´t work).

Edit: The Zen-based APUs (Ryzen 2200G and 2400G, Athlon 200GE) do NOT work with WIn7

The gpu doesn’t have UEFI boot it probably wouldn’t even work.

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This is a job for…

200GE

Those would be some of the hoops I’m talking about. Not to mention PS/2 Keyboard during the install and a nasty Windows update notification that says that your newer processor platform is not supported. Eitherway, Microsoft does not officially support this newer hardware on their Windows 7 OS and judging by the OPs relative newness to building computers, I figured I’d save him/her some hassle and recommend a platform that would be easier to maintain… At least for the time-being.

The notification can be fixed with wufuc

I doubt the guy would make it to that point without a lot of help.

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For a beginner, it would definetly be better to go with a system that natively supports Zen.

Off-topic, but thanks for pointing that out, I did not know it even existed. I tried this same thing a while back and was unaware of this work-around. Cheers

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Or perhaps a nicer used machine? Perhaps haswell? Could maybe get more bang in their budget.

I’m willing to pay more, I kinda thew a ballpark figure. To be completely honest I don’t understand most of your terms, I’m trying to not seem like a complete idiot. So I’m hoping my pc nerd can translate.

Can you post your current CPU? (This will tell us the kind of mobo you are using.)

can you go to task manager (right click on start bar -> task manager), go to the tab Performance; and write down your CPU

something like this:


(windows 7 may look little bit different, but model should still be there.)

or to system panel (should be within your control panel)

or go to your dxdiag


(windows key) + R
Type dxdiag

it should also give you a lot of information
image

you can save all that information in there into txt file, and attach it here or just write those details down…

Its likely going to be cheaper to point you to correct hardware than making you build a new pc.

else this would be your proper replacement

$146 (includes integrated GPU - its much faster than what you have right now)

$106 16GB DDR4

or cheaper $60 8GB DDR4

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