I built my PC about ~7ish years ago on a budget. At the time, I wanted it to run games like LoL and Civ5 cleanly, and I didn’t care so much about graphics. Now I’ve got some more money and I want to run larger games with more complex graphics (namely Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3) but my system really struggles to keep up. Here’s my current build:
Case: an older corsair model. I have the serial number (090215429701) but cannot for the life of me identify it further.
CPU: Intel i5-490K (3.5GHz)
CPU cooler: a cooler master fan (can’t find a number on it)
Graphics Card: Radeon RX 580 Series
RAM: Corsair 8GB DDR3
Motherboard: MSI z97 Gaming 5 (MS-9717)
Power Supply: EVGA Supernova 750 G2
Storage: Microsoft Storage Space Device 111.04 GB, Kingston SV300S37A120G 929.29 GB
Apologies for the spotty information, I’m quite new to this. Essentially, I’d like to know what my weakest pieces are, what could be improved on, etc. My budget is somewhere in the realm of $500 and I’m located in the US. Any suggestions on how to improve are welcome! If I can be more clear about some of my specs, let me know and I’ll try to clarify. Thanks!
If you are running windows the best thing you can do is religiously run defrag once a month
(( If you are using spinning rust ))even if windows tells you you dont need to.
If you are using ssd’s however
clear out temporary internet files.
Doing so will minimize the cpu cycles wasted on looking up cookie files.
Hardware wise adding memory and adding a graphics card with a good amount of its own memory can help.
Software wise, making use of the os’ s memory manager settings more towards performance than graphics.
With win 10 and 11 managing the damn adware built in will be a monumental task as it is.
With linux just clear the temporary internet and history files.
well honestly the case and PSU are reusable, MAYBE the GPU if it is the 8gb model and you are in need of saving every penny possible. $500 is a capable budget for a solid mid range gaming PC.
do you have any brand loyalties or preferences we should be aware of before making recommendations?
Thanks for the advice. The big storage drive is an HDD and the small one is an SSD. I run windows, which I thought auto-defraged, so I’ll give these recommendations a shot.
No brand loyalty here, but if I’m replacing the entire thing, I might want to replace the case too. It was shipped back to me during covid (I was in university) and it got pretty beaten up. Ideally I could make edits to the existing PC, but it sounds like you’re saying that might not be feasible?
DDR3 and what looks like a 4th GEN intel CPU are not even in the realm of current. And as an old person myself, i am not just saying that to be lazy. You would be better off replacing the CPU, Mainboard, and RAM.
grab that utility so we can see exactly what GPU you have. you might be able to do a stepped upgrade.
and how much effort are you wanting to put into this? like you are willing to delve into FaceBook marketplace and craigslist. or is this a ‘i want to click on stuff at newegg.com or amazon.com and have it show up on my porch’ situation.
The problem with that build is that 7 years ago that was a solid beast, and it aged exceptionally well compared to generations before it. Unless you are RAM constrained, no single upgrade is going to give a knockout hit in performance. A graphics card will be restricted by the CPU, RAM, and motherboard. A change in CPU would need a motherboard and RAM to go with it. That would give a huge boost in performance, leaving the GPU as the bottleneck.
With only $500, a good new case would massively eat in to the budget and not help performance at all. Then again most of my cases are extremely old or custom hack jobs, so I’m heavily biased.
A new CPU/Mobo/RAM and keeping the GPU as per above might be the best solution. This would leave a bit of money to either save up for a future GPU, or buy a new case. You would likely be well served going straight to DDR5. If those 5700X3D rumors are true then you could get a better bang for your buck with an AMD AM4 DDR4 build, but that would not be upgradeable with newer RAM or CPU.
I’m not really impressed with the lower end (say sub $300) GPU’s out there even though my graphics needs are very limited. On Windows you can get away with Nvidia which is a plus. Nvidia has been a never ending source of grief for me in Linux, the lower end AMD cards don’t have hardware encoding, and Intel still needs a couple years to work out their drivers. All I want is a trouble-free graphics card to game at 1366 x 768 without spending over $300 and they apparently don’t exist going in to 2024 without buying used.
One last note - and I haven’t been a Windows user in almost 10 years now, but I remember using defrag on a drive with music and it messed all the music up badly. Lots of chirps and glitches. Either way it is always a good idea to make backups of important data before messing with a drive. That should be the top of the list before doing anything else if you don’t already have a system of backups.
but at some moment, its just time for a new motherboard cpu and ram. If you already have a system, you don’t have to buy an entire new system if you want to upgrade, Videocard you can get later, Pci expres 5 nvme you can get later.
I’ve run the utility and got quite a bit of information I only sort of understand. Release date is Apr 18, 2017 and revision is E7. Either of those pieces of info answer your first question?
In answer to your second, I’m about to start a new job and a little short on free time, so probably just clicking things is more realistic.
i went from ryzen 5 to ryzen 9 and my turn times in civ 6 are sweet now.
if you go for upgrade of mb, if you go am5 you have many years to upgrade cpu etc. So you can just start with the ryzen 5. and then simply build it out. the ryzen 5 will be a huge upgrade against the 4th gen intel. and are the new apu’s coming that they promise are going to replace budget videocards. Nvme drives are amazing. But get a pci expres 4 one right now 5 is still to expensive.
For motherboard look what fits your needs
Hardisks keep them for now.
I think wait on the ryzen 8000 apu’s and do a system upgrade
quick fix, add an extra sata ssd and put a fress install of windows on it. make it big at least 2 tb
This I was afraid of, but I can’t say it surprises me. From what everyone is saying, it might be time to put the computer out to pasture and save up to start again with a larger budget. The case is really shot, I don’t think I want to try it with another build if I’m replacing the motherboard.
And thanks as well for the warning on defragging. Given the hesitation people are expressing, I’ll wait on that until I’ve had time to do more research.
I’m not going to say get this or get that brand. Look what is around you for the right price. but one thing windows 10 on a 110 gb ssd. must be constantly full. Ssd’s get really slow when they are on there last gb i thought you should always have atleast 10% free so if you want to continue using this system, a ssd upgrade would be wise. Just like filling all the memory slots to the max.
If the system works the system works. If its quick enough its quick enought. Upgrading a system will get you quickly spending more then a 1000 money because you want this you want that.
