So, I am currently running an absolutely ancient Ship of Theseus desktop. I have fairly modest needs, looking to play games, lets say on the order of Starfield, at 1080P, medium-ish settings, and not dropping below 30FPS when things get busy on-screen. Something like Minecraft I’d like to run a touch more aggressively, but I know it has its own technical bottlenecks that make it more intensive than you might think (don’t murder me… I still play Bedrock because I like vanilla survival and it runs well). I also do some light 3D CAD using paid-for software that I like, so some sort of legal-ish Windows partition or VM with some form of GPU acceleration would also be nice, but I’m okay with running Linux for most things.
Current specs:
- Gigabyte B450M mobo
- Ryzen 5 2400G as CPU only
- Radeon RX 580
- 16GB PC3200 DDR4
- Unholy accumulation of SATA III drives: a Lexar 250gb for Windows 10, a 120GB Samsung for a couple of games, and a 640GB 7200RPM drive for Linux and storage.
I have actually been able to get the aforementioned Starfield running at 50fps (inside and light load) and 20-25ish FPS (outside action) at a customized set of low settings that isn’t too horrifyingly ugly, but (1) that’s clearly about as good as it’s going to get, and (2) it’s probably contributing to my not playing it all that much. So, what would help, and is anything salvageable? Would prefer to keep the upgrades as cheap as possible while getting a noticeable improvement to tide me over for a couple more years of low-end gaming and CAD. I’m not targeting any specific number, just “better.” If it helps, let’s set a USD $300 cap on upgrades, but cheaper is better. I’m hoping that staying at the lower resolution will be helpful.
You must log in or register to comment.
I’d say upgrade GPU. Buying a GPU is awful but it’s by far the most directly responsible for gaming performance. I’d probably look for an RX 7600 or RTX 4060. Both of them should be around 300 dollars. Also be aware that games are starting to use more VRAM. Both of my recommendations above have 8 GB of VRAM, and that’s already not enough for some games. If you have the extra money, it’ll certainly be a good idea to spend a bit more to get a 16 GB card (or at minimum, a 12 GB card). Your best options there would probably be RX 7600XT or RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB. Both of those cards should be around the 400 dollar range.
Second priority would be upgrading your storage drives to SSD. Upgrading to SSD’s should help with general snappiness, and plus they shouldn’t be that expensive at this time. That should be around 100 dollars for 1 TB of SSD, or 50 dollars for 500 GB.
3rd priority is CPU. It’s fine, but you might gett CPU bottlenecked in certain scenarios (especially after getting a GPU upgrade). An R5 5600 would be a slot-in upgrade, so you can keep using your other parts. Last I checked (which admittedly was a while back), they’re a pretty good deal, at around 120 dollars.
4th priority is RAM. I’d actually say 16 GB RAM is fine for now, but RAM (and especially DDR4 RAM) is super cheap so you might as well upgrade your RAM if you’ve got the money.
It’s important not to use a mechanical drive for modern gaming (if you are). Modern games can expect to be able to load assets more or less immediately upon request, otherwise your experience and performance suffers.
Your cpu is below the minimum requirements for windows 11 which may cause you challenges in the near future. But if you’re comfortable with Linux that’s largely mitigated.
Disabling CSM (in your bios) and confirming your operating systems are configured for uefi is important.
Enable “above 4G decoding” in your bios.
Confirm your bios is up to date and that your ram profile is configured correctly. (Lookup xmp/docp)
I believe your platform is too old for the Intel arc b580 but I suggest researching that option as it fits your budget. Otherwise a 10GB or higher GPU if you can find one. (Probably need to search the used market for something like a Radeon 6800 or better)
I think the best routes to upgrades would be a 5000 series CPU, and a more modern budget GPU like an Arc B570 or RX 7600. Neither of these are likely to require you to upgrade your MOBO, RAM, or PSU.
Off the top of your head (because otherwise I’m happy to do my own research) would the Ryzen 5 5500 be worth the small premium over a 4500?
Try to get ryzen 5600, it’s pretty good and goes cheap. 5500 should be mostly fine too, but it’s a little gimped on cache compared to 5600. Avoid cpus with G at the end, you don’t want/need to pay for integrated graphics.
Second thing would be graphics card. Try to find used radeon 5700, 6600 or something similar. They will be faster and won’t be as power hungry = you won’t need new power supply.
Also bigger ssd. Doesn’t need to be nvme, but having spinning drive for software is a pain these days. Sata SSD is fine.
Yeah, for the first several years of this motherboard and CPU, I ran it with the integrated graphics. Vega APUs were the new budget gaming hotness for a little while. :-) God, I’m old.
I’ll keep an eye out for good deals, and see what I can put together. Sounds like this is at least a non-crazy budget for what I’m after. Thanks!
