Hardware & Technical Motherboard & CPU upgrade.

[Sir.Tj]

Right you far too clever for your own good lot.

Looking to do a cheap upgrade on my MB & CPU due to I suspect the MB might be starting to fail and it sometimes struggles to boot.

Bit of futureproofing etc... Don't mind AMD Intel etc..

Currently I have a Gigabyte LMT79 USB-3 MB and A AMD FX6300 Cpu with 8gb ram and a Gigabyte 1060 6GB GPU, 8gm DDR3, 250gb SSD and a 1TB HDD.

The PC pretty much excursively runs ED apart from a few small programs/games

Bear in mind I'm a single parent with soul destroying spawns of hell i.e.teenagers bankrupting me on a daily basis.

Good places for used kit will be useful.

 

[Rock Hermit]

I've just upgraded my system to an AMD Ryzen 5 1600, 16gb DDR4 2666 using a Gigabyte AB350 gaming 3 Motherboard and a GTX1070.

Going Ryzen will give you a very nice system for a low cost, but Intel i5 if you must have the extra 1% frame rate (I am now going to get flamed!)

Seriously go to novatech.co.uk excellent supplier and chose whatever fits your budget. See:

https://www.novatech.co.uk/products...chipset-atx-motherboard/ga-ab350-gaming3.html

 

[Shadowdancer]

So you will need board, CPU, and RAM no matter the details.

I just got a cheap and cheerful ASRock B350M Pro4 and put a Ryzen 7 1700x and 16 GB RAM on there. Works like a charm. You can get away with a smaller and thus cheaper CPU, a 6-core Ryzen 5 will run circles around the FX-6300, with the 5-1600 looking like a pretty decent choice that should last you a long time (the "X" versions are a bit faster, more expensive, and come without a cooler). Only downside so far is that the board has rather few SATA and fan connectors (two chassis fans of which only one is speed controlled), which probably won't be an issue.

Only real problem you may run into whatever you do is reactivating Windows because that will be nagging you, I'd recommend you switch to logging in with an MS account because that's one way to transfer a license after a hardware replacement.

Do everything right and you'll only have yourself to blame?

 

[Para Handy]

I don't know about AMD stuff and it is well over 6 months since I looked at the current market so I will leave proper advice to the better-informed. However I would just like to offer a word of caution - I have had a terrible time with the support (or lack of it) from MSI over a motherboard failure last year. I found them extremely unhelpful and downright rude when their BIOS upgrade bricked my MOBO. I would recommend not using them, I have used ASUS with no issues and Gigabyte are also good - I have no experience of others.

 

[Hell Razor5543]

I would agree with Novatech for your equipment. When anybody asks me about upgrading their PC I ALWAYS tell them to get the best motherboard that they can afford (even if that means they have a weak CPU for a while). As the motherboard is the backbone/spine of the system having a weak motherboard results in a weak system.

I currently am running an Asus Maximus VII Ranger motherboard. It had good overclocking capability, and some unusual options (including the ability to fit an M2 SSD and the ROG display unit). It has been superseded, but I do like how Asus do things. One thing they have is a pair of BIOS chips (one is write protected), so if the primary BIOS chip fails for any reason the secondary chip is waiting to get you started.

https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/ROG-Republic-of-Gamers-Products/

 

[MickyG1982]

So you will need board, CPU, and RAM no matter the details.

I just got a cheap and cheerful ASRock B350M Pro4 and put a Ryzen 7 1700x and 16 GB RAM on there. Works like a charm. You can get away with a smaller and thus cheaper CPU, a 6-core Ryzen 5 will run circles around the FX-6300, with the 5-1600 looking like a pretty decent choice that should last you a long time (the "X" versions are a bit faster, more expensive, and come without a cooler). Only downside so far is that the board has rather few SATA and fan connectors (two chassis fans of which only one is speed controlled), which probably won't be an issue.

Only real problem you may run into whatever you do is reactivating Windows because that will be nagging you, I'd recommend you switch to logging in with an MS account because that's one way to transfer a license after a hardware replacement.

Do everything right and you'll only have yourself to blame?

The thing about the X versions is, that they are simply better overclocked out of the box - the none x version will reach the same lofty heights with ease.

Basically if you aren't interested in overclocking the CPU then the X's are a good bet, for everything else go none X you will get the same performance overclocked.

 

[Shadowdancer]

I ALWAYS tell them to get the best motherboard that they can afford (even if that means they have a weak CPU for a while).

I just see a massive difference between "good" and "shiny". With many boards, you end up paying for buzzwords describing half a kilo of LEDs, Art-Deco glow-in-the-dark heatsinks, age-of-ultron-grade audio or murderer NICs that do nothing but cost money (and in case of the latter tend to cause network problems). In reality, nobody cares if your board is visible from Mercury (I'll go out on a limb and say that very few other people will ever even see it), if you want good audio you get a cheap USB interface, and the Realtek network chips that everyone uses are Just Fine™ for consumer use (if you need more, make sure you have a board with a free 4-lane PCIe slot and buy a professional intel card). The electronic and mechanical components are mostly the same everywhere and I'd bet actual real money that the boards are made at the same small handful of plants for everyone. So is a 200 quid board really "better" than a 50 quid part? Most of the time I'd doubt it. But damn it sure is pretty if you swing that way. Not kink-shaming.

(The dual BIOS flash chips are a good idea, but I haven't had a single mainboard die for whatever reason in at least 15 years, so I'm kinda willing to take that risk. And if I only paid a quarter of the alternative, hey, I can buy three more and still break even )

You know what's really useful? A good set of diagnostic LEDs or even a hexadecimal readout on the board that tells you what's wrong in that awkward moment when you've assembled everything and your system spins up to running fans and a black screen; that's something to shop for

 

[Rob At Work]

Motherboard - is that PC in this day and age?

 

[Robert Maynard]

When anybody asks me about upgrading their PC I ALWAYS tell them to get the best motherboard that they can afford (even if that means they have a weak CPU for a while).

That presupposes that the purchase will form the core of an incremental upgrade cycle - many PCs I've built for friends and family are never upgraded (apart from storage, maybe) and are retired with the same CPU / GPU / Mobo / RAM as when they were built.

Spending too much of the budget on the motherboard would reduce available spend on other components.

 

[Hell Razor5543]

My motherboard (OK, for my PC to be PC we COULD say system board! ) does have a built in diagnostics system, which shows the hexadecimal codes for the POST sequence.

When I am asked for my opinion about upgrading a PC I will (unless I am told otherwise) allow for future upgrading. That way the person asking has the options for future plans.

 

[Sir.Tj]

My motherboard (OK, for my PC to be PC we COULD say system board! ) does have a built in diagnostics system, which shows the hexadecimal codes for the POST sequence.

When I am asked for my opinion about upgrading a PC I will (unless I am told otherwise) allow for future upgrading. That way the person asking has the options for future plans.

I'm pretty much looking for a MB/CPU combo that will last a few years, the Current MB/CPU ae probably well over 5 years now so I'm not complaining, I think they've been excellent and still run well apart from the problems with booting.

As I said though I'm fin with used parts but the likes of CEX only seem to do processors not MBs.

Thanks so far for the advice folks.

 

[Shadowdancer]

I'm pretty much looking for a MB/CPU combo that will last a few years

"Last" how, are you looking for space to upgrade single components later on, or just banking on something you buy today still be "decent" by then?

If you want to, e.g., later switch to a better CPU then maybe prefer AMD because they have ever so slightly hinted that they want to support their new AM4 socket for some time, whereas intel currently seem to be on a self-discovery adventure and have been changing sockets more often than some people would have changed their underwear.

If you're going for the latter, then just take the slightly more expensive "lower upper" range of whatever; for AMD, just shell out for that 7-1700 (as for intel I honestly have no idea what the rough equivalent would be since their line-up confuses and infuriates me, probably the cheapest 6-core i7 you can get), plop it on a board with the features you need along with 16 gigs of RAM, and that will probably still work reasonably well in 5 years. CPU requirements have really increased way less drastically than marketing would like us to believe.

 

[jmg]

You know what's really useful? A good set of diagnostic LEDs or even a hexadecimal readout on the board that tells you what's wrong in that awkward moment when you've assembled everything and your system spins up to running fans and a black screen; that's something to shop for

yup, totally agree. That's why I get asus. Even their lower-model boards have led readouts, a "memory ok" button on the mobo to accept the memory you installed even if it's not *exavtly* what they support, power and reset buttons on the board, and flashback bios. and their support is great.

Get an entry level asus, an i5, keep your gpu.

 

[MickyG1982]

I'm pretty much looking for a MB/CPU combo that will last a few years, the Current MB/CPU ae probably well over 5 years now so I'm not complaining, I think they've been excellent and still run well apart from the problems with booting.

As I said though I'm fin with used parts but the likes of CEX only seem to do processors not MBs.

Thanks so far for the advice folks.

Of course the real question is, what kind of budget are you looking at?

I mean £360 gets you something like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ADMI-COMPO...ncoding=UTF8&refRID=DKDNJ5H04KAXFJZ1W9GS&th=1

£400 gets you the same but with 16Gb DDR4 instead.