Hardware & Technical Upgrade Decision Time!

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Well, sort of. I still have no money. Lol

Ok, so my PC is aging, rather ungracefully.
I managed to wangle a new case for Christmas to replace my cream and blue 2003 case, which is all nice and black, with many fans!
So nice. Much cool. Such light.

Anyhoo, my PC is beginning to struggle with life, the universe and everything.

Here's my current specs

AMD FX 8320, stock speeds, with Arctic Cooler Freezer Pro.
Gigabyte GA 970A UD3P
G.Skill 8Gb(2x4Gb) 2133mhz DDR3 RAM (at 1600mhz, seems to crash at 2133mhz alot)
Sapphire HD 6870 1Gb
WD Blue 7200rpm 1Tb HDD.
And an old 620w PSU.

My choices for components to upgrade are:
A new graphics card; either an AMD RX 470/480 or nVidia GTX 960.
£150++

An SSD, ideally 500~gb, but I could manage on a 250~gb, keeping my HDD for music and files.
£100+

Another 8GB(2x4Gb) of RAM
£50~

Or a new PSU to replace my decade old one.
£40~

I know an SSD would make the biggest impact on day to day activities and game loading times.
Ram not so much, and the PSU is more for peace of mind.

But the GPUs are way way beyond my budget for an upgrade, but it's not worth spending less. The cheapest GPU I found was a Sapphire RX 470 4Gb, for £175.
But my old HD 6870 is probably going to die soon. And it can't do much without overheating anymore.
So because it's beyond my budget, I'll need to do some clever trickery with my finances to get one.
And hide it from the girlfriend. (Apparently there's thing we need more, like a sofa, and new car... holidays.. a housr.. Bah!)

The CPU, RAM, and motherboard are all quite new, so none of those need replacing for a few years yet.
Luckily, all these upgrades can easily be hidden from the girlfriend, as she never touches my PC, and has no idea what my current GPU looks like. Lol

Anyhoo, if you were me, and had little or no money, but needed to choose one of these upgrades, which would you pick and why?

 

[Shadowdancer]

A new GPU and an SSD should extend the life of that system considerably. The other components are still good enough.

If you really want to lowball it, check out the RX460, and if you want something to keep you happy for a good time, just pick up an RX480 or gf1060, whatever you like more.

 

[Sir.Tj]

A new GPU and an SSD should extend the life of that system considerably. The other components are still good enough.

If you really want to lowball it, check out the RX460, and if you want something to keep you happy for a good time, just pick up an RX480 or gf1060, whatever you like more.

Yeah I'd agree with that recently upgraded to a Gigabyte 1060 6gb and even with my aging FX6300 cpu and a 250gb SSD my system is fcoping well atm.

Running ED lovely and BF1 is pretty damn good on ultra as well.

And consider upgrading the girlfriend by the use of flattery and bribery.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Hehe, bribery doesn't work on my girlfriend, she just raises her expectations of me.
And flattery doesn't seem to have any effect at all.
She's a bit too logical. Like me. Only with other things.
If I complement her, she immediately asks what I've done wrong, or what do I want. Followed usually by "You don't need that, don't waste money on things we don't need. "
Then proceeds to list the things we do "need". Like a new rug.
We have a rug, a big one. It's old, but looks nice. But apparently it's not good enough at being a rug, and needs to be replaced immediately. Lol
Then of course, we need a coffee table to cover a large portion of the new rug. Lol

My dreams of an upgrade got dashed instantly anyway.

Just checked my pre-payday bank balance...

£175.... Overdrawn!

No idea where that went. Bah. Maybe next year...

Or I could get a new job that actually pays a wage I can live on? Lol
If only it were as easy as finding a job in ED.... I'd be a multi millionaire!

 

[Porina]

What's the cushion situation like?

If the finances recover, I'd probably go for the GPU first. I'm not up to speed on the lower end, but the 960 is pretty much gone, and the 1050 and 1050Ti are kinda in that area now. You'd have to do more research to see how they compare, along with the 460/470.

After that, I'd probably look at a SSD. Dunno if the landscape has changed but I went for a Crucial MX300 525GB for around £110 when upgrading my laptop. Not the fastest, but good capacityrice ratio.

I wouldn't look at ram at this point as 8GB is still enough to get along with. Likewise if the PSU is still working without any signs of problems, why replace it?

Problems with existing GPU, I wonder if it might have a simple problem that can be resolved to stretch its life out a bit longer. Are all the case fans clear of dust, likewise on the GPU itself? If you can get some thermal compound you could try reapplying it.

 

[X-Terminator]

Go for a Hybrid SSD for more space and cheaper then spend more for GPU and go for the GTX1070.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

What's the cushion situation like?

If the finances recover, I'd probably go for the GPU first. I'm not up to speed on the lower end, but the 960 is pretty much gone, and the 1050 and 1050Ti are kinda in that area now. You'd have to do more research to see how they compare, along with the 460/470.

After that, I'd probably look at a SSD. Dunno if the landscape has changed but I went for a Crucial MX300 525GB for around £110 when upgrading my laptop. Not the fastest, but good capacityrice ratio.

I wouldn't look at ram at this point as 8GB is still enough to get along with. Likewise if the PSU is still working without any signs of problems, why replace it?

Problems with existing GPU, I wonder if it might have a simple problem that can be resolved to stretch its life out a bit longer. Are all the case fans clear of dust, likewise on the GPU itself? If you can get some thermal compound you could try reapplying it.

Yeah the 960 was phased out quickly.

1060 6GB is what OP wants now.

 

[MickyG1982]

Well, sort of. I still have no money. Lol

Ok, so my PC is aging, rather ungracefully.
I managed to wangle a new case for Christmas to replace my cream and blue 2003 case, which is all nice and black, with many fans!
So nice. Much cool. Such light.

Anyhoo, my PC is beginning to struggle with life, the universe and everything.

Here's my current specs

AMD FX 8320, stock speeds, with Arctic Cooler Freezer Pro.
Gigabyte GA 970A UD3P
G.Skill 8Gb(2x4Gb) 2133mhz DDR3 RAM (at 1600mhz, seems to crash at 2133mhz alot)
Sapphire HD 6870 1Gb
WD Blue 7200rpm 1Tb HDD.
And an old 620w PSU.

My choices for components to upgrade are:
A new graphics card; either an AMD RX 470/480 or nVidia GTX 960.
£150++

An SSD, ideally 500~gb, but I could manage on a 250~gb, keeping my HDD for music and files.
£100+

Another 8GB(2x4Gb) of RAM
£50~

Or a new PSU to replace my decade old one.
£40~

I know an SSD would make the biggest impact on day to day activities and game loading times.
Ram not so much, and the PSU is more for peace of mind.

But the GPUs are way way beyond my budget for an upgrade, but it's not worth spending less. The cheapest GPU I found was a Sapphire RX 470 4Gb, for £175.
But my old HD 6870 is probably going to die soon. And it can't do much without overheating anymore.
So because it's beyond my budget, I'll need to do some clever trickery with my finances to get one.
And hide it from the girlfriend. (Apparently there's thing we need more, like a sofa, and new car... holidays.. a housr.. Bah!)

The CPU, RAM, and motherboard are all quite new, so none of those need replacing for a few years yet.
Luckily, all these upgrades can easily be hidden from the girlfriend, as she never touches my PC, and has no idea what my current GPU looks like. Lol

Anyhoo, if you were me, and had little or no money, but needed to choose one of these upgrades, which would you pick and why?

Advice 1: GPU
Ignore the GTX 960 completely, the RX 470 & 480 are both better cards (though if you can push the budget up a bit the GTX 1060 (6Gb) trumps them all & the 3Gb version is only slower than the 480 & it's higher memory version. Both the RX 480 & the GTX 1060 cost £200+ however so would mean pushing your budget up by quite a bit. If you are looking to GTX 960 levels of performance then you would be better getting yourself a GTX 1050ti, it's both cheaper & uses much less power for the same performance.

Advice 2: SSD

Possibly quite pointless with the processor set up that you have, it really won't make that much difference.

Advice 3: Memory

Definitely, a cheap & cheerful addition & will give you some significant games if you happen to do a lot of multitasking.

Advice 4: PSU

Definitely, you are going to have to spend more than that to get a decent one, never skimp on a PSU, it can (& will in some cases) take the rest of your system with it when it goes.

 

[Porina]

Hard disks are slow. SSDs are fast. Hybrids, they're mostly slow in my experience. Much closer to a hard disk than SSD. This is largely irrespective of processor speed. AMD may not be the fastest now but the OP's isn't slow enough to make a difference. Upgrading from HD to SSD would give the most noticeable difference to general system responsiveness. It wont help with game FPS, which is why I still put the GPU ahead of it assuming that was the priority.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Yes, GPU and SSD considerably boosts a PC of a certain age

 

[Shadowdancer]

Advice 2: SSD

Possibly quite pointless with the processor set up that you have, it really won't make that much difference.

I disagree there. Even a small SSD (120 or 250GB) to put the OS on will make a world of a difference, especially compared to what the OP has at the moment. E:⁠⁠D is split across a shedload of tiny files, so it would profit from being on an SSD as well.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I disagree there. Even a small SSD (120 or 250GB) to put the OS on will make a world of a difference, especially compared to what the OP has at the moment. E:⁠⁠D is split across a shedload of tiny files, so it would profit from being on an SSD as well.

SSD brings an obvious improvement on Windows startup, and applications launch. And overall a better responsiveness of the computer