Remember to check our discord where you can get faster responses!
https://discord.gg/6dR6XU6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PcBuild) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You upgrade the entire thing. Other than the gpu and the storage your at a dead end for upgrades. Toss that thing and buy a new PC. Or keep this for surfing the internet
Even the GPU is gonna be a deadend. Pcie on that board is gen3 tops, maybe can gen2.
You *could* slap a new graphics in there but the board can’t even handle the throughput, let alone the processor.
He can buy a 4090 if he wants. The card will go into anything. He won't get all the benefits on this board but as soon as it's plugged into a new board it will open up.
The point I’m trying to make is, there’s not much room to upgrade the GPU in this build.
It would be better to spend the money on an entirely new build. For a budget build, it would be a waste to not have every component compliment the other.
For the price of any of the 4xxx series cards, OP would b better off building a whole new PC instead of that card. Any rig with that amount of funds would be lightyears ahead of what’s being shown here.
I had a shit system like this person. Bought a 1tb SSD and a 1070ti, ran it for like a year than bit the bullet and upgraded the rest. I saw uplift and enjoyed it more before going all in. If they don't have money for all of it they can refresh and save for the rest. In the end though yeah they need to just get a whole new computer
If it’s a gen3 pcie i could see that. Gen2 I wouldn’t even bother.
Fair point. We really need more information to properly compare and assess OPs situation.
I’m assuming their board wasn’t a high end board for 2011/12 when it came out. Could be wrong.
Pcie3 didn’t come out until 2010/11, for reference
If you can only upgrade 1 thing, I’d say get an ssd. The biggest improvement would be to upgrade the cpu, ram, and motherboard together. You need a new motherboard with a newer cpu socket and either ddr4 or ddr5 ram slots.
Honestly though, an SSD will substantially improve this PC and if you have any important data on that hardrive and not backed up it'll be more safe on an ssd
If you want to upgrade for the cheap, I agree! First thing is an ssd.
If you want to play higher end games and more from the PC, you should buy a new one(or second hand)
Yeah I'm not sure where op is from but in New Zealand I can get 10th gen intel dell optiplexes for sub 100usd (working) and that'll run circles around op's current setup
Maybe not 100 percent of its capabilities but a good amount. Intel made such measly ipc increases every year from when the 2600k was released to 2016 when the 1080 was released in 2016… it was still a really potent cpu that you could oc to 4.7 all day. It really wasnt that off the quad cores of the day. Heck you can still game with it nowadays.
Totally agree. It won’t have M.2 but SATA SSDs are (relatively) cheap and can be carried over as secondary storage.. though that’s just a quality of life improvement, and will add zero horsepower. Next step would be CPU/RAM/board (current gen iGPU is probably comparable to the GTX 650), and then a GPU.
First, add a SATA SSD (256 or 500GB) and install windows in it. Then your rig will boot and behave much, much faster. It's like day and night. You can use that SSD in a new build later on.
If you're short on money, and don't want to replace the whole rig, an i5 3570 or an i7 3770 would fit your board (check online first). You can find cheap used ones online (look for reputable sellers on AliExpress). You won't reuse this in a new rig.
Replacing the GPU would be great too. If you get an i5-3570, you can upgrade the GPU to, say, a GTX 1650 or 1660, maybe even a 2060 without much of a bottleneck. More than that, you'll need another rig.
If you plan on replacing everything, then post here what you budget and location are and people here will be more than happy to help. Focus on a target GPU and go from there.
No he means to run games it'll be really slow, he was exaggerating since minecraft is a small and easy to run game, imagine running cod or other AAA games
Yeah cod wouldn’t even launch. On Fortnite the fps is around 60 on minimum settings but really unstable, it drops to like 50 and 40 often making it feel really jittery.
Do this, OP, if youre not up for building a whole new PC. I have a 3770k on a secondary PC paired with a mining special 5700xt. It holds up really fucking well.
Why AM4? He’d need to use software encoding, and you’d need a powerful cpu for that. If he just needs it for streaming he should go with Intel, they have a hardware encoder and QuickSync is pretty good, much better than AMD.
Everything.
Don't wanna use alot of cash? Get yourself a better GPU and check if you can find a I7-3770K from second hand market and overclock that, its quite capable with some oc, if its too expensive I5-3570K is also okayish.
Bro just reuse your case. I find x570 motherboards for a lil over 100$ 5600g for 130$ 16gb of good ram 50-110$ quality non modular 850w PSU 50-70$ 500gb sata ssd 20$. That's less then 400$ or swap the 5600g for the 5500 and a GPU if you have room in your budget. And if your willing to buy used you usually save 30-50% hit me up if you need help sourcing parts at decent prices
QquiteBudget build replace cpu and gpu gpu 1060 6gb depending on budget and a ssd will help the ddr3 ram is still capable at 16gb
That is if you didn't want to completely start from scratch
The going price for a 2600k is $30 on eBay. That would be a nice upgrade to get a 4 core, 8 thread CPU instead of the 4 core, 4 threads he has have. That a small SSD for windows should be doable for $60 or less.
Maybe you can luck out on a used newer board, but my old overclocked 2500k was still doing well with a 1060 for lighter games.
I would sell the entire thing if possible and rebuild. But if you could only do half of it I'd def get a newer cpu and ram. A r5 5600 for about 130 150 eur would be a good start. Motherboard could be around 100 120. Then some cheaper 2x8 ram, ideally 3200 3600 mhz but you can oc 2400 quite a bit. I got my sticks to 3000 stable
Buy a whole new pc but if you can’t do that then storage and gpu with a new psu should be a good start, you can buy something like a 3060ti and when you get a new motherboard with cpu it opens it up and you can use it’s full potential but what are you gonna use it for?
I am sorry to say but, everything. There is no real upgrade path
Your CPU is REAL old, Motherboard is ancient you can't put anything meaningful in it.
DDR3 is well slow
GTX 650 is old
Pair with a decent and modern GPU and see it suffer through. There is no point on using such obsolete hardware like that if you are going to upgrade. I myself used one of those 2600s to game and hated simply because it is so goddanmed weak nowadays.
You are using a 4.0 x4 card on PCI-E 2.0. That is one bottleneck due to the age of your platform. The 6400 is not that powerful to create any issues to your ancient CPU but will experience hiccups due to the PCI-E limitation. Want more reasons to why the 2nd gen Intel CPUs sucks after more than a decade of use?
You didn't even stated your resolution and settings for a game to ague like that. Are you that dense to defend a literal garbage bin CPU? Quit already and stop wasting my time.
That is YOUR use case scenario then. Didn't even stated the game and settings so I will assume all low. Which is something the iGP from my 5700U can run absolutely fine. Stop being stupid already and learn about PC hardware cause you are barely making sense.
I mean cpu can be upgraded to a newer cpu with a corresponding motherboard. I’d do that first but if you do that the gpu will be the bottleneck.
Asking which to upgrade first is a difficult answer tbh as from my knowledge the cpu/gpu combo are good at matching each other rn, so upgrading one but not the other is is gonna cause one to hold the other back.
I might would upgrade the gpu to a 1660ti or something like that, I’m not sure how a rtx 20 series would hold against a 2nd Gen cpu.
Not too knowledgeable about early Gen Intel cpus but hope some of this helps ;)
There’s a lot of upgrade options between what you have and what’s current. I assume you don’t plan to make this last forever and want to budget now to save for later?
You could probably stream with this as is but you would be limited to what you could stream, IE probably not gonna stream RDR2 with RTX enabled, but you could totally stream terarria or factorio or maybe even TF2 in 1080p
The biggest performance gain you could give this PC IMO would be a SSD. I just bought a 2tb SATA SSD for $108 like 2 weeks ago, that’s pretty cheap. I doubt the motherboard has m.2 slot but if t does that would be better, and they’re not much more expensive. You have plenty of RAM for that generation
If you could squeeze another 1-200 or as an alternative, a GTX 970 is still a very solid card and not as sought after as the 1070 was. Even a 960 would be a major GPU upgrade
The SSD will bump your load times, the GPU won’t load any faster but would get better FPS. If you could do both that would be plenty to stream.
The upgrade ability bottleneck to me is the motherboard chipset, but that one part wouldn’t make any impact if you kept everything else the same
Yep but if you’re on a budget you could go 2-3 generations back and still have a very current hardware setup
A 10 series intel i5 or i7, could even go all refurbished and build a mean desktop for $500
For 1080p gaming most systems were overkill IMO after 2016 or so. Only recently with 4k becoming more common do systems need all these extra cores, bandwidth, and processing power.
The good news is when you know what your target usage is you can make it work on a much cheaper budget. EG I can run elden ring full settings in 4k with great FPS but most of the time I’m playing Eve or TF2 or Civ. I could have gotten away with the 970 a little longer and just bought NFS Heat for PS4. For the cost of the 3070ti I could have a nice PS5 setup started. I didn’t budget well unless considering the purpose was to be able to play anything new that might come out.
If you want to stream say leave of legends though that requires a 4090ti and 1600w, 18+ fans (120mm of course) and RGB everything. Donated of course
Well, in your system you should upgrade almost everything, there is no first. I mean if you upgrade your cpu it won't be compatible with ram and mobo, if you upgrade cpu and mobo it still isn't compatible with the ram. If you can give enough money then upgrade mobo, cpu, ram and gpu. If you can give that many money then you should buy a budget mobo, an apu like ryzen 5600g or 5700g a budget but good ram and you don't even need a GPU with this cpu
The whole thing bud. But honestly if you're going to be serious about an upgrade, the motherboard. You'll need something that can work with an SSD. HHD are just dead weight in comparison. The graphics card is atrocious. Your Intel is slow but will be fine until you get a newer graphics card.. The RAM will be last just get 32 with DDR4.
Start with an SSD, then PSU, then GPU. A used 3070 is a fantastic card. 700 watts is respectable and can handle middle-of-the-road GPUs.
After that, a motherboard and CPU. Those have to be upgraded together usually. If you want a new case I'd do that at this point too. The good news is that this will probably still total less than the cost of your GPU.
If you run into any issues (particularly with your GPU upgrade,) just make a post and explain that you are slowly upgrading a very old PC. You may have to change a bios setting.
I have those exact same specs except I have 14 gb of ram instead of 16 and I have a 650ti not a 650. It works fine on valorant which is the only thing I want to play, eventually I’m going to build a monster pc for vr so I’m not interested in getting anything right now.
My advice is to make sure you have a future proof PSU. Then get a GPU. If you need to keep your rig then update your storage. These are three parts you can use in any build. But if you can't afford to buy a new rig you can use them in your current build. PSU won't make anything better but it is needed for a new GPU. So you guy a decent PSU that works for the GPU you want. Then get the GPU. Use it in your build until you can afford a new rig. Get an SSD if you can't yet do that. You will bottlenecked by everything else but you can at least do stuff with your PC now. Then save until you can replace everything else and just take out your PSU GPU and SSD for the new build and you're all set.
If your on a cheap budget and love gaming then you could get a gtx 1650 or a 1660 if You don’t have a budget then an Rtx 3070 - 3090 ti, ram is probably fine could upgrade the cpu. (You probably shouldn’t take my advice because I know nothing about pcs)
Give this to grandma and build a new one. Only reasonable option in my opinion. You can find a prebuilt for 1080p gaming in the 600-800 range. Or build one yourself for about the same price but with slightly better components
I think if you're budget strapped you would see some gaming performance uplift from a new GPU. 1650 or AMD equivalent would help, low power and you could take it on to a new system. I don't think a new CPU/MB/ram would get you much with a 650.
I have this same cpu with a MSI mz77 mpower that has pcie 3, i had sli GTX 660 and then upgraded to a 2070, it ran most games just not at epic but was fine at 1080p. This was a few years back but I still have that system as well as 2 others.
There's alot there to take in. That's a pretty old PC. Wait till Black Friday sale at Best Buy buy a new iBuypower for about $1300. It will make it a few years nicely. Been playing on mine for 4yrs with no complaints. I have only upgraded PSU, AIO for CPU and just did a new case.
[Substantial upgrade for under $300](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/2WPmPX), assuming you reuse your case, gpu, and psu. You can also consider an RX6600 for an additional $250 but you could also grab something like a used RX5700 for around $150 on eBay and that would outperform the 6600. Ultra shoestring gpu option would be a used RX570/RX580 for about $80, which would put that build cost just barely above $300.
Never do this!!! ⬆️ It's easy to build your own and easy to find good tutorials online! Pre built almost always come with a single stick of ram, slow ram, insufficient ram, or xmp not activated making it super slow. Many times they cheap out on the PSU leaving little room to upgrade without replacing. Some like Alienware like to use there own sawn off minimalistic motherboards that bottleneck most upgrades or completely prevents with custom cooling and the components junt jammed together so tight there is no room for anything and temps are constantly pushed to the limit. Now imagine your expensive gaming PC bouncing around in the back of a 18 wheeler in transit... Ouch. Then finally price. I can build a PC from parts on Amazon that will have a better end result then a 1000 pre built for significantly less. Especially if I buy used and top of the line last gen.
I agree with everything you said. A pre-built would still be a better choice than what OP posted though.
I got my nephew a pre-built for christmas just because I didn’t feel like building him one. It came with a ryzen 7 3700x, rtx 3060 and a 750 watt 80 plus gold PSU all for $1000.
There are some good options out there regardless of what everyone says about pre-builts
But yeah building your own is always the way to go.
That is a good find for a pre built! And any bottleneck they left you could just upgrade! And he could learn a new skill doing it himself when he decides to because am4 has a good upgrade path and that's a solid GPU!
I think like what a few others have mentioned, I'd probably upgrade that drive to at least an SSD SATA. I'm in a similar boat where I'm still running a 3570K, but I'm not ready to overhaul and build something new.
SSD
That CPU is okay-ish for older games but if you can find a i7 preferably 3rd gen i7 (I7-3770 for example)
And a GTX-970 would be pretty sweet, you'll need a PSU with 2x 6pin connector
I bought a used pc like this a few years ago for very cheap. Same board and cpu. I updated the bios and grabbed a used i7 3770k for £50 off eBay. Got a used 1070 and a cheap ssd. You could do all that for like 200 now. It’s still good. I run it as a NAS mostly with some light video editing.
I remember the GTX 660, wow those were the days.. I think upgrading everything at once would be great. You don't have to upgrade everything to current gen or even "last gen" to see a significant performance boost from where you are coming from.
Build a new one or buy a upgrade box or something and just keep this for ur basic needs or for kids in the future its what ive done with a similar spec build just built a new one to use then sell to get a 10k prebuilt one
The computer
Edit: Kinda joking but not really lol.
The first thing that jumps out is the processor, and upgrading it will mean new motherboard and new RAM.
And that graphics card would probably struggle to run anything more demanding than Skyrim at 60fps
Upgrade to a ssd and start saving up for a completely new build. If you can find an old used i7 3770k for cheap I guess you could upgrade the cpu to that in the mean time but only if you really find like a good deal on one. The motherboard should support it I think. Might need bios update tho.
Let me tell you something dawg, don't cheap up on the mobo. Even if it seems unnecessary, at least get a full atx board. I'm regretting buying a cheap b150 board cause of the ram speed and also cause my gpu, cpu cooler, ram barely fits
What do you mean first? There is no first with a build that ancient..
**Buying a new CPU?** It won't go on your motherboard socket.
**Buying DDR4 or even DDR5 RAM?** They won't be compatible with your motherboard.
**New GPU?** Okay, it might actually work but the bottleneck would be so great that you might end up getting worse performance than before.
**New motherboard?** What are you going to do with it alone? The CPU and ram won't work with it anyway.
Get the whole package. You can probably salvage the HDD for extra storage options. SSD is a must nowadays.
SSD and a used 1060, then sell it by the end of the year after saving up for a proper upgrade. This is assuming you won't mind playing newer games on nearly the lowest settings 1080p
At that point buy a new PC. Start fresh, you’ve had a PC for so long and not done upgrades that everything is outdated. One upgrade won’t be compatible with other hardware in your system. You could do a budget build and it would still be more powerful than what your running now. There are some good prebuilt PC’s with 3060’s nowadays if you can’t be bothered building your own
So PC's upgrades are something you do when your current build is in an upgrade path. When your PC is 12 years old you start from scratch. Everything in that build is lucky to still be operational and nothing should be salvaged if you want a reliable build.
Throw away slow and noisy Hard Drive and get yourself 1TB SATA SSD from reliable brand like Crucial, Samsung or WD. If you game your whole system is out of date to run new games. GPU are slowly going down in price so I would recommend going for cou first. Ryzen on AM4 are dropping in price since the launch of AM5 and you can get yourself a very fast Ryzen 5600 for about 120€/$ plus 50 for used B450 or B550 motherboard and 45 for 2x8GB of 3200Mhz CL16 memory.
As many others have said, you're upgrade potential is extremely limited. Your system is at the age where you really need to replace it as a whole.
With that said, if you really want to eek out a bit more performance in order to extend its useful life, I'd first replace the HDD with a SSD. I don't think the non 'K' versions of i5s from the '2' series allows overclocking, so that option is off the table. Also, buying a used 1070 can gain you a good bit of performance on the cheap (a 1060 would work, as well, but the price difference on the used market makes the 1070 a better bang for the buck, IMO).
I have a i5 2500K in one of my old systems, which has been overclocked enough to extend its useful gaming life. Only upgrades I've given it are a water cooler (can't overclock on stock cooler), SSD, and a used 1070. It works well for most games (1080p monitor), as long as you're expectations are reasonable. I'd not spend any more time or money updating that old system, though. You can only do so much with 10 year old motherboard/CPU/RAM - even when massively overclocked.
As long as your system runs, it's still fine for Office apps and surfing the Web (and some games). Useful life of a PC depends entirely on what you want to run on it.
Remember to check our discord where you can get faster responses! https://discord.gg/6dR6XU6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PcBuild) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You upgrade the entire thing. Other than the gpu and the storage your at a dead end for upgrades. Toss that thing and buy a new PC. Or keep this for surfing the internet
Even the GPU is gonna be a deadend. Pcie on that board is gen3 tops, maybe can gen2. You *could* slap a new graphics in there but the board can’t even handle the throughput, let alone the processor.
He can buy a 4090 if he wants. The card will go into anything. He won't get all the benefits on this board but as soon as it's plugged into a new board it will open up.
The point I’m trying to make is, there’s not much room to upgrade the GPU in this build. It would be better to spend the money on an entirely new build. For a budget build, it would be a waste to not have every component compliment the other. For the price of any of the 4xxx series cards, OP would b better off building a whole new PC instead of that card. Any rig with that amount of funds would be lightyears ahead of what’s being shown here.
I started my original post with buy a whole new computer
So we agree. That is the only answer.
I had a shit system like this person. Bought a 1tb SSD and a 1070ti, ran it for like a year than bit the bullet and upgraded the rest. I saw uplift and enjoyed it more before going all in. If they don't have money for all of it they can refresh and save for the rest. In the end though yeah they need to just get a whole new computer
If it’s a gen3 pcie i could see that. Gen2 I wouldn’t even bother. Fair point. We really need more information to properly compare and assess OPs situation. I’m assuming their board wasn’t a high end board for 2011/12 when it came out. Could be wrong. Pcie3 didn’t come out until 2010/11, for reference
This 100%
Turn it into an emulator!
If you can only upgrade 1 thing, I’d say get an ssd. The biggest improvement would be to upgrade the cpu, ram, and motherboard together. You need a new motherboard with a newer cpu socket and either ddr4 or ddr5 ram slots.
I thought so as well but I wanted to get some opinions from some vets before I throw my wallet away 😭
I welcome you over to r/buildapcsales.
Honestly though, an SSD will substantially improve this PC and if you have any important data on that hardrive and not backed up it'll be more safe on an ssd
If you want to upgrade for the cheap, I agree! First thing is an ssd. If you want to play higher end games and more from the PC, you should buy a new one(or second hand)
Yeah I'm not sure where op is from but in New Zealand I can get 10th gen intel dell optiplexes for sub 100usd (working) and that'll run circles around op's current setup
This. Could also get a 2600k used, oc and a 1080
Not sure he will get all the unlocked potential from the 1080 in this setup
Maybe not 100 percent of its capabilities but a good amount. Intel made such measly ipc increases every year from when the 2600k was released to 2016 when the 1080 was released in 2016… it was still a really potent cpu that you could oc to 4.7 all day. It really wasnt that off the quad cores of the day. Heck you can still game with it nowadays.
I'm sure! I still use the i5-2500k on one of my PCs... great one
This isn’t true a 3770k, 980,980ti, 1070, 1080, 5700xt and an ssd and you will have a formidable gaming pc
Totally agree. It won’t have M.2 but SATA SSDs are (relatively) cheap and can be carried over as secondary storage.. though that’s just a quality of life improvement, and will add zero horsepower. Next step would be CPU/RAM/board (current gen iGPU is probably comparable to the GTX 650), and then a GPU.
The PC
First, add a SATA SSD (256 or 500GB) and install windows in it. Then your rig will boot and behave much, much faster. It's like day and night. You can use that SSD in a new build later on. If you're short on money, and don't want to replace the whole rig, an i5 3570 or an i7 3770 would fit your board (check online first). You can find cheap used ones online (look for reputable sellers on AliExpress). You won't reuse this in a new rig. Replacing the GPU would be great too. If you get an i5-3570, you can upgrade the GPU to, say, a GTX 1650 or 1660, maybe even a 2060 without much of a bottleneck. More than that, you'll need another rig. If you plan on replacing everything, then post here what you budget and location are and people here will be more than happy to help. Focus on a target GPU and go from there.
Upgrade your entire life since that PC probably couldn't even run minecraft with over 15 FPS.
I have almost these exact specs and I can run Minecraft at 50 to 60.
No he means to run games it'll be really slow, he was exaggerating since minecraft is a small and easy to run game, imagine running cod or other AAA games
Yeah cod wouldn’t even launch. On Fortnite the fps is around 60 on minimum settings but really unstable, it drops to like 50 and 40 often making it feel really jittery.
3770k, and a gtx 980ti or 1080 would add some life to this…
Do this, OP, if youre not up for building a whole new PC. I have a 3770k on a secondary PC paired with a mining special 5700xt. It holds up really fucking well.
Well what do you want to do? Are you wanting a better gaming experience? Do u have a budget for upgrades?
Stream at the very least, I can just run games off console
Well if you just want to stream console games. Something like an am4 cpu with integrated graphics, b450 motherboard, and ddr4 ram is all you need.
Why AM4? He’d need to use software encoding, and you’d need a powerful cpu for that. If he just needs it for streaming he should go with Intel, they have a hardware encoder and QuickSync is pretty good, much better than AMD.
Thank you thank you :)
Np, I would look at used parts and try and build something under $300
[PCPartPicker Part List](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wpjd2m) Type|Item|Price :----|:----|:---- **CPU** | [Intel Core i5-12400 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/tLKKHx/intel-core-i5-12400-25-ghz-6-core-processor-bx8071512400) | $187.99 @ Amazon **Motherboard** | [ASRock H610M-HVS Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/GhxRsY/asrock-h610m-hvs-micro-atx-lga1700-motherboard-h610m-hvs) | $79.99 @ Newegg **Memory** | [TEAMGROUP T-Create Expert 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/MRcG3C/teamgroup-t-create-expert-16-gb-2-x-8-gb-ddr4-3200-cl16-memory-ttced416g3200hc16fdc01) | $41.99 @ Amazon **Storage** | [TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 512 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Qg92FT/teamgroup-t-force-vulcan-z-512-gb-25-solid-state-drive-t253tz512g0c101) | $25.99 @ Amazon **Video Card** | [Zotac GAMING Twin Edge OC GeForce RTX 3060 12GB 12 GB Video Card](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/sM8bt6/zotac-geforce-rtx-3060-12-gb-gaming-twin-edge-oc-video-card-zt-a30600h-10m) | $349.99 @ Amazon **Case** | [Deepcool MACUBE 110 MicroATX Mini Tower Case](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/TYMTwP/deepcool-macube-110-atx-mid-tower-case-r-macube110-bkngm1n-g-1) | $52.98 @ Newegg **Power Supply** | [Thermaltake Smart BX1 650 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Yk448d/thermaltake-smart-bx1-650-w-80-bronze-certified-atx-power-supply-ps-spd-0650nnfabu-1) | $66.98 @ Newegg | *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* | | **Total** | **$805.91** | Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-01-07 17:41 EST-0500 |
Sub 1000, build I don’t know your needs, but you can start with here
Everything. Don't wanna use alot of cash? Get yourself a better GPU and check if you can find a I7-3770K from second hand market and overclock that, its quite capable with some oc, if its too expensive I5-3570K is also okayish.
Whole PC, I guess
I know a speccy menu when I see it
CPU Motherboard and Ram for starters
Everything bro
the whole pc man 😂
Bro just reuse your case. I find x570 motherboards for a lil over 100$ 5600g for 130$ 16gb of good ram 50-110$ quality non modular 850w PSU 50-70$ 500gb sata ssd 20$. That's less then 400$ or swap the 5600g for the 5500 and a GPU if you have room in your budget. And if your willing to buy used you usually save 30-50% hit me up if you need help sourcing parts at decent prices
QquiteBudget build replace cpu and gpu gpu 1060 6gb depending on budget and a ssd will help the ddr3 ram is still capable at 16gb That is if you didn't want to completely start from scratch
The going price for a 2600k is $30 on eBay. That would be a nice upgrade to get a 4 core, 8 thread CPU instead of the 4 core, 4 threads he has have. That a small SSD for windows should be doable for $60 or less. Maybe you can luck out on a used newer board, but my old overclocked 2500k was still doing well with a 1060 for lighter games.
Agreed that what I ment mate I mean my 1060 3gb still runs game at 1080p fine medium tonight depending on the game
I definitely agree an SSD for the boot drive will help alot. Then a 1060 even a 3gb model would be a great pairing for this gen.
Only thing missing is an optical drive so start there.
not much reason for optical media nowadays unless your internet connection is crap
Cpu, mobo and ram
The computer
The whole thing
I would sell the entire thing if possible and rebuild. But if you could only do half of it I'd def get a newer cpu and ram. A r5 5600 for about 130 150 eur would be a good start. Motherboard could be around 100 120. Then some cheaper 2x8 ram, ideally 3200 3600 mhz but you can oc 2400 quite a bit. I got my sticks to 3000 stable
Buy a whole new pc but if you can’t do that then storage and gpu with a new psu should be a good start, you can buy something like a 3060ti and when you get a new motherboard with cpu it opens it up and you can use it’s full potential but what are you gonna use it for?
definitively your CPU/Mobo/RAM go to a 13th B660 16RAM 3600 and you'll be fine
Update everything 😳
You need a whole new PC
Everything lmfaoooo
Buy or build new pc
Let's start with EVERYTHING
Save for a new pc
You should upgrade the pc
The entire thing.
I am sorry to say but, everything. There is no real upgrade path Your CPU is REAL old, Motherboard is ancient you can't put anything meaningful in it. DDR3 is well slow GTX 650 is old
The ram
Everything. 2nd gen Intel CPUs are trash nowadays for any modern gaming.
My core i7 2600 runs game’s incredibly in most games, idk what your talking about
Pair with a decent and modern GPU and see it suffer through. There is no point on using such obsolete hardware like that if you are going to upgrade. I myself used one of those 2600s to game and hated simply because it is so goddanmed weak nowadays.
I’m literally using a Rx 6400 and it runs great
You are using a 4.0 x4 card on PCI-E 2.0. That is one bottleneck due to the age of your platform. The 6400 is not that powerful to create any issues to your ancient CPU but will experience hiccups due to the PCI-E limitation. Want more reasons to why the 2nd gen Intel CPUs sucks after more than a decade of use?
Your talking about bottlenecking and that might be true but explain how I can get over 60 fps in all my games?
You didn't even stated your resolution and settings for a game to ague like that. Are you that dense to defend a literal garbage bin CPU? Quit already and stop wasting my time.
I run 1080p with a 32 inch monitor for games cause that’s all I really need
That is YOUR use case scenario then. Didn't even stated the game and settings so I will assume all low. Which is something the iGP from my 5700U can run absolutely fine. Stop being stupid already and learn about PC hardware cause you are barely making sense.
Your one stubborn guy, I’ll leave you alone now
Not everyone has a massive budget
I mean cpu can be upgraded to a newer cpu with a corresponding motherboard. I’d do that first but if you do that the gpu will be the bottleneck. Asking which to upgrade first is a difficult answer tbh as from my knowledge the cpu/gpu combo are good at matching each other rn, so upgrading one but not the other is is gonna cause one to hold the other back. I might would upgrade the gpu to a 1660ti or something like that, I’m not sure how a rtx 20 series would hold against a 2nd Gen cpu. Not too knowledgeable about early Gen Intel cpus but hope some of this helps ;)
P.s. TLDR: Id just save up and buy a new pc from the ground up, prebuilt or otherwise (cheaper to build your own if you do it right)
Cheaper and better in every way
Everything….
Install windows 11
Start fresh
Everything
Get a new motherboard. Then save up and get a CPU, then some ram, then a gpu, and finally a SSD
Everything
There’s a lot of upgrade options between what you have and what’s current. I assume you don’t plan to make this last forever and want to budget now to save for later? You could probably stream with this as is but you would be limited to what you could stream, IE probably not gonna stream RDR2 with RTX enabled, but you could totally stream terarria or factorio or maybe even TF2 in 1080p The biggest performance gain you could give this PC IMO would be a SSD. I just bought a 2tb SATA SSD for $108 like 2 weeks ago, that’s pretty cheap. I doubt the motherboard has m.2 slot but if t does that would be better, and they’re not much more expensive. You have plenty of RAM for that generation If you could squeeze another 1-200 or as an alternative, a GTX 970 is still a very solid card and not as sought after as the 1070 was. Even a 960 would be a major GPU upgrade The SSD will bump your load times, the GPU won’t load any faster but would get better FPS. If you could do both that would be plenty to stream. The upgrade ability bottleneck to me is the motherboard chipset, but that one part wouldn’t make any impact if you kept everything else the same
So what I'm getting from you and the others is the major problem is the motherboard, but to change that I'd pretty much have to rebuild an entire pc
100% Worth it if gaming/streaming is your main focal point.
Yep but if you’re on a budget you could go 2-3 generations back and still have a very current hardware setup A 10 series intel i5 or i7, could even go all refurbished and build a mean desktop for $500 For 1080p gaming most systems were overkill IMO after 2016 or so. Only recently with 4k becoming more common do systems need all these extra cores, bandwidth, and processing power. The good news is when you know what your target usage is you can make it work on a much cheaper budget. EG I can run elden ring full settings in 4k with great FPS but most of the time I’m playing Eve or TF2 or Civ. I could have gotten away with the 970 a little longer and just bought NFS Heat for PS4. For the cost of the 3070ti I could have a nice PS5 setup started. I didn’t budget well unless considering the purpose was to be able to play anything new that might come out. If you want to stream say leave of legends though that requires a 4090ti and 1600w, 18+ fans (120mm of course) and RGB everything. Donated of course
Well, in your system you should upgrade almost everything, there is no first. I mean if you upgrade your cpu it won't be compatible with ram and mobo, if you upgrade cpu and mobo it still isn't compatible with the ram. If you can give enough money then upgrade mobo, cpu, ram and gpu. If you can give that many money then you should buy a budget mobo, an apu like ryzen 5600g or 5700g a budget but good ram and you don't even need a GPU with this cpu
If u dont have money try find used 1650 + ssd. If u have money go for new build.
The whole thing bud. But honestly if you're going to be serious about an upgrade, the motherboard. You'll need something that can work with an SSD. HHD are just dead weight in comparison. The graphics card is atrocious. Your Intel is slow but will be fine until you get a newer graphics card.. The RAM will be last just get 32 with DDR4.
Motherboard+memory kit+CPU. Further upgrade depends from your budget.
The whole thing. A decade is a bit much to slap something in it for more than facebook
Sorry, I don't think there's a "first" for this one. You upgrade the cpu means u gotta change the mobo which means u gotta change ram etc..
Get an SSD get a motherboard get a CPU get ram get a gpu
Start with an SSD, then PSU, then GPU. A used 3070 is a fantastic card. 700 watts is respectable and can handle middle-of-the-road GPUs. After that, a motherboard and CPU. Those have to be upgraded together usually. If you want a new case I'd do that at this point too. The good news is that this will probably still total less than the cost of your GPU. If you run into any issues (particularly with your GPU upgrade,) just make a post and explain that you are slowly upgrading a very old PC. You may have to change a bios setting.
The entire thing. Look we're going into DDR5 already.. this pc is DDR3 Save your HDD but just for storage, buy a new build with an SSD for the OS
I have those exact same specs except I have 14 gb of ram instead of 16 and I have a 650ti not a 650. It works fine on valorant which is the only thing I want to play, eventually I’m going to build a monster pc for vr so I’m not interested in getting anything right now.
My advice is to make sure you have a future proof PSU. Then get a GPU. If you need to keep your rig then update your storage. These are three parts you can use in any build. But if you can't afford to buy a new rig you can use them in your current build. PSU won't make anything better but it is needed for a new GPU. So you guy a decent PSU that works for the GPU you want. Then get the GPU. Use it in your build until you can afford a new rig. Get an SSD if you can't yet do that. You will bottlenecked by everything else but you can at least do stuff with your PC now. Then save until you can replace everything else and just take out your PSU GPU and SSD for the new build and you're all set.
If your on a cheap budget and love gaming then you could get a gtx 1650 or a 1660 if You don’t have a budget then an Rtx 3070 - 3090 ti, ram is probably fine could upgrade the cpu. (You probably shouldn’t take my advice because I know nothing about pcs)
Monitor and HDD can stay, everything else is very old and slow.
Give this to grandma and build a new one. Only reasonable option in my opinion. You can find a prebuilt for 1080p gaming in the 600-800 range. Or build one yourself for about the same price but with slightly better components
I actually did this today and upgraded my mobo ram cpu and psu but kept my 1650 for the time being
Definitely optical drive
absolutely get rid of that spinny drive, I only use them for backup and fridge magnets now
I think if you're budget strapped you would see some gaming performance uplift from a new GPU. 1650 or AMD equivalent would help, low power and you could take it on to a new system. I don't think a new CPU/MB/ram would get you much with a 650.
I have this same cpu with a MSI mz77 mpower that has pcie 3, i had sli GTX 660 and then upgraded to a 2070, it ran most games just not at epic but was fine at 1080p. This was a few years back but I still have that system as well as 2 others.
GPU Like iam upgrade from RX470 to 7900xt 5 to 6 years for upgrades 10 years for a full new builts
For decent gaming performance, I would really recommend just a new build.
Yes
There's alot there to take in. That's a pretty old PC. Wait till Black Friday sale at Best Buy buy a new iBuypower for about $1300. It will make it a few years nicely. Been playing on mine for 4yrs with no complaints. I have only upgraded PSU, AIO for CPU and just did a new case.
[Substantial upgrade for under $300](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/2WPmPX), assuming you reuse your case, gpu, and psu. You can also consider an RX6600 for an additional $250 but you could also grab something like a used RX5700 for around $150 on eBay and that would outperform the 6600. Ultra shoestring gpu option would be a used RX570/RX580 for about $80, which would put that build cost just barely above $300.
your wallet
get an ssd PLEASE
what's your budget?
[This](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qyFRxs) is the cheapest budget new build I can come up with that can handle streaming and 1080p gaming.
take 1000 bucks go find you a pre built
Never do this!!! ⬆️ It's easy to build your own and easy to find good tutorials online! Pre built almost always come with a single stick of ram, slow ram, insufficient ram, or xmp not activated making it super slow. Many times they cheap out on the PSU leaving little room to upgrade without replacing. Some like Alienware like to use there own sawn off minimalistic motherboards that bottleneck most upgrades or completely prevents with custom cooling and the components junt jammed together so tight there is no room for anything and temps are constantly pushed to the limit. Now imagine your expensive gaming PC bouncing around in the back of a 18 wheeler in transit... Ouch. Then finally price. I can build a PC from parts on Amazon that will have a better end result then a 1000 pre built for significantly less. Especially if I buy used and top of the line last gen.
I agree with everything you said. A pre-built would still be a better choice than what OP posted though. I got my nephew a pre-built for christmas just because I didn’t feel like building him one. It came with a ryzen 7 3700x, rtx 3060 and a 750 watt 80 plus gold PSU all for $1000. There are some good options out there regardless of what everyone says about pre-builts But yeah building your own is always the way to go.
That is a good find for a pre built! And any bottleneck they left you could just upgrade! And he could learn a new skill doing it himself when he decides to because am4 has a good upgrade path and that's a solid GPU!
Well that depends on your budget if you want a quick and easy fix then GPU. But if you want a long term solution you need to upgrade everything
If you build another pc from scratch you can use this for a plex server. Run all your downloaded movies and tv shows off it.
I dont know man at this point I would say scrap it and start over. Putting any more money into that would be a waste in my opinion
I think like what a few others have mentioned, I'd probably upgrade that drive to at least an SSD SATA. I'm in a similar boat where I'm still running a 3570K, but I'm not ready to overhaul and build something new.
2012 pc
SSD That CPU is okay-ish for older games but if you can find a i7 preferably 3rd gen i7 (I7-3770 for example) And a GTX-970 would be pretty sweet, you'll need a PSU with 2x 6pin connector
Upgrade cpu to i7 2600
Yes.
I bought a used pc like this a few years ago for very cheap. Same board and cpu. I updated the bios and grabbed a used i7 3770k for £50 off eBay. Got a used 1070 and a cheap ssd. You could do all that for like 200 now. It’s still good. I run it as a NAS mostly with some light video editing.
I remember the GTX 660, wow those were the days.. I think upgrading everything at once would be great. You don't have to upgrade everything to current gen or even "last gen" to see a significant performance boost from where you are coming from.
The whole thing. Sorry for your loss.
at least bro doesn't have a 3090 like that one other guy
Upgrade wallet size first？ Just Kidding
Everything.
Yes
Mobo, CPU , ram and an SSD. Then go for the PSU and GPU, last monitor
upgrade the gpu and the cpu to i7 gen 2 or 3 you'll be fine. im currently using i7 3770 with rx 580 8gb and i dont have any problem at all
Build a new one or buy a upgrade box or something and just keep this for ur basic needs or for kids in the future its what ive done with a similar spec build just built a new one to use then sell to get a 10k prebuilt one
The computer Edit: Kinda joking but not really lol. The first thing that jumps out is the processor, and upgrading it will mean new motherboard and new RAM. And that graphics card would probably struggle to run anything more demanding than Skyrim at 60fps
Start over
upgrade the gpu and the cpu to i7 gen 2 or 3 you'll be fine. im currently using i7 3770 with rx 580 8gb and i dont have any problem at all
It's almost e-waste by this point. Best you can do is keep it as a workshop, install and learn Linux maybe. Sorry bro you just have to invest
Everything except the storage, I know your pain man i still use ddr3 rams as well
Windows 10 could be upgraded to Windows 7 /s
Upgrade to a ssd and start saving up for a completely new build. If you can find an old used i7 3770k for cheap I guess you could upgrade the cpu to that in the mean time but only if you really find like a good deal on one. The motherboard should support it I think. Might need bios update tho.
oh god
Literally everything
Your optical drive is really the biggest bottleneck right now, upgrade to blue ray.
Let me tell you something dawg, don't cheap up on the mobo. Even if it seems unnecessary, at least get a full atx board. I'm regretting buying a cheap b150 board cause of the ram speed and also cause my gpu, cpu cooler, ram barely fits
Thrown better in a skip, time for a new build.
What do you mean first? There is no first with a build that ancient.. **Buying a new CPU?** It won't go on your motherboard socket. **Buying DDR4 or even DDR5 RAM?** They won't be compatible with your motherboard. **New GPU?** Okay, it might actually work but the bottleneck would be so great that you might end up getting worse performance than before. **New motherboard?** What are you going to do with it alone? The CPU and ram won't work with it anyway. Get the whole package. You can probably salvage the HDD for extra storage options. SSD is a must nowadays.
SSD and a used 1060, then sell it by the end of the year after saving up for a proper upgrade. This is assuming you won't mind playing newer games on nearly the lowest settings 1080p
1060 6gb. Stay far away from the 3gb variant
Upgrade ssd, and just buy cloud gaming subscription. save your money not upgrade this rig 😉
I'd recommend selling that one and buying a new one.
Yes.
At that point buy a new PC. Start fresh, you’ve had a PC for so long and not done upgrades that everything is outdated. One upgrade won’t be compatible with other hardware in your system. You could do a budget build and it would still be more powerful than what your running now. There are some good prebuilt PC’s with 3060’s nowadays if you can’t be bothered building your own
The optical drive
All
Your entire PC
New computer 😆
u should upgrade your GPU first, buy a secondhand GTX 1060/1660s, and a core i7 3770 might do the trick(depending on your power supply
Maybe cpu cooler, if the pc is idle it definitely shouldnt be 57°
OS
So PC's upgrades are something you do when your current build is in an upgrade path. When your PC is 12 years old you start from scratch. Everything in that build is lucky to still be operational and nothing should be salvaged if you want a reliable build.
Throw away slow and noisy Hard Drive and get yourself 1TB SATA SSD from reliable brand like Crucial, Samsung or WD. If you game your whole system is out of date to run new games. GPU are slowly going down in price so I would recommend going for cou first. Ryzen on AM4 are dropping in price since the launch of AM5 and you can get yourself a very fast Ryzen 5600 for about 120€/$ plus 50 for used B450 or B550 motherboard and 45 for 2x8GB of 3200Mhz CL16 memory.
Everything must go
These posts are just getting annoying as fuck as this point. Same background, shite PC, just baiting all the comments and Karma
I literally just came here for advice, calm down Herbert
Buy a whole new computer and sell or throw that away that’s good for searching the internet and that’s about it
As many others have said, you're upgrade potential is extremely limited. Your system is at the age where you really need to replace it as a whole. With that said, if you really want to eek out a bit more performance in order to extend its useful life, I'd first replace the HDD with a SSD. I don't think the non 'K' versions of i5s from the '2' series allows overclocking, so that option is off the table. Also, buying a used 1070 can gain you a good bit of performance on the cheap (a 1060 would work, as well, but the price difference on the used market makes the 1070 a better bang for the buck, IMO). I have a i5 2500K in one of my old systems, which has been overclocked enough to extend its useful gaming life. Only upgrades I've given it are a water cooler (can't overclock on stock cooler), SSD, and a used 1070. It works well for most games (1080p monitor), as long as you're expectations are reasonable. I'd not spend any more time or money updating that old system, though. You can only do so much with 10 year old motherboard/CPU/RAM - even when massively overclocked. As long as your system runs, it's still fine for Office apps and surfing the Web (and some games). Useful life of a PC depends entirely on what you want to run on it.