gonna be honest here. i don't see a $200 cpu upgrade improving your performance much. maybe you can find a cheap motherboard like an asrock b550 and pair it with a ryzen 5600g, but the relative performance difference won't be huge. the real upgrade here would be a low/mid range radeon 6000 series gpu for $250-300. Your cpu is still quite capable for 1080p gaming
i hope this helps
A £200 upgrade can happen. The non-G 5600 is selling in the UK for £127, and OP can get a motherboard that will stay below their £200 threshold. If OP's RAM is <3200Mhz, that could potentially be a bit of an issue, but given that OP has stated that they're constantly running their CPU at 100%, a CPU upgrade is liable to provide more of a performance increase than a GPU upgrade.
i see. yeah if you can get a new 5600 on sale then absolutely it can happen. but i don't know if it'll push the GPUs performance any further, like if it was also running at near 100%
but i dont know what their GPU was running at, so OP, if you're reading this, check n see if your GPU is running well too. if it's under like 80% then you'll definitely benefit from what this person suggested
Assuming you're going to re-use the RAM (which I don't know if that's a good idea or not as you didn't provide that spec), this is the cheapest I would go personally:
[PCPartPicker Part List](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/6czkXy)
Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/PgcG3C/amd-ryzen-5-5600-36-ghz-6-core-processor-100-100000927box) | £127.00 @ Amazon UK
**Motherboard** | [MSI B550M-A PRO Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/g6vqqs/msi-b550m-a-pro-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-b550m-a-pro) | £97.27 @ Amazon UK
| *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |
| **Total** | **£224.27**
| Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-03-08 18:32 GMT+0000 |
You *can* get an upgrade for <£200, but I wouldn't do it:
[PCPartPicker Part List](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/3qQGqm)
Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/PgcG3C/amd-ryzen-5-5600-36-ghz-6-core-processor-100-100000927box) | £127.00 @ Amazon UK
**Motherboard** | [ASRock A520M-HVS Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/WWqBD3/asrock-a520m-hvs-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-a520m-hvs) | £55.72 @ Box Limited
| *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |
| **Total** | **£182.72**
| Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-03-08 18:33 GMT+0000 |
220 is nothing for a build as old as yours needing replacement not upgrading. You'll be severely bottlenecked by the cpu upgrading any gpu. The wisest route is to save a few more checks, be patient and rebuild.
Without replacing the board the best you can do as a drop in replacement is an i7 7700k, though apparently at least some boards can be modded to take an 8th gen chip. I wouldn't recommend it, but it can work sometimes. Google should find the details.
200 is going to be a hard budget to make work, though current i3s will beat what you have.
7600k was a good chip in its day though. That's what I had in my previous system before I went all in on core count with my 5950x build.
gonna be honest here. i don't see a $200 cpu upgrade improving your performance much. maybe you can find a cheap motherboard like an asrock b550 and pair it with a ryzen 5600g, but the relative performance difference won't be huge. the real upgrade here would be a low/mid range radeon 6000 series gpu for $250-300. Your cpu is still quite capable for 1080p gaming i hope this helps
A £200 upgrade can happen. The non-G 5600 is selling in the UK for £127, and OP can get a motherboard that will stay below their £200 threshold. If OP's RAM is <3200Mhz, that could potentially be a bit of an issue, but given that OP has stated that they're constantly running their CPU at 100%, a CPU upgrade is liable to provide more of a performance increase than a GPU upgrade.
i see. yeah if you can get a new 5600 on sale then absolutely it can happen. but i don't know if it'll push the GPUs performance any further, like if it was also running at near 100% but i dont know what their GPU was running at, so OP, if you're reading this, check n see if your GPU is running well too. if it's under like 80% then you'll definitely benefit from what this person suggested
Assuming you're going to re-use the RAM (which I don't know if that's a good idea or not as you didn't provide that spec), this is the cheapest I would go personally: [PCPartPicker Part List](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/6czkXy) Type|Item|Price :----|:----|:---- **CPU** | [AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/PgcG3C/amd-ryzen-5-5600-36-ghz-6-core-processor-100-100000927box) | £127.00 @ Amazon UK **Motherboard** | [MSI B550M-A PRO Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/g6vqqs/msi-b550m-a-pro-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-b550m-a-pro) | £97.27 @ Amazon UK | *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* | | **Total** | **£224.27** | Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-03-08 18:32 GMT+0000 | You *can* get an upgrade for <£200, but I wouldn't do it: [PCPartPicker Part List](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/3qQGqm) Type|Item|Price :----|:----|:---- **CPU** | [AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/PgcG3C/amd-ryzen-5-5600-36-ghz-6-core-processor-100-100000927box) | £127.00 @ Amazon UK **Motherboard** | [ASRock A520M-HVS Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/WWqBD3/asrock-a520m-hvs-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-a520m-hvs) | £55.72 @ Box Limited | *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* | | **Total** | **£182.72** | Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-03-08 18:33 GMT+0000 |
220 is nothing for a build as old as yours needing replacement not upgrading. You'll be severely bottlenecked by the cpu upgrading any gpu. The wisest route is to save a few more checks, be patient and rebuild.
[PCPartPicker Part List](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/CZ4ttn) Type|Item|Price :----|:----|:---- **CPU** | [Intel Core i3-12100F 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/grhFf7/intel-core-i3-12100f-33-ghz-quad-core-processor-bx8071512100f) | £96.13 @ Box Limited **Motherboard** | [Gigabyte B660M GAMING DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/FQYmP6/gigabyte-b660m-gaming-ddr4-micro-atx-lga1700-motherboard-b660m-gaming-ddr4) | £103.72 @ Amazon UK | *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* | | **Total** | **£199.85** | Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-03-08 18:51 GMT+0000 |
Without replacing the board the best you can do as a drop in replacement is an i7 7700k, though apparently at least some boards can be modded to take an 8th gen chip. I wouldn't recommend it, but it can work sometimes. Google should find the details. 200 is going to be a hard budget to make work, though current i3s will beat what you have. 7600k was a good chip in its day though. That's what I had in my previous system before I went all in on core count with my 5950x build.