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.
Hello fellow CAD friend!
I don’t know exactly which program you’re using, but a lot of the ones which are Linux-unfriendly sadly won’t even work on a VM. You will have to have an entire dual boot configuration for them. The good news is that if you’re still on a tight budget, decent 7200 RPM, 1TB hard drives can be had for around $40, sometimes less.
Minecraft is a whole different beast, and honestly it’s harder on my system than some CAD work… but can still be managed.
I have a license for Alibre Design. I have heard it works okay in a VM, but also that Linux is not at all their priority. I also have a very clunky, weird German program that I still kind of like for 2D work.
The current spinny disk in this PC runs my linux install and has a bunch of random stuff.
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 with your budget you’d want to upgrade either your CPU or your GPU, but not both, and should first identify the bottleneck for each of your use cases. At a guess, I’d say GPU for starfield and possibly CPU for minecraft especially if you’re using mods, but it’s worth spending time measuring that and picking the direction you want to go. You can try smaller upgrades for each, but my sense is that it wouldn’t sum up to as worthwhile upgrade as focusing on one.
An nvme drive would be nice, but I wouldn’t prioritize it above cpu/gpu. I think 16GB of memory is fine for what you’re wanting, and there’s nothing wrong with that motherboard.
Used 2080ti’s sell within your budget (and for less there are 2080 and 2080 supers on the market), and that would be a huge upgrade on the GPU side. Not a recommendation, just something to consider.
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!
(sorry for not contributing, I’ll be lurking my next upgrade from your post) Your computer is a direct upgrade of mine haha:
- B350M bazooka
- ryzen 3 1200
- Radeon RX 560
- 8Gb 2666hz
(This can play The Finals at 50fps average with no upscaling)
I’d double RAM and dump the rest into a new GPU. Beyond that you might as well save for a new rig.
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.
A 512gb NVME drive is like, $40. That as your boot drive and a CPU or GPU upgrade would do you a world of good; you could probably limp along with the RX 580 for longer than the ryzen 2400G
Edit: plus GPU prices are kinda batshit these days.
You could probably snag a 2070 for 300 or less, the rest of your hardware should be fine, maybe an NVMe M.2 SSD for boot and storage (you can get a 1TB for < 100 these days)
I had a 2400g and sadly the cache is the problem. If you can buy a used ryzen 1600, it’s quite an upgrade
Get a 1TB NVME Gen 4 drive, the speedup is insane. (If you have a slot for it on your motherboard; use this as your OS drive)
Get another 16gb of PC3200 DDR4 that’s as closely matched with your existing kit as possible.
and from there, only a GPU upgrade is needed to get you pretty close to the top. I still like the 3060 12gb; because I play games that require a lot of vram, but choice is yours here.
I’m leaning towards keeping the GPU, at least for now, but looks like I could get the SSD for ~$50, some well-matched RAM for around $25 (I guess this will help with a VM quite a bit?), and maybe a Ryzen 5 4500 for around $65. Given the limited and “squishy” info I’ve provided, does that sound halfway reasonable to start, and then see if the 580 still feels like a bottleneck?
Yeah, all of those sound perfect - should keep things nice and cheap and the machine will feel way snappier.
Honestly we’re reaching a point where 32gb of system RAM should be the default for most people. Especially for games.
You’re already probably not CPU-bottlenecked on the GPU - while you’re playing games, you should be sitting at 100% (or close) to GPU utilization.
If your GPU utilization never hits 100%; then you’re CPU bottlenecked.
