PC Upgrade Help - Should I upgrade within DDR4, or wait/save more and upgrade to 5?
Posted by mossyhobbit@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 8 comments
What is your intended use for this build? The more details the better.
I would love more consistent higher frame rates on higher settings in games, especially in Minecraft with shaders and mods, and occasional AAA games. I'm often using big laggy files in clip studio paint and occasionally video editing. I would like to move from windows to ubuntu soon, but idk if that's relevant or not.
If gaming, what kind of performance are you looking for? (Screen resolution, framerate, game settings)
1080p 60fps High/Ultra settings. Hopefully to upgrade to 1440p later on.
What is your budget (ballpark is okay)?
£800 ish
In what country are you purchasing your parts?
UK
My PC currently:
My dad picked the parts for me and we built it together in 2022, and then I added the M.2 2TB SSD later on. PCPartPicker Part List
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor | Purchased For £193.98 |
| Motherboard | MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard | Purchased For £99.98 |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory | Purchased For £139.25 |
| Storage | Samsung 860 Evo 250 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive | Purchased For £36.98 |
| Storage | Crucial P5 Plus W/Heatsink 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive | Purchased For £129.98 |
| Storage | Seagate BarraCuda 1 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive | Purchased For £32.99 |
| Video Card | EVGA SC ULTRA GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB Video Card | Purchased For £231.98 |
| Case | Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case | Purchased For £74.99 |
| Power Supply | Fractal Design Ion+ 860P 860 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply | Purchased For £124.99 |
| Monitor | Acer K242HL Bbid 24.0" 1920 x 1080 60 Hz Monitor | Purchased For £0.00 |
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts | ||
| Total | £1065.12 | |
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-09-02 17:05 BST+0100 |
I've been thinking about upgrading my PC recently, especially my GPU as the VRAM is maxed out often and I would love to be able to play on higher settings in games and at least manage 60FPS. However while researching I found that my CPU seems a bit outdated as well, and I wanted to upgrade my motherboard so I could fit one more M.2 SSD onto it (I was kindly gifted a second 2TB SSD by a friend and my PC fills up fast with big art files). My issue is that I don't know whether to upgrade smaller (upgrade V1) which would already make a big difference, or wait to save up more money and go bigger with an AM5 motherboard/DDR5 RAM.
I put together 2 pc part picker lists, and I was hoping any kind souls here wouldn't mind looking at them and seeing if they think V2 is too overkill for my needs or whether you think it would make a big difference, and any part suggestions if the ones I picked are terrible choices (especially if cheaper for similar results! that would be awesome), oR if you think this is ridiculous and I should just upgrade the GPU and leave it at that. I'm not too fussed about the look of the parts other than the case, I would just enjoy looking at them going :D
Thank you for reading my ramblings if you made it this far, any suggestions are hugely appreciated.
Upgrade V1:
Upgrade V2:
-XeneidoN-@reddit
Honestly, this wont be popular, but if you aren't going to build a modern PC you will be better off buying a console than building old hardware.
Your V2 system is not far behind my system although I can wholeheartedly advise against HDDs for anything other than cold storage of photos etc. that you aren't actively reading from to edit etc. Go as hard as you can with the base components such as RAM and CPU as with DDR5, 4 sticks of RAM runs horribly so if you ever think you'll want 64GB, now is the time but you'd only do that for intense games like Flight Simulator and probably video editing if you ever go quite far into it. If you can justtttt stretch your budget a little, a 7800X3D is a fantastic processor.
Also, just a note on the video editing side, I believe Intel is favoured for that over AMD, especially in Adobe applications. I'm sure others will chime in with some solid advice too.
mossyhobbit@reddit (OP)
I love consoles but to me nothing beats having your own PC! I am gonna wait and save more for upgrade v2/make a v3 and look at that CPU you suggested instead, thank you for your advice and suggestions!! it's all hugely appreciated.
-XeneidoN-@reddit
More than happy for you to DM me if you need any help. Good luck with your build.
mossyhobbit@reddit (OP)
that's very kind thank you!
Hawk7117@reddit
Intel does have a video encoder that beats AMD for the time being, but given that Rapterlake CPUs are still spontaneously combusting and the Ultra Lineup is still crazy expensive, AM5 is still the better value.
Also, most editing softwares allow you to select your GPU for video encoding which Nvidia is also very good at. If video editing is a priority the 7700x is still a fine choice but I would try and pair it with a 5060ti 16gb or 5070.
Hawk7117@reddit
Upgrade v2 is by far the best build, I would go with that and not dump "dead money" into a platform that will likely not have anymore releases unlike AM5
mossyhobbit@reddit (OP)
thank you, that's really good to know. I'm still very much a beginner so the knowledge is appreciated
Granuch@reddit
Agree, in mid range price AM5 will be better choice