Upgrading my gaming pc, need help

Posted by Sure_Masterpiece1026@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 5 comments

I currently have an older budget friendly pc that Id like to upgrade to play spiderman and newer games on that require higher performance. Its just a gaming PC that i bought from a guy at work a couple years ago. I'm not super familiar with building PC's but I have 8gb of ram. My storage is 1tb HDD.

My graphics card is fine I think so all I would need to do is upgrade the ram and maybe get a SSD? I was thinking of going to 32gb of ram but some say 16gb would be fine. I'm ignorant to PC's so I apologize. I'll list my current specs below.

Am I correct on this? If so, how much should I expect to spend and any suggestions on how to get what I need are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) 15-9400F CPU @ 2.90GHz

Installed RAM: 8.00 GB

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 (6 GB)

Storage: 932 GB HDD WDC WD10EZEX-08WN4A0. 224 GB SSD Maxtor Z1 SSD 240GB

System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

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Sure_Masterpiece1026@reddit (OP)

Do you guys mind explaining why the GPU makes such a big difference?

AdAmbitious1065@reddit

Yeah, the 16 GB of ram is a bare minimum these days, enough for chrome, a game, with music open, definitely get that. 32 gb is optional if you're multitasking but honestly with your setup I wouldn't recommend it, everything else would be a much better upgrade.

You can get a Nvme SSD, which would help you load/download games much, much faster, its a quality of life upgrade but a costly one.

Your motherboard supports only up to 9th generation (your current generation) cpus, and upgrading while would help, you still can't get really anything to modern and supported without changing your entire setup. Keep that for now

Realistically you should upgrade your GPU, https://zttbuilds.com/pages/gpu-comparison-chart has a guide, but like other commenters said, 3060 is good, 6700, etc. The good news is you generally get what you pay for, because of lovely supply and demand, so however much you want to spend money on is your boost. I'd go with a used one espically since you're budget and there will be people upgrading and selling their old ones. \~250-300$ is a reasonable price range to get a noticable performance boost, maybe going up to \~350 before you run into bottlenecking issues with your CPU

MarcusAurelius68@reddit

A used 3060 with 12GB should run a bit over $200-250 used. Should give a noticeable improvement.

There are several upgrades you could do, but you’re throwing money into a system with a 7 year old CPU.

I’d buy a GPU first, because that will likely make the biggest difference. You don’t mention a budget but prices are high right now. A RX 5080ti with 16GB is around $500 at the moment.

A cheap Ryzen 5 5500 would perform the same as what you have, so there’s no point changing the platform. Moving to an I7-9700K would give you maybe 10% more raw performance - not worth it.

So the next step I’d consider would be a RAM upgrade on your existing system. Look on eBay or check with friends and then Memtest it. 16GB should be enough.

Last I’d upgrade storage, because it’s expensive right now. That will also have minimal benefit to game quality, but it’ll load faster.

CalligrapherCold364@reddit

the 1660 is actually the bottleneck for newer games, not the ram. 16gb is fine for gaming nd a cheap ssd for the os nd games makes a big difference in load times. but spiderman nd newer titles will struggle on a 1660, worth budgeting for a gpu upgrade too if u can, a used 3060 is around 150-200 nd would make the bigger difference