Hey everyone! I'm looking to upgrade my PC since it's been about 3 and a half years since I built it. At the time, I had a tight budget, so I did my best with what I could afford. Now, I'm using my PC primarily for editing (Premiere Pro works fine, but After Effects struggles a bit), along with casual gaming and music production—those run okay, but I want better performance for more graphics-intensive games. I've got a budget of around £500 to $600, maybe up to $1000 if needed. Here are my current specs:
- GPU: MSI Ventus NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1650
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-core
- PSU: Corsair 650W
- Motherboard: ASUS TUF Gaming B850-PLUS
- RAM: 16GB DDR4 (I think it's Corsair)
- Storage: 250GB SSD for Windows, plus two 2TB hard drives
- Cooling: Basic fans from Amazon
I'm considering upgrading my GPU and RAM, but would that mean upgrading my PSU too? I only have about 50GB free on my SSD—is it worth upgrading that for speed? Should I replace my older hard drive? I'd also like to get a new case and some new fans. Any suggestions on what components to upgrade? Thanks for your help!
2 Answers
If you're looking to upgrade, a GPU like the 5070 is a solid choice as long as it fits your budget and your PSU can handle it. I picked one up for around $600, and it's been amazing! Going for 32GB of RAM would help with your editing, too—picked up mine on sale for about $55. Just make sure your cooling setup can keep everything running smoothly with these upgrades!
Just checked, and my CPU might bottleneck with that 5070, so looks like I’d need a CPU upgrade as well.
Upgrading your GPU and RAM is definitely a good start! Whether you need a new PSU depends on which GPU you choose. Some great options won't require a PSU upgrade. As for your SSD, having 50GB free won’t really slow down your system significantly, but if you can, upgrading to a larger SSD can improve boot and load times considerably! For your old hard drive, if it’s working fine, there's no rush to replace it, but switching to an SSD for faster speeds could be useful if you store games or software there.
Thanks for your insights! If that old drive fails, will I lose my files, though?
Definitely a concern! It's good to back up important files regularly, just in case you want to be safe.
I’ll keep my eyes peeled for good deals, thanks!