My PC is getting old, and I want to use it more for gaming, but newer games run slowly and feel laggy. I have about $900 to spend on upgrades. My current system has an AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB of G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4 memory, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660, an ASRock B450 Pro4 motherboard, and 1 TB of storage. The power supply is an EVGA 450W unit. What upgrades would make the biggest difference?
3 Answers
The graphics card is the biggest limitation here. An RX 9060 XT with 16 GB of VRAM would be a strong upgrade for 1080p or 1440p gaming. A Ryzen 5 5600, 5600X, or 5600XT could also improve CPU performance without replacing the motherboard.
I’d upgrade to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM and pair it with a 16 GB RX 9060 XT. That should give you a noticeable improvement over the GTX 1660 while keeping your existing B450 platform. Make sure the motherboard BIOS supports the newer Ryzen processor if you decide to upgrade the CPU too.
Before choosing parts, check the power supply. A 450W unit is likely too close to the limit for a modern graphics card upgrade, so I’d replace it with a quality 600W–750W model first, depending on the GPU you choose. Your 1 TB of storage is usable unless it’s nearly full or still a slow hard drive.
The power supply is an EVGA 450W model, and I currently have about 1 TB of storage.