I'm looking to replace my older Gigabyte H110M motherboard and Intel Core i5-6500 while keeping most of my current components. The PC is mainly used for heavy multitasking, office applications, many browser tabs, Zoom and Discord calls, and Plex streaming. I only do light gaming such as Magic Arena and Heroes of the Storm, where 40–60 FPS at 1080p on low or medium settings is perfectly fine. I already have a GTX 1050 Ti, 16GB of DDR4-2400 memory, a 750W Corsair PSU, a 240GB SATA SSD, a 1TB hard drive, a microATX Cooler Master N200 case, and a PCIe Wi-Fi adapter. My budget is roughly $500, and I'm near a Micro Center in the United States. I may upgrade the RAM if necessary. I'm also frustrated by how much desk space the tower takes up, so I'm interested in compact alternatives such as a small-form-factor PC, a mini PC, or another creative setup that works well with a sit/stand desk.
2 Answers
Since your main concern is desk space, selling the current system and moving to a modern mini PC might be worth considering instead of replacing only the platform. A Ryzen mini PC with Radeon 780M integrated graphics would be dramatically faster than the i5-6500 for general use, usually includes more memory and a newer SSD, and should handle your lighter games at roughly the level of the GTX 1050 Ti. It would also take up very little space and be easier to mount or hide near a sit/stand desk.
A Micro Center bundle built around a modern Intel Core Ultra 5 250K-class processor could make sense here. For around your budget, you may be able to get the CPU, motherboard, and new DDR5 memory together, which would give you a major improvement in multitasking. You could then sell the working DDR4 platform and put that money toward a larger SSD or a future graphics-card upgrade. Your existing GTX 1050 Ti and power supply should be fine for the games you listed.
That sounds promising. I’ll check the current Micro Center bundles and compare the included motherboard and memory.