I built this PC about nine years ago, and it has been remarkably reliable. Its current specifications are an MSI B350M Mortar motherboard, Ryzen 5 1600X, 16 GB of RAM running at 1067 MHz according to the system utility, a 489 GB Crucial MX300 SSD, a 2 TB hard drive, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti with 11 GB of VRAM. It also has several quiet Noctua fans.
The system is starting to show its age. It struggles with newer demanding games and cannot always run modern titles at maximum settings, but it still performs well for its age. I would like to give it to my wife so we can play co-op Steam games together, along with games such as The Sims 3, World of Warcraft, and future releases that are not especially graphics-intensive.
I plan to build myself a new PC eventually, but I would prefer to upgrade this one sensibly rather than replace it immediately. What parts would provide the best improvement while keeping the cost reasonable?
3 Answers
The platform still has plenty of life left. After updating the BIOS while the Ryzen 5 1600X is installed, you may be able to replace it with a Ryzen 5 5600, 5700X, or another compatible Ryzen 5000 chip. That would make a major difference in CPU-heavy games and general responsiveness. Check MSI’s CPU support list for the exact BIOS version before buying anything, and make sure the power supply is adequate and from a reputable manufacturer.
The GTX 1080 Ti is still a capable 1080p and reasonable 1440p card, especially for the games you listed. I would not replace the graphics card first unless a particular game is actually GPU-limited. The RAM appears to be running at DDR4-2133, so enabling its XMP profile could help if the memory supports a faster rated speed. If it really is only 2133 MHz, replacing it with a matched 16 GB or 32 GB DDR4-3200 kit would be a relatively affordable improvement.
A larger SATA SSD would probably be the most noticeable quality-of-life upgrade. Keep the existing SSD for Windows if it is healthy, or replace it with a 1 TB SATA SSD so games do not have to live on the older hard drive. Then upgrade the CPU only if performance is still limiting. For the games mentioned, the current graphics card should be fine, and a fresh CPU plus SSD could keep this machine useful for several more years without the cost of a complete rebuild.
The memory utility reports 1067 MHz, and the motherboard is definitely the MSI B350M Mortar. I will check whether that is simply the doubled DDR4 speed and whether an XMP profile is available.