I built this PC about five years ago and could use advice on maintenance and upgrades. It currently has a Ryzen 7 3700X, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, and an RTX 2080 SUPER with 8 GB of VRAM. I use two monitors, with the main display running at 2560×1440.
Recently, I've been struggling to maintain 60 FPS in games such as The Witcher 3, Warframe, Monster Hunter, Marvel Rivals, and even Minecraft. I usually have to lower settings to medium-high and enable upscaling or frame generation. These games ran much better when the system was newer.
I have never replaced the CPU thermal paste, and I have not opened or repasted the GPU. I also had an older stability problem where the screen would go black while the GPU fans suddenly ramped to full speed, requiring a manual restart. It happened more often in moderately demanding games. Undervolting the GPU with MSI Afterburner seemed to stop the issue, although I'm not sure whether that is masking a hardware problem. The power supply is a Corsair RM850.
What maintenance should I perform, and which upgrades would make the biggest difference? Specific CPU, GPU, RAM, or other part recommendations would be appreciated.
3 Answers
The black screen followed by maximum GPU fan speed points more toward a graphics-card crash, driver failure, power-delivery issue, or GPU instability than old thermal paste alone. Since reducing the voltage helped, the card may be less stable at its original settings, but undervolting generally does not damage the rest of the system. Try a clean graphics-driver installation, return the card to stock settings to test it, monitor GPU temperatures and hotspot temperature, and inspect the power cables and connectors. The RM850 is plenty of capacity, assuming it is healthy and properly connected.
Don’t repaste parts just because they’re several years old. First check temperatures, clock speeds, usage, and frame-time behavior with a monitoring tool while gaming. If the CPU or GPU is actually overheating or throttling, clean out dust and replace the relevant paste or thermal pads as appropriate. For a noticeable gaming upgrade after the CPU, a newer GPU would help most at 1440p, but choose based on your budget and whether you want higher settings, ray tracing, or more VRAM. Your current PSU should support many modern midrange and upper-midrange cards.
The 3700X is probably the first performance limit to address, especially in CPU-heavy games at 1440p. Since you’re already on AM4, a Ryzen 7 5700X3D is usually the most worthwhile drop-in upgrade for gaming. It lets you keep the motherboard and DDR4 memory while providing a substantial improvement in minimum and average frame rates. Also consider moving to 32 GB of RAM if your current 16 GB is a 1×16 kit or you’re seeing memory usage close to the limit.
A drop-in AM4 upgrade sounds much easier than replacing the whole platform. I’ll check whether my memory is running in dual channel before choosing a kit.
I’d also test with another known-good cable or power supply if the crashes return at stock settings. If the problem follows the GPU, the card itself is the likely culprit.