I bought a prebuilt PC about five years ago for roughly €1,300, and it has served me well. Its current specifications are a Ryzen 5 3600, 16GB of RAM, a GTX 1660 SUPER with 6GB of VRAM, and about 1.8TB of storage. I'm considering an upgrade because I recently played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at the lowest settings and would like to run it at much higher quality. My budget for a new system is around €1,500–€2,000, and I currently use a 1920×1080 144Hz monitor. Would it make more sense to upgrade the graphics card first, possibly along with storage or other components, or replace the entire PC?
5 Answers
Since you’re using a 1080p 144Hz display, a graphics card upgrade should produce the most noticeable improvement in demanding games. However, if you want consistently high frame rates in CPU-heavy or competitive titles, the Ryzen 5 3600 may hold back a powerful modern GPU. You could also use the budget for a better graphics card and a 1440p monitor, which would be a more substantial visual upgrade than continuing to target extremely high frame rates at 1080p.
Avoid jumping straight to the most expensive graphics card unless you’re also planning to upgrade the rest of the system. A reasonably priced card such as a used RTX 2070 SUPER or RTX 3060 12GB, depending on local prices and your power supply, may be enough for your current monitor. Test the result first, then decide whether a complete rebuild is necessary.
Start with the graphics card and see whether that solves the problem. Before buying one, check what power supply you have, including its wattage and available power connectors. A midrange card that offers around twice the performance of the GTX 1660 SUPER without dramatically increasing power consumption could be a sensible match for the Ryzen 5 3600.
The right choice depends on your actual use case and budget. If the 1.8TB drive is a hard disk rather than an SSD, replacing it with an SSD should be one of the first upgrades because it will make Windows and applications feel much faster. For gaming, the graphics card is currently the biggest limitation, although a newer processor would also help if you’re targeting very high frame rates at 1080p.
With €1,500–€2,000 available, a new build is certainly possible, but you probably don’t need to replace everything immediately. A strong graphics card could give the existing system a major boost, and you can upgrade the CPU, motherboard, and memory later if the Ryzen 5 3600 becomes a bottleneck. If you do build a new system, consider buying previous-generation parts after newer hardware releases, since they often become cheaper.
That makes sense. I’ll check the power supply before deciding on a card.