I built this PC in 2019 and am trying to figure out the best upgrade path for reliable 1080p at 60 FPS in games released through 2026 and somewhat beyond. My current parts are a ZOTAC GeForce RTX 2060 6GB, ASUS Prime X470-Pro motherboard, EVGA SuperNOVA 850W Gold power supply, Ryzen 5 2600, 16GB of DDR4-3000 memory, a 480GB SATA SSD, and an 8TB hard drive. The motherboard and power supply seem capable of supporting newer components, so I would prefer not to replace them unnecessarily. A 4K setup is outside my budget, and I also want to use Sunshine and Moonlight to stream games from the upstairs PC to a downstairs TV since running an HDMI cable is not practical. What CPU, graphics card, and memory upgrades would offer the best value?
1 Answer
A Ryzen 7 5800X3D would be a strong final upgrade for that AM4 platform, although a less expensive X3D chip could also make sense. Pairing it with a modern Radeon card such as the RX 9070 XT would provide plenty of performance, but that GPU is probably far beyond what you need for a 1080p/60 FPS target. Your 850W power supply should be more than sufficient. Sixteen gigabytes is still usable, but 32GB would give you more room for newer games and background applications; replacing the current kit with 2x16GB DDR4-3200 or DDR4-3600 is generally preferable to mixing separate kits.
Would adding another matching 2x8GB kit be a reasonable cheaper way to reach 32GB? I have also read that moving from DDR4-3000 to 3200 or 3600 may not make much difference with this generation of Ryzen. The suggested graphics card is also much more expensive than I expected, so I am wondering whether a midrange option would handle 1080p/60 FPS or whether it makes more sense to upgrade the RAM and CPU first and wait for better GPU pricing.