I recently bought a prebuilt system for 855 CAD with an ASUS B650 motherboard, Ryzen 5 8600G, 16GB of DDR5-6000 Crucial memory in a single stick, and a 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD. I also added three terabytes of used 2.5-inch SATA hard drives, a secondhand GTX 980 Ti for 60 CAD, a Thermalright Frozen Warframe CPU cooler for 50 CAD, and some extra case fans. What upgrades would make the most sense next if my goal is to play Cyberpunk 2077 at ultra settings?
4 Answers
For ultra settings, particularly with ray tracing, expect to spend substantially more on the GPU than you paid for the rest of the system. A current-generation card with at least 12GB of VRAM would be a sensible target, while used high-end cards can offer good value if their condition and power requirements check out. You may also need a stronger power supply.
The graphics card should be your first major upgrade. The GTX 980 Ti is very old and is below or around the game's minimum requirements, so it won't deliver a good Cyberpunk experience. The right replacement depends on your resolution, target frame rate, and budget, but a modern midrange card would be a huge improvement. Check your power supply and case clearance before buying one.
Add a second matching 16GB DDR5 stick as soon as possible. Running one memory stick means single-channel mode, which can noticeably hurt performance, especially with an 8600G. Two 16GB sticks will give you 32GB in dual-channel mode and are a better fit for a demanding game.
The CPU is probably fine to start with, so I wouldn't replace it before the graphics card and memory. The 500GB SSD may also become cramped once you install large modern games; consider adding a larger NVMe SSD later. Keep the hard drives for bulk storage, but use the SSD for Cyberpunk and other games where loading times matter.
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