I recently gave my 13-year-old brother a hand-me-down gaming PC and want to figure out its strengths, weaknesses, and most sensible upgrade path. The current hardware is an AMD Ryzen 5 5600, 32 GB of DDR4-3200 memory with two of four slots occupied, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super, a 1 TB Western Digital hard drive, and a roughly 250 GB Samsung SSD. The motherboard is an MSI MS-7C02, apparently based on the B450 platform. I'm planning to buy a 2 TB SSD first so he has enough fast storage for his games. For his current game selection, the system seems capable, but I'd like to understand what would provide the biggest improvement if I eventually have more money to invest. I'd also appreciate explanations of why certain upgrades make sense, since I'm much less familiar with current PC hardware than I was several years ago.
4 Answers
The graphics card would eventually be the biggest performance upgrade, especially if he wants higher settings, higher resolutions, or newer demanding games. A modern card with 16 GB of VRAM could improve longevity, but the exact choice should depend on prices and the power supply in the PC. The RTX 2070 Super is still good enough that I would wait until it actually becomes the limiting part.
Don’t replace the motherboard solely to move from PCIe 3.0 to PCIe 4.0. A B550 board would provide newer connectivity, but the current graphics card and existing SSD generally won’t lose meaningful gaming performance because of PCIe 3.0. A motherboard replacement makes more sense when moving to a new CPU and memory platform, not as an isolated upgrade.
Since this is an AM4 system, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D-class processor—or another compatible X3D chip available at a reasonable price—would be the best CPU upgrade for gaming. It can help in CPU-heavy games, but it isn’t necessary for a typical mix of games, and the upgrade may not be worth the cost compared with keeping the 5600 and saving for a future platform change.
The 2 TB SSD is the most practical first upgrade. Put Windows and the games he actually plays on it, and keep the hard drive for less frequently used files or backups. Beyond that, there’s no urgent weakness: the Ryzen 5 5600, 32 GB of RAM, and RTX 2070 Super still make a very capable 1080p gaming system. If his games run well, upgrading just for the sake of it probably won’t be noticeable.
A 5600X3D can also be a good option where it’s available, but I’d check the motherboard’s BIOS support before buying any AM4 processor upgrade.