I'm on a tight budget of $150 and looking to upgrade my GPU. I mostly play competitive shooters at 1080p, so high framerates are my top priority. I've been considering buying a used 1080 Ti since they generally sell for around $100-150 on eBay, but I'm not sure if that's the best option. I'm open to used or older hardware, as I think that's all I can afford at this price point.
Here are my current specs: Ryzen 5 1600, RX570 4GB, and 24GB of RAM. My power supply has plenty of wattage, and my motherboard has an X370 chipset. Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
4 Answers
If you're lucky, you could score both an RX 6600 and a Ryzen 5 3600 upgrade for around $150 or slightly more. I picked up my RX 6600s for $110 each, and a Ryzen 5 3600 for only $50 a couple of months back. Upgrading from Zen 1 to Zen 2 significantly boosts performance, kind of like jumping from Intel's 3rd-gen to 8th-gen CPUs!
Just to give you a heads up, your Ryzen 5 1600 might bottleneck the performance in competitive shooters with any new GPU. A used RX 5700 XT could be a good pact for you, especially if you don’t worry about running the latest games on day one. You might even find a Ryzen 5 5600 for a decent price to pair with it, which would be a solid upgrade! Also, make sure your RAM is dual-channel and running with XMP enabled. If you're using three sticks of RAM, that could hurt performance, so you might want to adjust that setup.
You should be able to find a used 3050 or 3060 for under $150 with some diligent searching. Good luck on your hunt!
I'd steer clear of the 1080 Ti; it's getting pretty old. If you can, look for a used 3060 within your budget—those can be found for around $150 if you search locally. Alternatively, a 2070 could also work well for you.
That sounds awesome! Where else did you look besides eBay?