I'm in the UK and have been using my current PC for roughly six years. It has had a couple of blue screens recently while gaming, but my main concern is improving gaming smoothness and FPS. I was considering building a compact, minimalist system in an NCASE-style case with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and an RTX 5070, although I'm not sure whether those are the best choices or what parts would pair well with them. My budget is around £2,000, though I'd prefer to spend less if possible. My current system is a Ryzen 7 2700 with the stock AMD cooler, an RTX 2060, ASUS PRIME X470-PRO motherboard, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3600, a 1TB Samsung 980 PRO, an NZXT H510 case, two 120mm case fans, and a Corsair VS650 power supply. I'm also considering selling the old PC after building the replacement, but I'd like to know whether upgrading the existing system would be a better-value option.
3 Answers
You may not need a completely new build. Update the motherboard BIOS and look for a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, then add a newer graphics card such as an RTX 5070 or RX 9070, depending on pricing. Your existing DDR4 memory can stay, although moving from 16GB to 32GB would be worthwhile. This lets you keep the AM4 platform and avoid the current cost of a new motherboard and DDR5 memory. I’d also replace the stock cooler with a decent tower air cooler, especially with the 5800X3D.
A full new build with a 9800X3D would be excellent, but it may spend a lot of the budget on the CPU and platform without improving gaming as much as a GPU upgrade would. Since your motherboard supports newer AM4 processors after a BIOS update, a 5800X3D plus a new graphics card is the sensible value route. Also investigate the recent blue screens before selling the old PC, since they could be caused by drivers, temperatures, memory, storage, or the aging power supply rather than the whole system needing replacement.
For a roughly £2,000 budget, upgrading the existing machine could provide much better value than replacing everything. The 5800X3D is a strong gaming upgrade from the Ryzen 7 2700, and a modern GPU would make the biggest difference to FPS. Your 3600MHz RAM is suitable, but adding another matching 2x8GB kit or replacing it with a 2x16GB kit would give you 32GB. Check the exact case, graphics-card length, cooling clearance, and power-supply requirements before moving to an NCASE-style enclosure.
A new case isn’t necessarily a major problem, but compact builds need more planning. It’s worth checking GPU dimensions and cooler support before buying anything, since not every RTX 5070 or RX 9070 will fit.
That sounds like a good idea. I hadn’t considered a BIOS update, and keeping the current platform would definitely make the upgrade cheaper. I’m still wondering how difficult it would be to move the components into a smaller case.