I'm ready to move on from my roughly 10-year-old gaming PC, but current component prices have me wondering whether a staged upgrade would be more economical than starting over. I mostly play discounted PC games and Minecraft, but I'd like to try Cyberpunk 2077 and other older AAA titles at around 1440p and 60 FPS.
My main upgrade interest is a Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB, along with more storage and RAM. I'm buying in the United States and can wait for sales. Which parts of my current system are still worth keeping, and what would be the best upgrade order?
Current system:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700
- Motherboard: Asus STRIX B350-F Gaming
- Memory: 16GB G.Skill Trident Z DDR4-3200
- Storage: Samsung 850 Evo 500GB SATA SSD and Seagate 2TB 7200 RPM hard drive
- GPU: Asus ROG STRIX GTX 1070 Ti 8GB
- Case: Fractal Design Focus G
- Power supply: Corsair TX550M Gold 550W
2 Answers
This platform can still be upgraded in stages. First update the motherboard BIOS to the newest version that supports Ryzen 5000, then replace the Ryzen 7 1700 with something like a Ryzen 5 5600 or another compatible Ryzen 5000 chip. After that, upgrade the graphics card. That lets you spread out the cost instead of replacing everything at once.
A 9070 XT would be a major jump from the GTX 1070 Ti, but I would not run it from the 550W power supply. Replace the PSU with a quality 750W model from a reputable line, then install the GPU. If your budget allows, a higher-end Ryzen 5000 gaming chip, particularly an X3D model that your BIOS supports, could extend the life of the AM4 system considerably. Make sure the graphics card is installed in the motherboard’s primary full-length PCIe slot.
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