Hey everyone! I'm working on upgrading my old PC, which currently has an Intel i7 3770 and a GTX 650. I've been facing issues with my hard drive since it's really old and seems to be on the verge of breaking down. Right now, I can only afford one upgrade: I can either buy a new GPU like an RX 6600 or go for a new Motherboard, CPU, and SSD combo (I'm looking at a Ryzen 5 5600, Asus Prime B450M-A II, and a Crucial P3+ 1TB SSD). My system is also slow, with 100% disk usage after boot and taking about 30 minutes to start up. I want to upgrade it to match a list I have on PC Part Picker, but I'm unsure which upgrade to prioritize. Also, my motherboard doesn't have an M.2 slot. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I live in Australia, so that might affect pricing too.
2 Answers
I’d recommend getting the SSD first. Upgrading to an SSD will really speed up your boot times and overall performance. Once that’s sorted, you can look for a GPU later on. You could also check out the used market for older GPUs like the GTX 1070 or RTX 2070 if you're worried about prices.
Definitely go for the SSD and CPU upgrade! With a good SSD, your OS boot time could drop to under a minute, which is a huge improvement over the half-hour wait you’re dealing with now. You can hold off on the GPU since you mentioned you don’t need it for graphic-intensive games.
Thanks for the advice! I think I'm leaning towards the SSD for sure, given how long it takes to boot up. Plus, I don't play super graphics-heavy games, so I can wait on the GPU upgrade.