I recently picked up a budget PC for under $400. I play games at 1080p on medium settings and enjoy titles like Arc Raiders and shooters like Ready or Not. I also run mods in Madden and do some web browsing along with light productivity work. I'm constantly switching between games and tasks, and now I'm considering whether to grab another 16GB of DDR4 RAM from Facebook Marketplace or to upgrade my HDD to an SSD. Right now, prices for both upgrades aren't great, so which change would give me the best performance boost? Here are my specs: AMD Ryzen 7 1700, ASRock X370 Killer motherboard, 16GB DDR4 RAM, RTX 2080 SUPER VENTUS XS, and a 2TB WDBLUE HDD.
4 Answers
I say go for an SSD first! A new CPU would also be a solid upgrade choice, but since your storage is a major bottleneck, that should take priority. Just check your motherboard's support for new CPUs—upgrading to a Zen 3 might be worth considering down the line.
If your PC doesn't have an SSD, that's definitely the first thing I'd recommend upgrading. It really transforms the speed and general responsiveness of your system! But what are you looking to improve specifically? Are you encountering any slowdowns with certain tasks?
Get the SSD first. Since you're currently using an HDD, the performance upgrade you'll see will be huge. You can always look at RAM or CPU upgrades later!
Definitely get an SSD! You'll wonder how you lived without one once you've tried it.
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