Hey everyone! My girlfriend has a pretty outdated PC that's over 7 years old, and she's really starting to hit its limitations. She does a lot of work with After Effects, Clip Studio Paint (with tons of layers), and plays games, plus she's interested in starting streaming. We're wondering if we can upgrade her current setup without replacing everything or if it's just going to be easier and more cost-effective to build a brand new PC from scratch. Here's her current configuration for reference: CPU: Intel Core i7-9700F, Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock, Motherboard: MSI Z390-A PRO, Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16 GB, Storage: Kingston A400 SSD and Seagate 1 TB HDD, Video Card: MSI GTX 1660, Case: Antec P7 Silent, Power Supply: Corsair CX450M. Any advice on this would be super helpful!
4 Answers
Reuse the HDD or SSD, and sell the other one after doing a fresh Windows install. You could get around $250 easily! Just make sure to show some benchmarks when you sell it.
If you're looking for a solid graphics card, consider getting something like the RX 9060 XT, it can handle just about anything. And if streaming is on the horizon, save for the AM5 platform for an easier experience later on!
Honestly, it's probably best to just build a new PC. The platform you're on is outdated, and the best upgrade you're looking at is the Intel i9-9900K, but it's not a significant jump. What's your budget for this upgrade?
I would recommend reusing her SSD. That's still a good piece of hardware, and everything else seems pretty outdated.
Yeah, I planned to keep everything related to storage.
To be fair, we can save for a bit and get a decent setup, but that'll take some time.