I live in the Netherlands and have a flexible upgrade budget of around €500. I mainly play Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant, which run reasonably well but not as smoothly as I would like. My current system is an ASRock A320M-HDV R3.0 motherboard, Ryzen 5 2400G, Radeon RX 580, 16GB of Kingmax DDR4-3200 memory, a 240GB SSD that is being incorrectly identified as an HDD, and a 1TB Toshiba P300 hard drive. Which components would give me the biggest performance improvement, and what upgrade path would make the most sense?
2 Answers
The system is fairly balanced, so a noticeable overall improvement may eventually require upgrading both the processor and graphics card. Prioritize a Zen 3 CPU first, then put the rest of the budget toward a newer 1080p GPU. The 16GB of RAM is still usable, and your games should be installed on the SSD rather than the mechanical hard drive for faster loading and smoother general use.
A Ryzen 5 5600, 5600X, or 5600XT would be a good starting point. Avoid the Ryzen 5 5500 and the integrated-graphics models for this upgrade. After replacing the CPU, use the remaining budget toward a newer graphics card, such as an RX 9060 XT-class card, depending on local pricing. Check your power supply and case compatibility before buying.
Would spending roughly €60 more on a higher-end processor be worthwhile compared with the Ryzen 5 5600?