PC Upgrade Decisions

Kinja'd!!! by "Junkrat aka Rick Sanchez: Fury Road Edition" (realasabass)
Published 07/02/2017 at 14:47

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Kinja'd!!!

So here is the deal. My kids are wanting to play games other than Minecraft on their PC’s. I built some PC’s for them a while back, nothing special AMD Dual Core APU’s with R5 graphics. I was going to split up my current 7970's between them and get myself some new cards or card. So I went to go look at their computers to make sure they had room in the cases, I noticed the PSU’s did not have any 6 pin connectors for the GPU. I guess in my quest to find a good deal on PSU’s I overlooked that detail. Now I will have to buy new PSU’s for the external video cards.

Here is my question. I want to get them better CPU’s, but do I stay with the FM2 socket or go with the low end Ryzen with a new motherboard? Should I maybe reach a little further and get a Kaby Lake i5? I could get a decent APU with onboard 7850 graphics for around $120, a Ryzen for $160, or an i5 for $190. Will these other chips be that much better to warrant a new motherboard? They will probably still be stuck with my 7970's for at least a year after this, although a RX 460 or 1050 can be had pretty cheap.


Replies (8)

Kinja'd!!! "djmt1" (djmt1)
07/02/2017 at 14:53, STARS: 2

Future proof now while your up for it.

Kinja'd!!! "LongbowMkII" (longbowmkii)
07/02/2017 at 15:05, STARS: 0

The Ryzen seems pretty amazing, particularly for the price.

Kinja'd!!! "TheTurbochargedSquirrel" (thatsquirrel)
07/02/2017 at 15:58, STARS: 0

A Ryzen 5 would be a great option as a cheaper powerful cpu.

Kinja'd!!! "Manwich - now Keto-Friendly" (manwich)
07/02/2017 at 16:00, STARS: 1

When deciding to do a CPU upgrade, I like to look at Tom’s Hardware CPU hierarchy:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html  

Going with a Ryzen will likely be a big performance jump... and will likely be the best performance boost for the money.

Kinja'd!!! "facw" (facw)
07/02/2017 at 16:20, STARS: 1

7970s aren’t super power hungry, you might well be able to get away with using these:

Kinja'd!!!

Edit: Err wait, I was thinking 7870s. 7970 would probably be too much.

Kinja'd!!! "Joel Ness" (joelness)
07/02/2017 at 17:00, STARS: 0

Umm, thanks for the meme. Can’t unsee that!

Kinja'd!!! "Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
07/02/2017 at 18:03, STARS: 0

+1 for the Nibby reveal.

Kinja'd!!! "Illegitimus Prime" (illprime)
07/03/2017 at 04:12, STARS: 0

I had an AMD A10 6700 and upgraded to a Ryzen 5 1600, the performance difference is massive between the two, I can imagine the difference between a Ryzen 5 1400 and an older dual core APU is pretty huge. Ryzen would be a good move IMO.