Hey guys, please review my upgrade considerations.

Goal: good bang for the buck upgrade. No need for high end. Just a cheap but good step forward. Does my choice make sense or do you think this little step is not worth it? I am a little flexible on the budget. Is there something more valuable in that range?

Duties:

  • mostly workstation / office / many browser tabs / hobby programming (small projects) / a couple apps incl. electron apps running at the same time
  • little gaming (grand strategy). So far the GPU and RAM are …fine, i guess. I will upgrade them some time in the future, to play KCD2
  • no video editing, almost no 3d modeling, little virtualization, no Image processing

Current system:

  • i5-7600K CPU
  • MS-7A71 mainboard
  • 16 GiB of RAM (slow 2133 MT/s)
  • Radeon RX 480 Graphics

Low cost upgrade idea:

  • AMD Ryzen 5 5600 6x 3.50GHz So.AM4 90€
    • there is a 5600X for 100€ but just 1% faster in benchmarks
  • Gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 AMD B550 So.AM4 Dual Channel DDR4 ATX Retail € 106
    • There are B550s for 10€ cheaper but this one supports my old DDR4-2133 RAMs and up to DDR4-3200

196€ for a good upgrade doesn’t sound too bad. I probably need a new cooler too because of the new socket. I could get faster RAMs but figured that i would probably not feel the difference. These give me upgrade options in the future but don’t cost much right now, since i hope to keep all other parts (PSU, midi tower, etc.). Is it correct, that i don’t need a new PSU since the power consumption does not increase (for now)? And does the old PSU cable fit the new mainboard?

What else do i need to consider?

Thank you :-)

  • klay@lemm.eeOPEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    CPU, boards and RAM sticks barely degrade over time

    thank you! I actually buy used things often, just with CPUs i didn’t, assuming i never know if people did overclocking or abuse them… Do you think it is safe enough? Then i would totally do it.

    The 5600 comes with a stock cooler

    I was going to buy it ‘tray’, as they cost more boxed (15- 30€). And i heard that boxed coolers are often bad. I would try to get a better cooler for a budget close to that difference.