PC upgrade advice needed
in Desktops ·
If I were in your shoes, I’d go with the Ryzen 1500X, an AM4 motherboard for roughly $267 (which is about half the price of the CPU), and put $333 toward some DDR4 RAM without a second thought. If you can swing 16GB, do it; otherwise, stick with 8GB and upgrade later. You won't even need an extra cooler since this model comes with a decent one included.
Your PSU is more than sufficient for what you're doing, so there's no need to swap it out. Also, keep this in mind: if you decide to upgrade in a year or two, adding more cores on an Intel build usually means replacing the entire architecture along with the CPU—unless you hunt down a used Extreme edition, which isn't worth the cost. With Ryzen, however, you could grab a used high-end model or a newer series that will almost certainly be compatible with that same motherboard. It simply gives you much more flexibility than Intel does.
Since gaming is your main priority here, you'll likely find yourself wanting a stronger GPU sooner rather than later. As someone mentioned earlier, a GTX 1060 would have been the better move. But it is what it is.
Before Ryzen arrived on the scene, there wouldn't have been any debate; you'd just grab an i5 CPU for gaming and call it a day. Nowadays, though, investing in a Ryzen chip makes more financial sense because it's a solid performer and offers much better future-proofing for upgrades.
Your PSU is more than sufficient for what you're doing, so there's no need to swap it out. Also, keep this in mind: if you decide to upgrade in a year or two, adding more cores on an Intel build usually means replacing the entire architecture along with the CPU—unless you hunt down a used Extreme edition, which isn't worth the cost. With Ryzen, however, you could grab a used high-end model or a newer series that will almost certainly be compatible with that same motherboard. It simply gives you much more flexibility than Intel does.
Since gaming is your main priority here, you'll likely find yourself wanting a stronger GPU sooner rather than later. As someone mentioned earlier, a GTX 1060 would have been the better move. But it is what it is.
Before Ryzen arrived on the scene, there wouldn't have been any debate; you'd just grab an i5 CPU for gaming and call it a day. Nowadays, though, investing in a Ryzen chip makes more financial sense because it's a solid performer and offers much better future-proofing for upgrades.