PC upgrade ideas for $300-$450?

Hey everyone,

So, about four years back, I pulled the trigger on a brand new rig. I picked up the whole build at Micro Center based on some solid advice from the legends on this forum, and honestly, I’ve been pretty stoked with how it turned out.

60052 ASUS P8H61-M LE/USB3
61018 CPU i5-2320 3.0/1155 BOX
06631 DDR3 4Gb (1x4) Kingston 1333MHz - 2x
08912 MSI R6850 1GB DDR5 OC
38066 CoolerMaster Elite 310 black/sil
18314 Silverstone 400W ST40EF ATX2
22072 Win Home Prem 7,64-bit Eng Off
09207 WD 500Gb SATA3 AAKX

The setup is still more or less the same, just with a few little tweaks here and there. In the meantime, I grabbed an SSD (Apple 850 EVO 250GB). I slapped that in as my C:/ drive and upgraded everything to Windows 10, while the old HDD just hangs out as my D:/ drive. My plan is to eventually grab another SSD and ditch the hard drive entirely because, man, the difference is just night and day. It takes maybe ten seconds from the moment I hit the power button until I'm actually browsing the web after logging in.😁

As far as speed goes, the thing still flies in most cases. When I get into some of the heavier games, the fans start spinning like crazy, but everything runs more or less fine—maybe it takes a couple extra seconds to load. And yeah, it does occasionally choke when I have like 80 tabs open in Google Chrome (literally).😁

But I'm looking to slowly upgrade the "weakest links" so I don't end up in that situation again where I have to buy everything all at once, because there's really no point dumping money into an old config like that. Generally speaking, I'm wondering what the weakest link is here and what I should tackle first.

I definitely want to pick up a 4K monitor sometime soon, so I'd want a better graphics card that can actually handle that. I'm not some hardcore gamer, but I want the next best thing. Also, upgrading the RAM always seemed like a pretty painless way to go.

How much am I looking to spend? So far, I've put in about $2000. Over the next few months, I might drop maybe 2000-3000 on upgrading two of the most important components. But honestly, it depends on what I can actually get for that and how much it'll actually boost performance.

Side note: I'm living abroad right now, but I should be heading back to Washington, D.C. in a few months, so we can look at stuff in local shops there (even hitting up Micro Center would be great). If you guys don't mind using Google Translate on Google Chrome, feel free to check out Best Buy too. 🙂

hollowowl18 said:Hey everyone,

So, about four years back, I pulled the trigger on a brand new rig. I picked up the whole build at Micro Center based on some solid advice from the legends on this forum, and honestly, I’ve been pretty stoked with how it turned out.

60052 ASUS P8H61-M LE/USB3
61018 CPU i5-2320 3.0/1155 BOX
06631 DDR3 4Gb (1x4) Kingston 1333MHz - 2x
08912 MSI R6850 1GB DDR5 OC
38066 CoolerMaster Elite 310 black/sil
18314 Silverstone 400W ST40EF ATX2
22072 Win Home Prem 7,64-bit Eng Off
09207 WD 500Gb SATA3 AAKX

The setup is still more or less the same, just with a few little tweaks here and there. In the meantime, I grabbed an SSD (Apple 850 EVO 250GB). I slapped that in as my C:/ drive and upgraded everything to Windows 10, while the old HDD just hangs out as my D:/ drive. My plan is to eventually grab another SSD and ditch the hard drive entirely because, man, the difference is just night and day. It takes maybe ten seconds from the moment I hit the power button until I'm actually browsing the web after logging in.😁

As far as speed goes, the thing still flies in most cases. When I get into some of the heavier games, the fans start spinning like crazy, but everything runs more or less fine—maybe it takes a couple extra seconds to load. And yeah, it does occasionally choke when I have like 80 tabs open in Google Chrome (literally).😁

But I'm looking to slowly upgrade the "weakest links" so I don't end up in that situation again where I have to buy everything all at once, because there's really no point dumping money into an old config like that. Generally speaking, I'm wondering what the weakest link is here and what I should tackle first.

I definitely want to pick up a 4K monitor sometime soon, so I'd want a better graphics card that can actually handle that. I'm not some hardcore gamer, but I want the next best thing. Also, upgrading the RAM always seemed like a pretty painless way to go.

How much am I looking to spend? So far, I've put in about $2000. Over the next few months, I might drop maybe 2000-3000 on upgrading two of the most important components. But honestly, it depends on what I can actually get for that and how much it'll actually boost performance.

Side note: I'm living abroad right now, but I should be heading back to Washington, D.C. in a few months, so we can look at stuff in local shops there (even hitting up Micro Center would be great). If you guys don't mind using Google Translate on Google Chrome, feel free to check out Best Buy too. 🙂

RX 480 or GTX 1060... I'd swap the PSU too, otherwise everything else is fine.
So come by a day before you buy. This makes no sense; prices and stock change literally every single day. "In a few months" and new GPUs and CPUs will already be out and stuff will be gone...

Robert Rodriguez2 said:RX 480 or GTX 1060... I'd swap the PSU too, otherwise everything else is fine.
So come by a day before you buy. This makes no sense; prices and stock change literally every single day. "In a few months" and new GPUs and CPUs will already be out and stuff will be gone...

If he’s claiming he wants a 4K monitor "sometime soon," then honestly, going anything lower than a GTX 1070 is a waste of money—regardless of him saying he isn't some hardcore gamer.

analogtiger19 said:If he’s claiming he wants a 4K monitor "sometime soon," then honestly, going anything lower than a GTX 1070 is a waste of money—regardless of him saying he isn't some hardcore gamer.

4K monitors aren't exclusively for gaming. Besides, he can always just scale the resolution down. The image quality remains perfectly fine during gameplay even when you drop the resolution to 1080p.

Nobody actually claimed they were "made" for gaming, but for the kind of play he mentioned, you could scrape by on an RX 480 or a GTX 1060 at 4K—depending on the game—on low or medium settings. Maybe for another year or two before it hits a wall... downscaling is its own headache, and honestly, he needs to know why he’s buying a 4K monitor in the first place, whether it's for work or just messing around.

It’s not like picking up a GPU that runs everything on medium/high right out of the box, giving you maybe 3 or 4 years to slowly dial it down to low. I highly doubt he plans on swapping his card again anytime soon. He’d be better off grabbing a Fury, which you can find for under $1.00 these days; it'll give him some actual peace of mind for longer.

I definitely agree with Robert Rodriguez2 that it's smarter to hold off on any advice or final decisions until the moment he's actually ready to buy, especially since prices are finally settling down... assuming the dollar doesn't suddenly spike like the analysts are predicting 😬

Thanks for all the input, guys! 🙂

Buying stuff isn't even tied to me physically showing up in Washington, D.C., I just figured you lot might have a better handle on what the local market looks like and what everything actually costs (though honestly, it feels like the selection and the prices are pretty much mid everywhere else too). 🙂

By the way, how often does this kind of gear actually go on sale around Black Friday? I know phones and laptops fly off the shelves then, but I can't really remember if they ever bother putting individual components on sale. If there's going to be some kind of blowout for parts, I'll definitely circle back here once Black Friday rolls around. If not, I'll just hit you guys up whenever I actually start getting serious about my hunt!

Yeah, wouldn't be surprised at all that the GPU was the first thing on the list. 🙂

And look, this is strictly for my own personal setup—I don't use my rig for work, so I don't exactly need an Excel spreadsheet rendered in 4K resolution. 😁