So, I am currently running an absolutely ancient Ship of Theseus desktop. I have fairly modest needs, looking to play games, lets say on the order of Starfield, at 1080P, medium-ish settings, and not dropping below 30FPS when things get busy on-screen. Something like Minecraft I'd like to run a touch more aggressively, but I know it has its own technical bottlenecks that make it more intensive than you might think (don't murder me... I still play Bedrock because I like vanilla survival and it runs well). I also do some light 3D CAD using paid-for software that I like, so some sort of legal-ish Windows partition or VM with some form of GPU acceleration would also be nice, but I'm okay with running Linux for most things.
Current specs:
- Gigabyte B450M mobo
- Ryzen 5 2400G as CPU only
- Radeon RX 580
- 16GB PC3200 DDR4
- Unholy accumulation of SATA III drives: a Lexar 250gb for Windows 10, a 120GB Samsung for a couple of games, and a 640GB 7200RPM drive for Linux and storage.
I have actually been able to get the aforementioned Starfield running at 50fps (inside and light load) and 20-25ish FPS (outside action) at a customized set of low settings that isn't too horrifyingly ugly, but (1) that's clearly about as good as it's going to get, and (2) it's probably contributing to my not playing it all that much. So, what would help, and is anything salvageable? Would prefer to keep the upgrades as cheap as possible while getting a noticeable improvement to tide me over for a couple more years of low-end gaming and CAD. I'm not targeting any specific number, just "better." If it helps, let's set a USD $300 cap on upgrades, but cheaper is better. I'm hoping that staying at the lower resolution will be helpful.
I think the best routes to upgrades would be a 5000 series CPU, and a more modern budget GPU like an Arc B570 or RX 7600. Neither of these are likely to require you to upgrade your MOBO, RAM, or PSU.
Off the top of your head (because otherwise I'm happy to do my own research) would the Ryzen 5 5500 be worth the small premium over a 4500?
Try to get ryzen 5600, it's pretty good and goes cheap. 5500 should be mostly fine too, but it's a little gimped on cache compared to 5600. Avoid cpus with G at the end, you don't want/need to pay for integrated graphics.
Second thing would be graphics card. Try to find used radeon 5700, 6600 or something similar. They will be faster and won't be as power hungry = you won't need new power supply.
Also bigger ssd. Doesn't need to be nvme, but having spinning drive for software is a pain these days. Sata SSD is fine.
Yeah, for the first several years of this motherboard and CPU, I ran it with the integrated graphics. Vega APUs were the new budget gaming hotness for a little while. :-) God, I'm old.
I'll keep an eye out for good deals, and see what I can put together. Sounds like this is at least a non-crazy budget for what I'm after. Thanks!