Morning FG,
I thought I'd post a what would you do regarding a potential PC upgrade as I have a dilemma. My current PC is a m-itx build; Intel 3770 (not a K), 8Gb DDR3 1600Mhz RAM, GTX 1050Ti, 60Gb SSD for OS. I use it for gaming but also for Photoshop, 3D modelling and rendering and a little video editing (hopefully more when I pull my finger out - sorry Lee ) It is worth noting that I only game at 1920x1200 at 60fps and I'm reluctant to change my monitor as it is a colour accurate monitor.
I was looking at around a £1000 for an upgrade and I have been looking at building a whole new system, Ryzen 5 1600, 16Gb DDR4 3000Mhz or 3200Mhz RAM, 256Gb SSD, GTX 1060 or 1070 and upgrading to Windows 10. The other option is put that money in to a new PSU and GPU (probably 1080 maybe 1080ti) and maybe try to find 16Gb RAM for my current system.
So to the dilemma; If I stick with my current m-itx system then I am quite limited in that I'd need to get creative with my HDD placement to fit bigger GPU's in my case. I've run out of sata ports on my MB which is an annoyance so potentially could change MB too though this would require a new case (though if I change to an ATX case this cost could be offset for lack of a better word as the case could be used for builds in the future). All the non-gaming stuff I do loves RAM so it would be nice to change to 16Gb but being m-itx I have only 2 DIMM's so it means a wholesale swap rather than adding more sticks unless I do go for the change in MB too. I would like to change to Windows 10 too for the reasons above and would like a bigger SSD while I'm at it. On top of all this, I'd also have to get a new PSU.
So basically; sticking with my current system actually means new ram, new GPU, new PSU, new SSD and new OS with maybe a new case and new motherboard. This big pro would be a nice performance increase to everything but it feel like a lot of effort and change to still be running on a 6 year old CPU, EOL RAM etc. The GPU would be overkill for effectively 1080p60 gaming but the 3D side of things is GPU accelerated so I would see some benefits.
A whole new Ryzen based system would be an upgrade but having looked at numerous benchmarks the single threaded performance and even multithreaded, a Ryzen 5 1600/1600x doesn't score much higher (if at all) over my 3770. However a whole new system does come some advantages, it is all newer hardware; DDR4 RAM is much faster than DDR3, AMD have said they will support the AM4 socket for a while (2019 or 2020 I think they said?). Even with a lower GPU in this build I should still easily hit 60Hz of my monitor on high settings but in 3D and rendering the small gain in CPU performance would be offset but the loss in GPU performance.
It seems illogical to me to upgrade to a whole new Ryzen based system for very little gains in performance but it seems equally as illogical to go through that much change and be on 'old' hardware.
So FG WWYD?