I’m currently running the following:
Gigabyte B550 UC AC-Y1 motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
AMD Radeon RX 6600
32GB Ram
500GB SSD + 1TB SSD
PSU 600W
Outside of wow, I do photography. So I use photoshop, lightroom, and various other photo editing programs also that are graphics and ram intensive. If money was no issue, what is the first two things you’d upgrade to? If you had a budget of $1000 for upgrades, what would you choose?
Monitor is a HP 25f set to 1920 x 1080 due to editing for photo competitions. Refresh rate is set at 59.94hz with the ability to go up to 75 hz. WOW is really the only game I play outside of the photo programs above (plus evoto). Power supply looks to be EVGA 600W. Right now I’m averaging about 58 fps on wow.
Monitor is still good, and would probably be last on my list since I bought it specifically for photo editing.
I was thinking probably GPU and possibly power supply. But am really debating if starting to upgrade with the mobo first would be worth it since I’d be able to upgrade from there with newer items as they come out too.
so EVGA had several 600w units
600b & 600w from HEC and the 600wBQ from andyson
HEC has certainly done better in production lately but not when those units were made. Andyson is pretty mediocre as well. These are OEMS you go to knowing cost cutting will be done that will impact performance. The 600w probably the cheapest of the three, the BQ was…OK and the better of the three with a FDB fan (although noisy) and 105c rated main cap.
1920x1080 is hardly demanding and you already get close to 60fps. Something like the RTX 4060 will get you to 75fps in WoW easy but really not worth that investment for just 15 fps. Cards like the RTX4060ti or RX 6800 would be nice upgrades from the RX 6600 but your 1)monitor refresh rate would limit their full potential 2) your CPU would start to limit their full potential 3) you can run the RX4060ti off the evga BQ 600 but the RX 6800 would really push that PSU and it could get noisy (probably will) . I would not run either GPU on the other two units especially the “W”.
If it was me (take or it leave it) with a 1k budget
1-solid PSU
2 - GPU (RTX 4060ti or 7700XT)
3 - Monitor (I know you want to skip that part but it really will give your GPU upgrade room to stretch its legs)
4- look for a used 5700X3D or 5800X3D
without the budget
5700X3D & 5800X3D are great gaming CPUs even today and will run WoW and most other games extremely well with a mid level GPU…probably I would sacrifice some CPU performance now and get a 7600x (still a very good gaming CPU) with a new platform that AMD will support with new CPUs for at least another two years giving me more of a upgrade path down the road
hope this helps you a bit to make your decision, end of the day get the performance you want that puts smile on your face otherwise what’s the point of getting hardware
Thank you! That does help. I’m thinking I’ll likely go the no budget route and get what I was thinking. It’s easy enough to build gaming computers for me. While I wasn’t wanting to upgrade the monitor I may look at the higher quality photo editing ones which wouldn’t be a bad thing. The PSU, I was figuring I’d likely need to upgrade since it’s only 600W anyways. And wasn’t exactly the best one then.
From what you’ve said, a 750 or 850 W PSU (although this might not be necessary depending on what GPU you go for)+5700x3d, with as much of the rest put towards getting as beefy a GPU as you think you need within budget sounds like the play.
Although, you can probably fit up to a 4070 Super with a 5700x3d and still be fine on the 600 W PSU from a capacity perspective. But the market’s gone crazy with the shortages and the 50 series launch, so the days of $550 4070s appear to be gone for a while.
600w, 750w, and 850w are all more marketing numbers and fail to tell the ability of a PSU without temp rating and proper 3rd party testing. For example if I recall correctly that EVGA 600"W" is only rated for 25c (30c tops) while the 600 BQ is surprisingly rated at 40c. A quality 650w unit like the corsair RMx line is rated to 50c. What does that mean? Well inside your PC temps can easily hit 45c+ so that 600w 25c rated will not be able to perform under spec in those conditions. Once pushed to high power demands it will either fail to deliver power and/or go out of spec. The 40c will perform better but may have similar issues once you push it even further near its limit. The 50c rated (and tested) unit will hit 650w power delivery no problem under those conditions while still remaining in spec.
So in reality that 600w is more like a mediocre 500w unit. Same can be said to generically state get a 750w, 850w, 1000w, etc., unit. What often ends up happening is someone says get that quality 650w for $100 (an example) while the shopper sees a 800w unit for $75 and says to themselves why spend $100 for 650w when I can get 150w for more for $25 less? That’s a no brainer. Well that 800w is rated for 30c and basically acts like a mediocre 700w unit while 650w is built like a tank, doesn’t sweat in hot temps, and will handle any transient spike your mid level GPU will toss at it while remaining under spec and keeping your hardware in proper working condition without damaging it.
So get the PSU that has the proper connectors your system needs, handles all your current hardware and down the road upgrades, and will properly perform under difficult conditions for your system (and future ones) time line and passed “proper” 3rd party testing.
Is that a 650w, 750w, 1000w+ unit? I can’t tell you that and neither can anyone else without the user doing home work on their end to a degree. What parts do I plan to have now and down the road and what are their power demands. Getting a $250 1000w unit is waste of money if you only need 375w tops. A 650w for $100 will handle that and you could have upgraded the CPU, GPU, etc., for better performance. Getting a $100 650w when you will need 600w 12 pin connector for a flagship GPU in two years is also a waste of money since now you are going to have to spend another $200 for a quality 1000w PSU.
*prices are an example