ID Verified
|
Trusted Lifetime subscriber
quickymart:
What a great tool! Thanks for the tip.
This is a PB Tech custom-built machine, made in early 2018.
I use it for working from home (VPN), web browsing, watching movies, the odd bit of light gaming etc. I'd love to use two monitors but would need a larger desk.
Okay, so you're in quite a unique position in that you have a motherboard that can actually take a very modern CPU.
Can you run GPU-Z (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/) and show what that says you have for your GPU?
At this stage, I'd say a bigger SSD is cheap and worthwhile, you can get a much more modern CPU with an integrated GPU, lose your current GPU (I believe it'll be slower than the intergrated GPU, unless I'm mistaken), and pop in some more RAM.
Parts list as follows
https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDSAM971501/Samsung-970-EVO-Plus-500GB-M2-2280NVMe-SSD-RWMax-3 Samsung EVO 970 500GB NVMe SSD, $109.
https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/CPUAMD05600G/AMD-Ryzen-5-5600G-6-Core--12-Threads-up-to-44GHz-M AMD Ryzen 7 5600G, $320.85 with built in GPU.
https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/MEMGSK3829/GSKILL-Ripjaws-V-Series-Black-32GB-DDR4-Desktop-Me G.SKILL 32GB RAM kit, $212.
Or, you could also reduce costs a bit and opt for https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/MEMGSK3828/GSKILL-Ripjaws-V-Series-Black-16GB-DDR4-Desktop-Me for $114.32, which is the same kit but in 16GB instead of 32GB.
Ask PB Tech to install it all, it's definitely compatible with your board but you will need to upgrade the BIOS.
Advise them of this, the BIOS is available from https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A320M-HDV/index.asp#BIOS
They will need to flash the 7.0 Beta BIOS, and then the 7.03 Beta BIOS, which will enable support for the Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. You won't be able to flash back to the older BIOS,
And you could also upgrade the CPU Cooler from the OEM one if you wanted.
This will be a SIGNIFICANT jump in performance, as you're going from a quad core Bristol Ridge part (4 very old, very slow cores, equivalent to a Pentium Dual Core), to a modern 6 core, 12 thread CPU which could probably outperform your original CPU using a single core.
On top of that, the integrated GPU will be notably more performant than the GPU, which I suspect is an R7 240, and with 32GB of RAM you'll have plenty of memory to play with.
Edit:
Actually, if you do need a video card for games, image editing, etc. you could swap the CPU out for https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/CPUAMD05500/AMD-Ryzen-5-5500-6-Core12-Threads-up-to-42Ghz-19MB for $240.35, and then add a GPU of your choice, be it a GTX 1650, RTX 3060, etc.
You will probably need an upgraded PSU at that point though, and this one is probably overkill but quite affordable. https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/PSUCLM4651/Cooler-Master-MWE-Gold-650W-80Plus-Gold-Fixed-Cabl
Anything I say is the ramblings of an ill informed, opinionated so-and-so, and not representative of any of my past, present or future employers, and is also probably best disregarded.
ID Verified
|
|
