Best path for upgrading my pc

[smb3]

My desktop is quite old and I'm trying to see what's the best upgrade path for me

Current setup

• Ryzen 3400g
• 32Gb ram
• Atx case - let's say it needs to be replaced
• There's a micro atx motherboard becausethe proper one broke and I replaced it with the cheapest I could find at the time lol

I don't use the PC much, in fact I use my work macbook more, but I want to separate work and personal as my main reason for doing this.

Don't really need a graphics card, but I do play around with local llms. I do gaming on my steam deck, if there's a way to get good 1080p gaming I'll consider it.

Things on my mind

• Current idea is to just get one of those upgrade kits from evetech
• Should I go with a smaller form factor case if I'm not going to get a great graphics card?
• Should I rather another laptop instead?

Thoughts on which way to go? Best value, not necessarily cheapest, is the way I want to go.

 

[Lupus]

If you don't use the PC much, keep the AM4 platform and go for this


CPU miles ahead, GPU should be okay for 1080p gaming and it won't break the bank

 

[TheMightyQuin]

 

[Jean Claude Vaaldamme]

Depends on how much you want to spend.
Keep everything you have except the CPU.
Spend little Go on Carbonite, get a Ryzen 3700x for around R1500 and a RX 6600xt For around R3500
Spend a bit more, Go on Carb, get a Ryzen 5600x for around R2000 and a Rx 6700xt for around R5000

 

[Jean Claude Vaaldamme]

OK and putting a GPU in also depends on what PSU you have, you may need to upgrade that too.

 

[Rayne]

How much are you spending?

 

[bixt]

If you don't use the PC much, keep the AM4 platform and go for this
View attachment 1840887

CPU miles ahead, GPU should be okay for 1080p gaming and it won't break the bank

I wouldnt buy buy that card, he didn't specify his MB so ill assume its PCIe 3 - which is only x8 for this GPU and a major bottleneck (pcie3 x 8 lanes) . Get a Radeon 9060 instead which has a full x16 bus. Even though it will run at pcie3 speeds and not pcie5 it wont matter as the large bus will compensate.

Agree with the CPU choice. Thats a fantastic CPU.

 

[kamikazi]

A Ryzen 5 5600 and an Intel B580 12GB should give you good mileage for around R8k, though you might be constrained by the graphics card running at PCI-E 3.0 x 8 speeds, though this should only be generally noticeable when loading larger LLM models, and shouldn't impact your tokens/second generation.

A 16GB graphics card will give you a bit more flexibility for picking LLMs, but the RX 9060 XT 16GB version doesn't have particularly high memory bandwidth, but its definitely the best value for money card out there. A 2nd hand RTX 3060 with 12GB is also a decent option if you want access to Cuda on Nvidia. If your focus is more on LLMs than gaming it could also be worth a look at the RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB RAM if you can stretch your budget.

Running with a 8GB graphics card limits your options quite a lot with the size of models that you can fit into memory, though it would be passable if you are only dabbling a little (I used a RTX 3060 Ti for playing around with LM Studio).

 

[smb3]

How much are you spending?

Let's say 11k max. But if something is great value then I don't mind stretching a bit.

There were questions on the motherboard too, current one is this

MSI A320M PRO-VH AMD AM4 Micro-ATX Gaming Motherboard

For psu, I can't remember what I got but consider it good enough.

 

[kamikazi]

I'd go for a Ryzen 5 5600 with that board looking at the motherboard power circuit and age of the board. If you go this route, remember to update the Bios first before upgrading the CPU.

Another option in your budget is something like a GMKtec NUCBOX K8 Plus AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS. The performance of this CPU is very good.

That will give you a good overall PC boost and will be adequate for light gaming (I have this APU in a laptop and if you don't play the latest games or turn the setting down for newer titles its surprisingly capable), but with the NPU and shared memory it is possible to fit larger LLM models, especially if you upgrade the RAM. It doesn't have a high token/sec generation, but it does run.

Wootware also has a branded laptop with an AMD APU along the above lines that slightly exceeds your budget, but for a laptop option that is also something to consider, though you would still need an OS.