Future-proofing / potential new upgrades for future?

CGettins

Active member
Evening all, I recently received my new build (full specs are in the signature).
I'm just wondering, what sort of upgrades should I look at? I'm going to look at eventually upgrading the storage to higher levels, although theres no rush for this as I'm no where near filling my storage.

I'm using this computer for both work/play purposes. The only games I really play are FIFA, GTA V and Cities Skylines (CS I know is highly ram hungry and has high pc usage).

So far, monitor-wise, I've looked at the AOC e2770Sh 27" or Samsung C27F390 (my thinking is I wouldn't require a 144mhz monitor, due to me not being on the most intense games etc? Please correct me if wrong)

Any tips with regards to upgrades, or any future things I should look at would be great please. Thinking mainly GPU, ram?
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
What? You've just received a new build and already you're thinking of upgrades?! Why did you not ask these questions before you placed your order???
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
As above, considering upgrades now is kinda crazy :) If you're upgrading soon you should have not bought the PC, instead saving up a little more cash to avoid wastage through upgrades - and if you're not upgrading for a long while, there's no point planning because new stuff is coming out all the time.

We're going to see new families of CPUs and GPUs from AMD this year for instance, probably starting in the summer. I mean there's one GPU coming out tomorrow...

You should not ever need to upgrade the RAM - 16gb is way more than enough for gaming and by the time it's not we'll be on DDR5 anyway. The RAM was the most long-term investment for your system, as discussed in the other topic.

Whatever monitor you buy, make sure it has freesync. And if you can, try to confirm people have reported that model also working with Nvidia GPUs too now Nvidia have enabled that. Ideally something with a decent freesync range. e.g. G2460VQ6

But... buying a monitor only to then upgrade the GPU is not a sound plan, because you want the monitor and GPU to be a good match. Getting a budget ~£120 monitor if you're then upgrading to an RTX 2060 is not an ideal way to do it.

Do you actually need a new monitor? Unless your old monitor dead or below 1080p resolution a £120-£150 monitor isn't actually going to be much of an upgrade.
 

CGettins

Active member
I've only just been told after receiving my order that I had some inheritence money coming to me in the next month - so was a little too late, as I had already received and was enjoying my new build. I was simply just posting to see what I could look at upgrading in the future. Sadly my monitor broke, so I've had to go back to using the AOC 23.6" E2470SWDA LED TFT - 1920 x 1080. So mainly looking at upgrading that. I like AOC, so might go with the recommendation you've already made.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
So the AOC 23.6" E2470SWDA LED TFT is a 1080p 60hz budget monitor worth ~£100.

The 2 monitors you listed are more or less the same, but 27". The monitor I suggested is the same but with freesync.

In other words, none of these are a major upgrade on your E2470SWDA. They are all budget-class 1080p monitors. You'd be better off sticking with the E2470SWDA for now, and saving the money towards a major monitor upgrade, which you should perform in tandem with a GPU upgrade. :)

Your 1050 ti was something you already had from before buying the new PC anyway as I recall?

What sort of budget are you looking at for combined upgrades?
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
I've only just been told after receiving my order that I had some inheritence money coming to me in the next month - so was a little too late, as I had already received and was enjoying my new build. I was simply just posting to see what I could look at upgrading in the future. Sadly my monitor broke, so I've had to go back to using the AOC 23.6" E2470SWDA LED TFT - 1920 x 1080. So mainly looking at upgrading that. I like AOC, so might go with the recommendation you've already made.

Upgrade the monitor then and invest the rest of the inheritance money for three years. Then, in three years time you'll be able to afford a brand new system using the then latest technology. That makes more economic sense I think. :)
 

CGettins

Active member
Probably would look at spending £600 max on the combined upgrade (is this realistic??) Don't really wanna change the Ryzen 2600 too soon, so guessing I would need to go for a GPU which wouldn't massively bottleneck. I'm currently using the 1050ti from an older build correct :)
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
1) There's nothing it makes any sense to upgrade the R5 2600 to until Zen 2 comes out later in the year
2) Even then it probably won't be worth it as the CPU is fine
3) The 2600 isn't going to bottleneck the GPU in nearly all cases anyway

I wouldn't worry about bottlenecks :)

You could go with an RTX 2060 for £330 and a 27" 1440p 144hz monitor with freesync like the EG 27 (Element Gaming 27) for £230 (the usual sale price down from £270). Apparently the freesync plays nice with nvidia GPUs too. But even if not it's still a solid spec for the cash.
 

CGettins

Active member
1) There's nothing it makes any sense to upgrade the R5 2600 to until Zen 2 comes out later in the year
2) Even then it probably won't be worth it as the CPU is fine
3) The 2600 isn't going to bottleneck the GPU in nearly all cases anyway

I wouldn't worry about bottlenecks :)

You could go with an RTX 2060 for £330 and a 27" 1440p 144hz monitor with freesync like the EG 27 (Element Gaming 27) for £230 (the usual sale price down from £270). Apparently the freesync plays nice with nvidia GPUs too. But even if not it's still a solid spec for the cash.

Thanks for the advice, I'll get this sorted soon! :)
 

CGettins

Active member
Hi, just been doing some digging into the monitor, and it states that its only 'AMD FreeSync' as opposed to an NVIDIA one, people on the web have stated that it would only be effective with an AMD built GPU, is this correct?
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
No.

Up until January, they'd have been right.

Then in Jan, Nvidia started supporting VESA Adaptive Sync, better known under the AMD branding Freesync. They probably could have done all along, but that would have undercut their revenue from gsync which uses some proprietary hardware. This was quite a major shift by Nvidia.

Nvidia did so while still extolling the virtues of gsync, and warning of what could happen if you used an adaptive sync (for which read Freesync) monitor they hadn't explicitly approved as being compatible. They said they'd tested over 400 monitors and only felt comfortable listing 12 as 'gsync compatible'.

So the first thing everyone did was to go out and test gsync on every not-officially-approved-as-compatible monitor and found that, as expected, it basically works fine. Which makes sense because all Nvidia are doing is supporting an open standard of adaptive sync, which the monitor is supposed to have if it has freesync.

e.g. https://www.techspot.com/article/1779-freesync-and-nvidia-geforce/ everything worked, including LFC - the only monitor that didn't play nice was the one that needs freesync via HDMI and not DP (which is unusual) and Nvidia's GPUs support it only via DP. The EG 27" supports freesync via DP. And if you look at the user reviews of it on a particular site, there is someone claiming they have gsync working on it fine since Jan.

There's a public google docs sheet started on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/ag5z8m/nvidia_freesync_monitor_testing_master_list/

Which is pretty much wall-to-wall people saying that it works on X monitor

So the adaptive sync should work, but even if it doesn't it's the highest spec GPU and monitor combo you can get for £600 that I can think of.
 
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