Hey guys, so I have ~$500 available at the moment and am planning to improve my gaming rig, and I was hoping to get some input from you tech savy folks so I can get the most out of my budget. I had some very helpful people on these forums help me peice together my computer to begin with a couple years or so back (which I was very happy with for my limited budget at that time as well,) but I'm sure that can be improved on now a few years later with some more money to work with, and I also went with the bare minimum in terms of accessories (such as monitor, mouse, keyboard, I mean I don't even have a headset yet lmao)

Either way, this is my "Speccy" summary, which should give an idea of what I'm working with, and I can say that I have some godawful old HP speakers, literally a TV as a monitor, a $5 mouse and a really old logitech keyboard that seems fine actually, but I'm sure it could be better. If you guys need any more input let me know and I'll see what more I can add.

---Operating System
Windows 8.1 64-bit
---CPU
AMD FX-6300
Vishera 32nm Technology
---RAM
8.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24)
---Motherboard
MSI 970A-G46 (MS-7693) (CPU 1)
---Graphics
Acer S202HL (1600x900@60Hz)
E241-A1 (1920x1080@60Hz)
2048MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series (XFX Pine Group)
---Storage
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-00KUWA0 ATA Device (SATA)
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-00KUWA0 ATA Device (SATA)
---Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NSB0 ATA Device
---Audio
AMD High Definition Audio Device


With this all said, the "accessories" I was looking at were namely an actual gaming monitor (Acer GN246HL possibly, roughly $192) a gaming mouse (corsair scimitar looked nice but it's $80, maybe logitech g600 for a $40 alternative, I do play MMOs and like the idea of an MMO mouse) and a headset (logitech g230 looked solid for ~$40) with a keyboard potentially being the last thing I was concerned with, since I have a mechanical keyboard, even if its old as hell and not a gaming one, seems the least desperately needed upgrade XD

Of coarse, these total to quite a large chunk of my budget, and I'm not sure if I should be looking to upgrade my computer itself in other more prudent ways?

I'm a big gamer, and mainly just wanted to improve my quality of life in doing just that, gaming, whether it be from investing into accessories or the computer itself. I know a monitor upgrade to 144hz might accomplish nothing FPS wise if my computer itself doesn't have the horsepower for example, so that's definitely a big factor in this sort of thing.

Can anyone help with some advice? Perhaps you know better accessories for my budget, or have better ideas of how to spend the money to get a much nicer gaming setup going?

PS: Should I wait for blackfriday or something to buy my parts off Amazon? I literally don't buy stuff often, and really want to get the most out of what I have.

Thanks for any help!

IF you have two sticks of RAM, you have them in the wrong slots. If you only have one stick of RAM, then disregard.

I see that you said you play MMOs. Do you also play other types of games?


As for upgrades, that's kind of hard. Maybe SSD and a decent monitor.

If you upgrade the vid card, then the CPU will be the problem. And the smart upgrade for the rest would be new mobo, CPU and RAM...which will not be cheap.

Like this: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/v4cTCy <---- If you do this...save up about $300 more for a GTX 1060, as soon as possible.



/e If you decide for peripherals, I would get a decent 1440p monitor, and maybe a keyboard and a mouse.

This post was edited by Ghot on Jul 25 2016 11:39am

Is there a way I can check if it's one or two sticks of RAM without opening the case? I didn't piece it together personally so I couldn't tell you off hand, but that sounds iffy.

I do play other games, I play a bunch actually. Most consistently it's games like League of Legends, Overwatch, PoE, DotA, bunch of steam games, with intention of stuff like witcher 3, doom, dark souls 3 etc if it turns out they run well on this. One of the main reasons I was looking for upgrades was because of playing competitive games like league and overwatch though, for example, for the 1 ms response time monitor "edge" over some tv monitor that has who knows what response time etc (am I overestimating how much that matters?)

As for the rest, it sounds like I need more $$$ to upgrade the computer itself in a meaningful way, which isn't too surprising honestly. Do you feel my computer would make good use out of a 144hz monitor, and how meaningful of a boost is 1440p over 1080 for gaming? When I looked at 1440p 144hz 1ms response, they seemed almost twice as expensive as the 1080 144hz 1ms monitor I had listed above D:

Thanks for the help so far.

This post was edited by shinigami on Jul 25 2016 09:44pm

144Hz/1440p is the way to go for gaming. but without a $300-400 vid card, you will struggle to push that many pixels.

The problem here is, you need a full upgrade and you have the budget for half an upgrade.

This is the kind of build you need to run games like Doom and Dark Souls 3...on a decent monitor.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/PjshgL


/e Or to get really serious...

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/zRRK4C

This post was edited by Ghot on Jul 25 2016 09:52pm

hmm, thats rough hah.

All right, so since I can't afford that any time soon (like for years most likely =P) should I just look for a good monitor now with intentions of upgrading the PC down the road to fully utilize the monitor later (and in the meantime get the 1ms response and stuff like that going?) as well as remedy some of the other rather sad bits like having no headset and a 5$ mouse? lol. Also I have a "logitech internet navigator keyboard" that I assume is decades old but I really have no clue, would a gaming keyboard be a meaningful upgrade you think?

As for Doom and Darksouls 3, I guess those will just be on the "to play" list for quite a while, but maybe I can make my league/overwatch/WoW gaming experience get a boost peripheral wise at least right? =P

/e Yeah.... I can't get serious lmao.

This post was edited by shinigami on Jul 25 2016 10:06pm

I would suggest a good monitor (1920 x 1080)and maybe a GTX 1060. That should come to about $600, if you shop around.

Good monitor being 144Hz and preferably IPS, but TN will work almost as well. The GTX 1060s should be available in a week or two. The GTX 1060 will cost about $300.

Or just skip the monitor for now, and get a GTX 1070 and an SSD

Thanks a ton guys, some great input that's eye opening for me here. Since SSD and GFX seem to be the consensus, may I ask what grabbing these two specific upgrades would do for my gaming in general? (I know better GFX improve graphics / FPS etc hah, I just don't know how much better the ones suggested are than what I have and what it would "enable" for me that I can't currently do if that makes sense, given I don't have a 144hz monitor yet to even benefit from more than 60 FPS. Would it be the difference between max settings on witcher 3 / doom etc while I currently would probably be on lowest or something like that?)

Also the SSD, is that just going to give me more HD space (something I definitely would appreciate don't get me wrong, but I guess I'm not running out yet)

Apologies for being fairly naive with this stuff, just trying to understand why these pieces are unanimously considered the priority for you guys XD

As for the monitor, I feel like I'm probably just super tunnel visioned on it at the moment due to having a TV as my main screen atm, ever since I read that TV's don't have their MS response times even listed because of how bad they tend to be. Since I play lots of competetive games, things like ping and delay just matter a whole bunch to me generally speaking, and especially since I am west coast playing league where the servers are in CH, having 79ms ping on average is already a pain in the ass, if I could shave some delay between my input and the game by getting a better monitor, I just get the impression that would matter a whole bunch (but I could be overestimating that or tunneling too hard on that concept) Between that and the idea that getting better GFX to enable higher than 60 FPS is irrelevent until I have a higher than 60hz monitor just lead me to the conclusion a monitor would be a good purchase to "set me up" for future upgrades down the road as well. + it couldn't hurt to have 2 1920/1080 monitors for my 2 monitor setup atm rather than having two monitors of different sizes aesthetically.

But yeah if you guys think GFX and SSD are top priority, I can understand that too XD Just explaining why I kept tunneling on the monitor, but you're definitely right, they cost a bunch.

This post was edited by shinigami on Jul 25 2016 11:51pm

awesome link, definitely bookmarking that one XD