Hi Everyone,
I am going to share about my system upgrade. I got a system assembled from a local shop around 2010, which is now 10+ years old. I used to play some old games like Vice City, and Prince of Persia. I had this computer built while I was in school, to learn about basics then.
I used to watch movies and songs at that time on it as well. I had a 720P Samsung Display with a 60 HZ refresh rate, which to my surprise is still enough for modern days as a normal monitor. There are also new monitors with 75Hz and more but this monitor still worked great.
So, let's get back to the main upgrade story.
Why do I have to upgrade?
I haven't used my system for a long since I have the new laptop with me and most of the time, I use my laptop only, being the latest than the system. But when I set up my office space in my home, I thought of setting it up as well, so I can sometimes run it. And when I was assembling it, It did not work and gave a beep.
I thought it was a faulty memory and I tried swapping rams, even using my old rams that I had kept aside after the upgrade. But that did not work and I had to get it to the repair shop. Unfortunately, the Board died and I had to go for a new board.
So, I thought instead of investing in a new Board, I should go for an upgrade. Then I enquired about some old CPUs available with some new parts. There was the option of going with either the Intel i3 with 4th gen or the Intel I5 6th gen, so I selected the Intel i5 6th gen. Below is the link if you want to check.
Initial Upgrade with Intel i56400T
- Intel i5 6400T 2.2 GHZ with 2.5 Boost (an optimized version of 6400T over 6400 with 2.5 GHz and 2.7 GHz Boost and 35 W vs 65 W TDP)
- 8*2 DDR4 Ram Gskill Ripjaws with Heatsink
- Gigabyte Board
- Integrated Intel HD 530 graphics
- 512 GB Samsung NVME SSD
It cost me around 14500 INR or $175, and normal usage performance was nice. I was able to browse 4k videos on the web and even able to smoothly open most of the latest day-to-day streaming apps like Amazon Prime and Netflix.
But I had the idea of upgrading it to make at least a mid-budget gaming system, so I tried to install a few games. I was able to play a few games like Tekken 5, NFS World, and Watch Dogs 2 on the system.
I was able to get a nice FPS of 20-25 in Watch Dogs 2 with integrated graphics and 16 GB RAM with 2133Mhz speed over 2400 normal speed because of the CPU limit.
I also installed some more games, but they were unable to start. I had a free game available from the Epic Store because of Amazon Prime gaming. It was Ghost Wire Tokyo, which I thought was an old game, but no. It was released around 2021, which makes it a new game that requires decent hardware. I haven't checked its requirements and tried to run it, and it resulted in crashing.
So I thought of adding a graphics card to my system.
Upgrade with a Graphics card
I got a graphics card from the store, GT 730 which is a decent and cheap one for 4000 INR or $50. I tested it and to my surprise, it made the system perform worse than before. So I decided to have a new card, not the latest but a powerful one.
I went for an upgrade to GTX 1650 OC which is three times more costly than the GT 730 but with decent graphics, as it's DDR6 with 4GB memory over the DDR3 one.
Upgrade with Ryzen CPU and RGB Cabinet
I had a small and cute cabinet from the 2010 time build, which was still in a good state, but the ports were damaged and it did not have enough space for the new SMPS and graphics card.
So, I then upgraded additional parts
- Ryzen 5 3500 6 Cores up to 4.1 GHZ
- Gigabyte Board (Asus one)
- Coolmaster SMPS
- Ant E Games Cabinet with RGB fans
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650
With this added my budget was gone out of budget, lol. The total cost was increased to 47K INR as the graphics card only was 12k INR so, I can say, the cost was doubled with the performance as well.
As the new Ryzen CPU did not have the Integrated CPU, I had to anyways get a new GPU, so I opted for 1650 which is very powerful. I was able to get a nice FPS with the Ghostwire Tokyo game, which I will start playing and sharing soon.
I was able to reuse my 60 Hz Samsung monitor as it's giving a nice resolution for me.
Now my Experience
I haven't spent much time on the system yet, as I was busy with other things and also the weather is so cold that not possible to sit for long.
But for gaming, I played the Ghostwire Tokyo game I got from Epic. I was getting a great performance with 60 FPS (throttling to 50-52 sometimes) and the quality was also great. I played for around 2 hours and there were no issues or heat up as it was a desktop.
What I can say is
- Now better performance in terms of speed
- Better graphics and Gaming FPS
- Better Disk speed with NVME
- Enough RAM to use with Windows 11
- Perfect for 4k Streaming and watching Videos
- Can be used as my alternate system for work as well
Now Some screenshots
I was not specifically trying to have an RGB Cabinet, but there was a very low price difference between both, which was just 800-100 INR. So I opted for an RGB Gaming cabinet from the Ant ESports (They build gaming-specific products).
The two fans installed, are both RGB and can change colour based on red, green, blue or multi-mode as per your choice. The RGB fan light can be turned off as well, which helps to save power when not in use.
Now let's see, the screenshots.
Front Side
Upper side with ports and net view.
The left side of the cabinet with tempered glass to showcase system parts.
And finally the back with the ports and wires connected.
One more thing I remembered about the cabinet is it's a modular type, which means there is an additional compartment just to hide wires so that they can not be seen while looking through the glass.
Looks cool, Isnt it?
Yes, that's the main part of a desktop nowadays.
For the remaining parts, the display is used the same as well as the woofer speakers that I got and enough base than most of the costly soundboards available in the market.
Mouse and keyboard, I used the same for now.
Link to PC Parts, if you want to explore my build and explore the cost
Intel Core i5 6400 Desktop Processor
Ryzen 5 3500 Desktop Processor
Nvidia Geforce GTX 1650 graphics Card DDR6 4GB RAM
Ant Esports ICE-211TG Mid Tower Computer Case I Gaming Cabinet
Gskill Ripjaws 8GB Ram DDR4
Cooler Master SMPS
Compatible Motherboard (As I have taken locally, I gave an online link)
Note: I am giving these as a reference only, but you can go with them if you want to build your own. The links I have added are affiliate links, so it would be good if you buy something from Amazon Links I posted.
Link to Games I mentioned
Watch Dogs 2
Ghostwire Tokyo
Need for Speed World
Summary
If I summarize my experience, I can say Ryzen works best within budget and if you have no budget constraints, then go with Intel. But the Ryzen build is best for Gamers, especially Budget gamers. You can even find Systems with Ryzen 5 3600 or Ryzen 5 4600. Gpus you can find are 1050, 1050TI, 1650 PC, 1650 super and 2060. But if you want to go hard on gaming then 3050, and 3060 are the ones to go. And the latest 4060 you can get, if you want to burn your money lol.
Thanks for reading my Blog. I will share gameplay and my experience soon. I will also compare and list all gaming cards currently available in the market soon.
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