I’m not very tech savvy so please bear with me.
I bought a premade in 2018 and I’ve only updated the graphics card and ram since then. I’m using a 55" Samsung TV as a monitor. It’s really starting to get sluggish/finicky. Gaming example: it can run BGate3 on medium but starts having issues any higher.
- Processor: Intel Core i3-8100 Coffee Lake CPU, 4 Cores, 3.6GHz
- Graphics Card NIVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8gb
- CPU Cooler: Intel Stock CPU Cooler
- Motherboard: ASUS Z370-P Motherboard
- Memory: 8GB DDR4 2400MHz Memory (2 x 4GB Sticks) + Crucial Ballistix BL2K8G36C16U4B 3600 MHz, DDR4, DRAM, Desktop Gaming Memory Kit, 16GB (8GB x2), CL16, Black
- Hard Drive: Seagate 2TB Firecuda Hybrid Hard Disk
What’s your budget look like? Because if you don’t have much to spend, you’re best off just tossing an SSD in as your boot disk. That’ll help significantly. After that, I’d grab 32GB of matching RAM(make sure it’s DDR4, not DDR5) and try that.
After that, you’re basically building a new PC because to significantly upgrade your CPU- which is the next thing you’d want to- you’d need at minimum a new motherboard as well and probably a case since prebuilt cases can have proprietary layouts and be weird.
If you wanna build your own PC, but can’t figure out what parts would be good/what you actually need feel free to reply with a budget and your general location- country is good enough- and I can send you a link to a part list. I used to hang out in /r/buildapcforme and I kinda miss it lmao
Very kind of you I use it for everything (I’ve edited the post to give more info) so I’m not against spending a few grand (UK£) if now is the right time to do so. If it’s not the right time then I’m trying to work out what I can replace that will be compatible and easy for a noob to install I guess
If the most resource intensive thing you’re looking at is BG3 @ 1080p/60fps, you definitely won’t need to spend a few grand. Now is a great time to build. You can get pretty great price/performance at the moment.
Here’s a link to a build, I’d suggest buying the SSD in that list, and replacing your hybrid drive. You can keep the hybrid as a spare, if you want, but you don’t have to. If that solves your issue and gets you the performance you want, cool.
If it doesn’t solve your issues, you can just buy the rest of the parts in the list and build a new PC. It’s a PCPartPicker link for the UK, so it’ll tell you the best places you can order each part in your country. Alternatively, you can buy a prebuilt- probably wanna aim for $1000 USD or so for a prebuilt. I can’t really help you with that, not my thing.
If you do end up building your own there’s an extremely helpful very long Linus Tech Tips video that breaks down how to assemble the whole thing.
It’s so nice that we can build PCs again. In 2021 I moved across the pond for work and couldn’t bring my old PC with me. I wanted to build a new one, but it was impossible due to GPU shortage. I had to buy a garbage premade PC by Dell, because it had 3060 card and was cheaper than buying standalone 3060 card.
That GPU shortage absolutely blew. I used a 1650 the whole time, just sitting on my hands waiting for something to be vaguely affordable. Ended up snagging an RX 6600 right at the very very end of the shortage- caught it on a steep sale and paid $220 for it, and my exact model is $200 now so I did pretty good I think lol