Is 8GB of RAM enough?
Yeah it’s fine, particularly given RAM prices these days.
Yes, absolutely get an SSD. Worlds different as far as performance.
I’d suggest installing it ASAP before you do anything else w/ the PC. Many drives will come w/ free cloning software. I know Toshiba SSD’s do, and it’s dead simple to use. Clone the HDD to the SSD and swap their places (cables) so the SSD is the C: boot drive. You can change the boot drive in the BIOS, but often swapping the cable is simplest if you’re not accustomed to poking around in BIOS, or UEFI, these days.
Once the 1TB drive becomes your data drive, you can always remap the Docs/Photos/Music folders etc to the new drive letter.
What monitor will you be using this with?
HP 22cwa
That’s 1920*1080. 1060 should be great for that.
GTX1060 will smoke games at 1080p.
Yeah the 1060 is great for 1080p gaming.
I’m thinking of waiting until the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities are resolved since I’ve been getting by with my Lenovo. Though the comments here are getting me amped to pull the trigger. How concerned are you all about:
- a recall of Intel and AMD chipsets,
- are the difficulties/expense of replacing the chipsets going to be significant enough that I should wait, or
- not giving a dang and plunging right in?
There won’t be any recall. Spectre/Meltdown will be mitigated through software/firmware/microcode updates until redesigned chips arrive. The downside is that there will be a performance hit, but most consumers won’t notice it at all.
Opinion dump start:
There is always something to wait on when it comes to upgrades… maybe a new technology is around the corner, personal reasons, new console cycle, new games about to release, etc… Just a plethora of reasons to wait.
Since that means there’s never a right time to upgrade, that also means there’s never a wrong time to upgrade. So my personal guidelines for upgrades are:
- am I having any issues with any games I’m playing that upgrading would fix?
- do I think an upgrade would measurably improve my gaming experience?
You’d be surprised how long you can go and still have the answers to those questions be no. Like, more than 5 years, easy.
That being said, the Spectre/Meltdown issue and the unusual RAM and GPU pricing right now would have me wait, since I think it’s pushed pricing into “unfair” territory, even if I could still afford it. Unfortunately, I think it might be a year for the former to resolve, and I don’t know if a year will resolve the latter (probably with GPUs but unknown on the RAM).
I absolutely would not buy an intel CPU under any circumstances until they fix Meltdown. Spectre will take longer.
This build is a Ryzen. All the more reason to pull the trigger now. Especially considering GTX 1060’s in the wild would represent half the cost of this PC.
Ryzen is fine, but it needs fast DDR4 RAM and memory is craaaaazy expensive these days too.
I probably wouldn’t go under DDR4-2666 for Ryzen, and would try to get DDR4-3000. Of course if you already bought it the 2400 will work fine, it’s just that Ryzen performance scales really well with faster RAM.
Maybe a stupid question, but is this upgrade worth doing given the current prices, or should I wait and buy a whole new PC?
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/AMD-A8-5600K-vs-AMD-A10-6800K
(I don’t think the prices on that page are accurate.)
I’m wary of upgrades, since I usually don’t think they’re worth the trouble.
I wouldn’t buy a non-Ryzen AMD CPU under any circumstances.
If I list some specs, would anyone be willing to create a build on PCPartsPicker? Thanks.
If you really need to buy right now, NZXT will build a computer for you with all parts at MSRP for a $99 fee. Looks pretty legit, and would save a fortune if you need a GPU in particular. Be sure to go AMD.
But I would still suggest waiting, if you can.