I’ve had my prebuilt pc for about a year, now and I’m ready to make some modifications to it to kinda make it my own.
SPECS
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If your looking to stay with your AM4 Motherboard then 5800XT is your best deal for around $200 The 5800XT is 8 core and PCIe 4.0 vs the 5600GT 6 core and PCIe 3.0 This help get the most of your 3050 GPU but I would upgrade it next. X3D chips are around $300-600 right now better to go AM5 like a 7000 or 9000 CPU for that price.
Got a budget in mind?
You should really start with the GPU. You would see the largest uplift from that. I can’t believe they’re even putting six gig cards in computers anymore😮!
i’d recommend a 9060 XT 16 GB the biggest bang for the buck right now. Either one of these would work with your existing power supply. So no need to spend more money there.
then when money permits upgrade the CPU (5800xt). You can get away with 16 gigs of RAM for a while. That would be your last upgrade. especially with the price of RAM right now.
you will be tempted, but do not buy an 8 gigabyte card, whatever brand you pick.
As Vicaro said, a 9060xt would be a good card, and if you upgraded your 5600gt to enter a 5700x or a 5800x than as kegun said than that would also do you good
I wouldn’t with 6 Core PCIe 3.0 CPU 9060XT will be bottlenecked and you wouldn’t get full potential He’s not even getting maxing out he’s current 3050 with a 5600GT
Big difference between PCIe 3.0 vs PCIe 5.0 not to mention 6GB GPU vs 16GB GPU
Think of it like drinking out of a straw or only driving a Ferrari 55 MPH
What you’re saying is fair, and I don’t disagree. A 9060 XT will be somewhat bottlenecked by a 5600GT, especially in CPU-heavy games or at 1080p.
When I build or recommend parts, my philosophy is to think a step ahead for the future. If he were to upgrade the CPU alone to something like a 5800-class chip while keeping the 6 GB 3050, the real-world gains would mostly show up as slightly higher minimum FPS and smoother frame pacing—but average FPS and visual settings wouldn’t change much because the GPU would still be the limiting factor.
By comparison, a GPU upgrade provides a much more noticeable improvement right away: higher graphics settings, better consistency, and eliminating the VRAM limitations that already cause compromises in modern games. Even if the CPU caps peak FPS in some scenarios, the overall experience improves more immediately.
Ideally, both upgrades would happen at the same time, but that’s not always realistic financially. If only one component can be upgraded now, I lean toward the GPU because it delivers meaningful gains today and still makes sense long-term when the CPU is eventually upgraded.
Againa, I think you’re 100% right—it will be bottlenecked until he upgrades the CPU or the system as a whole. In the meantime, he would likely need to cap his frame rate at around 60 FPS (possibly higher depending on the game) to help reduce stuttering caused by the slower CPU.
He should still be able to play games at high or even max settings and shift more of the workload onto the GPU, which can help with overall smoothness. That said, in some titles, CPU-heavy settings like crowd density, physics, or simulation options may still need to be dialed back a bit depending on the game.
If Sorryimreallydumb (no—you’re not) can swing the roughly $600 and do both upgrades at the same time, then you end up with a really solid machine with no major compromises. Until then, some trade-offs are inevitable, and a bit of settings experimentation will be needed to find the smoothest experience. I think we’re really just looking at the same problem from two different directions—the end result is the same either way. Once all the upgrades are eventually done, the system ends up in the same place; it’s just a matter of which component gets addressed first (I just believe the 6gig card is gotta go first) and how things are dialed in along the way. I’ve been in that situation before myself, upgrading parts piecemeal, and sometimes it’s just about dialing things in until the rest of the system catches up.
I agree
Not a great time to buy ram for sure. Everything is so over priced right now.
That is fair, but his 16gb should be enough
what is your use case?
Looking at the build, i see others have given you great advice on upgrade it, but I feel like you are at the limit of what can be pushed with it.
I would personally recommend a new build, but what exact PC is it?
Case so we can judge whether a card actually fits, budget so we can go back and forth, and see if deals apply, and overall, what is your use case?
The motherboard you have is a mATX so it leads me to believe the case is all small, and the cooler is just a normal fan heatsink. the CPU given doesnt run hot enough to warrant a AIO but if we chose something over 95w, like the 5800xt, then we need to consider a AIO to make sure it stays cool, or at the very least, add more fans.
even seeing if we can stay mATX and go am5, were essentially building a new system all together. This is what I could pull off. You can save maybe $100 in total if you switch some parts tro $20 of here, $15 here, $30.
This is my thoughts and opinions. the other advice is great, just not my first thought.
At most I wanna stay at the $300 mark but I think I’ll have room for at most $500
Yeah on the company website it says it is a M-ATX would you recommend to getting a bigger case in the near future or after I get the components?
what company and model PC is it? So we can see the pc.
All arguments aside it depends on his budget
@Sorryimreallydumb if you have around $200 to spend get the 5800XT CPU if you have $350-500 get a 9060XT 16G or 5060 Ti 16G
He said thay he was looking to upgrade his cpu, not his gpu, so his budget is perfect. He can get a 5800xt cpu and that’s perfect
I must have missed where he said specifically hes looks for a CPU upgrade. I only replied to the original message where he looked for any upgrade recommendations.
Do you personally think the 5800xt will make sizeable different to his build? like in terms of bottlenecks or frame rate increases?
If his budget was $600-750 instead of $300, would your recommendation stay the same?
Can you clarify a little? I don’t understand
I skipped the 5k series completely. I can read data sheets all day but have no experience with it. Do you think with it being same generation, itll make a huge leap in performance? Like, on paper, a 9600x is inferior to a 9900x but what is the real world difference in usage? With his GPU, how much bottle neck are we looking at? I see a frame jump in possibly 20-25 frames.
Would a bigger budget change what you recommend in terms of parts? Sticking within same generation
Thanks for clarifying, so the cpu that he has now is actually bottlenecking the gpu he has now so a cpu is what we want to focus on, but if he had $200-$300 more to his budget than he would get a 5700x or a 5800x (as we have been saying) but get a used gpu (if he could find one that is more powerful than a 3050 6gb) but if he had $400 more, (which will make his entire budget $600) than he could get a 9060xt 16gb along with the same cpu choice that we have been pushing. And the cheapest rtx 50 series gpu is $300, and that gpu is the 5060 8gb, so I don’t that is a good option. Hopefully that answers your questions.
Newegg refreshed(Refurbished) 9060 XT 16 & 5060 Ti 16G are going for $299 Maybe that’s a option?
