Get a new case, and fan, and maybe a liquid cooling setup too. And switch operating systems while you’re at it. Might as well upgrade to larger SSDs. And it’s a good opportunity to go down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole as well.
Ergonomics, forget the gaming gear and move into healthier computing. New office chair, standing desk, adjustable pneumatic monitor arms, fatigue mat, clean up wiring, vertical mouse ball, split keyboards, desk organizers. It never ends
ITX Mobo + soldered on AMD 7945hx processor, outperforms by a significant margin any standard cpu+mobo combo you could get for the current price, which is under $400 pre tax.
So thats a mobo, high powered labtop AM4 cpu, that uses ddr5 sodimm ram.
Oh and you can just slot any ole normal GPU into its PCIe x16 v5.0 slot, its got two standard SSD M2 2280 gen 4 slots you can put your existing SSD(s) in.
There you go, for your consideration, there’s your upgrade/sidegrade path, or your framework for just a new build, given that GPUs now basically cost as much or more than … everything else in a pc combined.
…
Pop out your old mobo, this thing is ITX so it’ll probably fit in your old case, though that isn’t guaranteed.
Grab 32gb (2x16) of 5200/5400/5600 sodimm ddr5 ram for roughly $90 to $110.
(You could go as high as 2x48gb = 96gb but frankly 95% of people will be a ok with 32gb)
Sell your now apparently appreciating in value standard form ddr4 ram.
Grab a noctua 120mm nf-f12 pwm fan for $20, or some equivalent from your preferred fan company, slap that on the massive built in cpu heatspreader, you’re good to go.
Sell old cpu heatsink/fan or aio loop.
You may lose the ability to run… an extensive argb case fan setup without some finagling on that front, but who cares, you wont need all of them, this is a very energy and heat efficient cpu.
If you’ve got some kind of nest of internal archive HDDs, yeah, that may be a bit of a problem too, but realistically, not too many people do that, and you can put an internal HDD into a ~$20 enclosure and just turn it into an external hardrive, something like this:
Oh and also switching to this kind of paradigm, paired with say a non XT AMD 9070, this’ll do basically all gaming you could want at 1440p, and will almost certainly substantially lower your total setup power draw… if you’re maybe also worried about just general rising energy prices.
Which you probably should be.
You can also now consider just downsizing your rig’s case, and power supply, to a portable ITX form factor, or an mATX form factor, should the idea of your PC not weighing 60+ pounds appeal to you.
There are a good number of ITX cases that will fit most full size GPUs, some via a riser cable, some not even needing one.
Sure, not forever obviously. I’m not suggesting that. But why right now when I already have a DDR4 setup that works fine and just needed some more RAM for some applications? It just seems overkill to replace everything now for questionable benefit when I could always buy new kit later.
Which would also require a new CPU depending on the current setup. And rebuilding the whole PC just to upgrade the memory?
Get a new case, and fan, and maybe a liquid cooling setup too. And switch operating systems while you’re at it. Might as well upgrade to larger SSDs. And it’s a good opportunity to go down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole as well.
That’ll be 3500, and 2 months of tweaking please.
What stage is after ‘owning more mechanical keyboards than you have excuses for using them’?
Hmm. I’ll let you know when I figure that out because that’s the stage I am at?
Ergonomics, forget the gaming gear and move into healthier computing. New office chair, standing desk, adjustable pneumatic monitor arms, fatigue mat, clean up wiring, vertical mouse ball, split keyboards, desk organizers. It never ends
Split ergo keyboard is next on my list in fact
Correct. Yes.
… But also with a lot of other perks and some downsides… if you are willing to consider a different paradigm for a pc build.
I say: Adapt, Improvise, Overcome.
I present to you…
… the Minisforum BD 795i SE.
https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-motherboard
https://www.amazon.com/MINISFORUM-Motherboard-BD795i-SE-PCIe4-0/dp/B0DQ8WXMKP
ITX Mobo + soldered on AMD 7945hx processor, outperforms by a significant margin any standard cpu+mobo combo you could get for the current price, which is under $400 pre tax.
So thats a mobo, high powered labtop AM4 cpu, that uses ddr5 sodimm ram.
Oh and you can just slot any ole normal GPU into its PCIe x16 v5.0 slot, its got two standard SSD M2 2280 gen 4 slots you can put your existing SSD(s) in.
There you go, for your consideration, there’s your upgrade/sidegrade path, or your framework for just a new build, given that GPUs now basically cost as much or more than … everything else in a pc combined.
…
Pop out your old mobo, this thing is ITX so it’ll probably fit in your old case, though that isn’t guaranteed.
Grab 32gb (2x16) of 5200/5400/5600 sodimm ddr5 ram for roughly $90 to $110.
(You could go as high as 2x48gb = 96gb but frankly 95% of people will be a ok with 32gb)
Sell your now apparently appreciating in value standard form ddr4 ram.
Grab a noctua 120mm nf-f12 pwm fan for $20, or some equivalent from your preferred fan company, slap that on the massive built in cpu heatspreader, you’re good to go.
Sell old cpu heatsink/fan or aio loop.
You may lose the ability to run… an extensive argb case fan setup without some finagling on that front, but who cares, you wont need all of them, this is a very energy and heat efficient cpu.
If you’ve got some kind of nest of internal archive HDDs, yeah, that may be a bit of a problem too, but realistically, not too many people do that, and you can put an internal HDD into a ~$20 enclosure and just turn it into an external hardrive, something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/X-MEDIA-XM-EN3451-BK-3-5-Inch-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B00ARNCYEU
Oh and also switching to this kind of paradigm, paired with say a non XT AMD 9070, this’ll do basically all gaming you could want at 1440p, and will almost certainly substantially lower your total setup power draw… if you’re maybe also worried about just general rising energy prices.
Which you probably should be.
You can also now consider just downsizing your rig’s case, and power supply, to a portable ITX form factor, or an mATX form factor, should the idea of your PC not weighing 60+ pounds appeal to you.
There are a good number of ITX cases that will fit most full size GPUs, some via a riser cable, some not even needing one.
Yeah, when you want to upgrade your PC but the parts in your PC don’t support upgrading, you’ll have to replace those parts. Where’s the issue?
The issue is that’s a weird alternative to just buying some DDR4 RAM.
We don’t want to be stuck making DDR4 RAM forever, or mobos that only use DDR4 RAM, etc.
There comes a time where you have to just move on to new hardware.
Sure, not forever obviously. I’m not suggesting that. But why right now when I already have a DDR4 setup that works fine and just needed some more RAM for some applications? It just seems overkill to replace everything now for questionable benefit when I could always buy new kit later.
Buy some then, but just accept that since it’s very old tech that is being discontinued you will pay more.