What to do?

My PC which is only used for games these days seems to be playing up, one of the SATA connections for some reason have stopped working so I had to move the drive to another port. The internal USB 3 port is also not working, not a problem as I have PCI-e usb 3 card with an internal socket on it, so that is connected to the front panel.
It seems as if things are going wrong bit by bit. The machine is 6 years old.

I don't want to spend a lot on it as I said it is only used for games and not high spec games either. I did think about buying a new motherboard, The b450 board which is compatible with my CPU is around £100 for a ATX version.

My other thought is to get an AMD Ryzen 5 5600, whihc is still more powerful than my Ryzen 7 1700, going by benchmarks and anASRock B550 PHANTOM GAMING RIPTIDE, complete price is around £245.


As I said, the machine is only used for games these days since I have the Mac for other stuff, now, and again I use it to render some video if I am using the mac for other stuff or want to render to bits of video.

So what do people think is the best option, get a new board for my 6 year old CPU or go for a new CPU and board?

Oh I just had a thought, I would have to get memory as well as the memory I got is only 2666, the Ryzen 5 supports 3200, so another £40 for 16GB of ram.

The more i look into it, maybe best just to get a motherboard, it would be cheaper, but is it better value?

Thanks for any advice.


Just a add on, my PC is working at the moment, just,

Edited by zyborg47 (Mon 03-Jul-23 09:21:40)

Another option might be to look at Gumtree (or a similar local site if you have one) to see if anyone is trying to flog something suitable that they don't need any more... or maybe put an ad in the "Wanted" area.

Edited by billford (Mon 03-Jul-23 10:00:44)

If it's still working, isn't your main machine, and is fine for your purposes why bother to spend money on it now? Wait until it gives up the ghost, by which time everything will have improved and/or dropped in price, and spend the money then. You can surely afford to wait the few days it would take to get a new machine if it gives up the ghost completely.

cheers peeps, Tiny is correct, the computer is working at the moment, so leave it be, in fact it seems to be working better now than it have been for a while, so i presume the Sata port must have been having a problem for a while and is why a couple of my games would freeze.
They seem to be ok now.
So what I will do is put some money up each time I get paid and look at what is around next year.

That is what I am going to do.

thanks once again, now I have to go out and help a colleague put his computer together. I am not doing it, just watching him to make sure he does it right.