Rig upgrade

[Slaviczech]

Hello guys,

I want to ask a question about upgrade of my PC from 2016. I have i3 6100, GTX 1060 6GB, 8GB of RAM. It is my gaming PC and I want to upgrade it. I know that the CPU is just garbage for gaming now. I am very tight on budget. So I am choosing now between Ryzen 5 1600 AF (Zen+ 6C/12T - 107$ in my country) and Ryzen 3 3100 (Zen 2 4C/8T - 120$ in my country). With that I want to upgrade to 16GB of RAM and keep my GTX 1060 which is still enough - I am using my old but still good Dell monitor with just 1680x1050 and I am playing mostly the singleplayer titles. From my research the R5 1600 AF is the winner, but I want to have another opinion.

Thanks for any opinions.

 

[neeyik]

How much is your budget exactly? The 1600 AF is pretty much the same as the 3100 for gaming, but if you could stretch to the 3300X, you'd have greater longevity in the upgrade:

 

[Slaviczech]

My budget is 250$ and I really cannot go above it, not now - B450 MB is 83$ another 8GB of RAM is 42$ - 3300X is around 147$ in my country. Maybe I will wait and try to save more money for it, but the prices are going up every week for all parts because of exchange rate and coronavirus.

Thank you for your reply.

 

[neeyik]

In that case, definitely pick the 1600 AF - it's a fantastic CPU for $107. Now do note that B450 motherboards can be a little choosy about what RAM is installed - what 8GB DIMM do you currently have and what motherboard are looking to purchase?

 

[Slaviczech]

In that case, definitely pick the 1600 AF - it's a fantastic CPU for $107. Now do note that B450 motherboards can be a little choosy about what RAM is installed - what 8GB DIMM do you currently have and what motherboard are looking to purchase?

Thank you for your reply.

I have 2x 4GB of Crucial Single Rank 2133MHz DDR4 RAM CL15, and I want to buy Asrock B450M Pro4 and I want to buy another two 4GB sticks of Crucial single rank 2400MHz (2133MHz is not available anymore). I know that it is not ideal, but it is the cheapest way for upgrade that I hope will work.

 

[neeyik]

There's only a brief list of Crucial models in ASRock's memory QVL:

ASRock > B450M Pro4

Supports AMD AM4 Socket Ryzen™ 2000, 3000, 4000 G-Series, 5000 and 5000 G-Series Desktop Processors; Supports DDR4 3200+ (OC); 1 PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 PCIe 2.0 x16, 1 PCIe 2.0 x1; AMD Quad CrossFireX™; Graphics Output: HDMI, DVI-D, D-Sub; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec), ELNA Audio Caps...

www.asrock.com

4GB 2400 MHz isn't listed, so they've either not tested it or it's not recommended for stability reasons. The newer RAM will obviously run at the same clock speed as the slower ones, but the timings might be a mismatch.

All you can really do is try them and see what happens - if your system doesn't like the combination, then just keep the 2400 MHz in the computer (I.e. run with 8 GB). When you've got the available budget, get a 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) 2666 MHz kit that's compatible, and sell the other memory to offset the cost. But hopefully you won't need to do that.

 

[Slaviczech]

There's only a brief list of Crucial models in ASRock's memory QVL:

ASRock > B450M Pro4

Supports AMD AM4 Socket Ryzen™ 2000, 3000, 4000 G-Series, 5000 and 5000 G-Series Desktop Processors; Supports DDR4 3200+ (OC); 1 PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 PCIe 2.0 x16, 1 PCIe 2.0 x1; AMD Quad CrossFireX™; Graphics Output: HDMI, DVI-D, D-Sub; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec), ELNA Audio Caps...

www.asrock.com

4GB 2400 MHz isn't listed, so they've either not tested it or it's not recommended for stability reasons. The newer RAM will obviously run at the same clock speed as the slower ones, but the timings might be a mismatch.

All you can really do is try them and see what happens - if your system doesn't like the combination, then just keep the 2400 MHz in the computer (I.e. run with 8 GB). When you've got the available budget, get a 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) 2666 MHz kit that's compatible, and sell the other memory to offset the cost. But hopefully you won't need to do that.

Thank you very much for help.

I hope that it will work. If yes, than maybe I will try to tweak the settings of RAM to match the timings on all sticks (good that all of them have same voltage 1.2V). If not, than I will save money for 16GB kit.