new to upgrading

[Shivani]

It was suggested that I create an account to get more help in what I can do to get my computer up to the specifications needed to upgrade it and get more feed back into what I can do.

Right now I am trying to upgrade my graphics and it was suggested that I could most likely buy a graphics card and could in theory slide it into the slot provided, but knowing my inexperience to these things I wanted to make sure that I bought a compatible graphics card and with little luck i have the best response I have been given is "It depends on the motherboard having a PCI-Express x 16 slot available." and unfortunately before I could get more information the thread was locked as solved. which is how I stumble onto this website, because I wasnt going to give up that easily.

currently I'm using a AMD APU A4-6300 Dual-Core(https://www.pc-specs.com/cpu/AMD/APU_A4-Series/APU_A4-6300_Dual-Core/1238) and would like to see if MSI - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4GB GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card is compatible with mine.

Specifications.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Version 10.0.18363 Build 18363
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Name DESKTOP-PKBSMN9
System Manufacturer MSI
System Model MS-7721
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU To be filled by O.E.M.

Processor AMD A4-6300 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics, 3700 Mhz, 1 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. V8.2B2, 9/28/2015
SMBIOS Version 2.8
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode Legacy
BaseBoard Manufacturer MSI
BaseBoard Product A68HM-E33 V2 (MS-7721)
BaseBoard Version 9.0
Platform Role Desktop
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.18362.752"

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 15.2 GB
Available Physical Memory 11.6 GB
Total Virtual Memory 17.5 GB
Available Virtual Memory 13.4 GB


If you want to see a horrible example of what I bought its https://www.amazon.com/CybertronPC-Patriot-Gaming-Desktop-Discontinued/dp/B00D1KX2M4?th=1
except i went for the windows 10 as the os and for some ungodly reason is has 1 fan in the front and a water cooling system over where I can only assume the actual chip is. If need be I can move past my embarrassment of it all and give pictures as to how the inside looks for more references.

 

[Zerileous]

I want start by thanking you for providing detailed specs. It makes a big difference for us and I know it's not the easiest thing to piece together when you're not familiar.

First of all what are you trying to accomplish? This is a pretty limited CPU and it could hold you back quite a bit as well. According to the MSI page, the motherboard can support an A10, but it may be better to upgrade to a newer platform, rather than spending money on a 6 year old CPU. If replacing the CPU is something you're interested in, some more investigation should be done into compatibility prior to you making a purchase. It really is not advised to spend money on hardware this old though.

It is correct that you need to have a PCIe x16 slot in order to use that card. Good news is the motherboard has one of those. It is horizontal under the CPU and colored blue. There are a couple of other things we need to check though. In case you're not familiar with all of the parts: https://www.cgdirector.com/parts-needed-to-build-a-pc/

The amazon listing states that the system has a 400W power supply (PSU). I would like you to verify that, and really also a picture of the label on the PSU would also be helpful in determine it's functional capacity. The PSU is a metal box probably either on the top or bottom of the case with a lot of wires coming out of it. The MSI GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER recommends a 350W PSU or better, so the 400W unit should be adequate, but I would prefer to see the sticker, because some of the rated wattage may not be available at the voltage required by the card. The card also requires a PCIe power connector. This is a 6 pin physical plug that you will need to find attached to PSU. If not this can be worked around with adapters, but it makes me more suspicious of the PSU's capability anyway. The connector looks like this:


Next concern is cooling. You mentioned only one fan in the system. The GPU will add heat to the system, and while the cooler attached to it will remove heat from the graphics card, you'll need case fans to remove the heat from the enclosure. Here a picture of the system would help in determining whats possible. Good news is this card is not a high heat producer, so it should be something that we can work around with maybe the addition of one or two fans.

Finally is dimensions. This is not a large card, but since I don't know anything about your case, you'll need to make sure there is enough room. The card is 9.76" long x 5.00" high. In metric the length is 248 mm. The card will also occupy the space below the PCIe slot, so if there is another card already installed, it could be problematic. Length is measured from the back of the case to the front. There could be a drive bay or something else in the way. Depth is from the motherboard to the side panel.

Please be sure to power the system off and unplug the power cord from the rear to the system before opening it to take pictures / measurements. Also it is good practice to touch a metal part of the case to neutralize any static electricity prior to reaching into the system.

 

[Shivani]

Im fully aware that it will be completely impossible to make this build into something of the future, but I can say what my original goal was "to be able to play the witcher 3 on my pc and continue to have my gamer experience through pc rather then console." I gave my console to my kid, because they were and still are getting more enjoyment from it then I was, and my gaming style went from hardcore to slightly more on a casual gaming sense. I think what ultimately hurt is my lack of experience and that when I reached out to more experienced computer gamer I realized later that I was convinced to get a lower end product based on personal biased against nvidia and that I was to trusting. I never realized there would be a rivalry between amd and nvidia and so forth, because of my naivety I haven't been able to play my full list of games that I purchased thinking that I could outright play them and its limited my overall experience to the point that I feel very bitter, but I'm doing my best to see what I can do to at least be able to play what I can even at the lowest to modest settings settings.

To the point here are the pictures I said I would take with comments and highlights as to what I've previously mentioned. I also what to clarify that the water cooler does have a built in fan but when I mention a fan I mean a singular fan of its own rather then an attachment. You'll see what I mean in the pictures, I feel it was a very poorly thought out third party build that amd partnered with. :/

the monitor I'm using is an Acer - h236hl bid, with resolution of 1920/1080, but I never use the max resolution because I sometimes get motion sickness and having it out of full screen helps.
View attachment 210394

As for my gaming list I'll provide it from my steam account. I did a test to see how bad it is with monster hunter so that is why its highlighted as installed. Three good examples is dragons dogma, monster hunter, and starbound. The reason I have given these three as a good example is because it gives a good range of what I'm wishing my computer is capable of doing. If I could explain it better I would, but overall i'm hoping these examples is kinda what I'm hoping to benchmark at as slightly or decently over the minimum requirements to play the games I've purchased.

Dragons dogma I have to have it in windowed mode and everything on the lowest settings to have a flow of frame rates, but with predictive motions i'm able to play it, but would like a smoother experience.

MINIMUM:
OS: Windows Vista or newer (32 or 64 bit)
Processor: Intel Core i5 660 CPU or equivalent
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Radeon HD 5870 or equivalent
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 20 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX-compatible sound card or onboard audio chip
Additional Notes: 1) Supports Keyboard+Mouse and XInput/DirectInput devices including Xbox 360, Xbox One, DualShock4 and Steam Controller.
2) Some high end integrated graphics chips and modern gaming laptops with a discrete GPU may work but have not been tested, nor are they officially supported by Capcom.


So far with monster hunter has told me that the specifications that i have put it on give me 1.74gb over o.74gb(I"m assuming the ideal gb usage as its in bright red for no on 1.74) vram uasage with the settings at widowed mode for 1024x768 wide 16:9 of frame rate 60 vsnc off. ultimately the audio came first and I would have to wait for cinematic to catch up between playable scenes, but nothing indicated I was in game or being hurt while waiting.

MINIMUM:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: WINDOWS® 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-bit required)
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4460, 3.20GHz or AMD FX™-6300
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 or AMD Radeon™ R7 260x (VRAM 2GB)
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 48 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectSound (DirectX® 9.0c)
Additional Notes: 1080p/30fps when graphics settings are set to "Low"

The third being Starbound, I would think with an 8 bit game it wouldnt be so computer heavy, but even with terraria I get the same experience of lose of frame rate, but when I turn off through admin commands of black out, it goes very smooth in frame rates but when put to full screen it goes back to chugging. The greatest comment I have been given by the developers through there discord is that the game was not designed in mind for my potato of a computer and that if I want to play it so badly i can buy a 600 dollar graphics card in a sarcastic condescending tone to which is what lead me to uninstall it because I refuse to support them do to there blatant lack of regards to lower tiered users like me.

which came out in 2016 and there minimum requirement are:

OS: Windows XP or later
Processor: Core 2 Duo
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: 256 MB graphics memory and directx 9.0c compatible gpu
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 3 GB available space

Also for the Witcher 3's minimum requirments just to have a base reference:

OS: 64-bit Windows 7, 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1) or 64-bit Windows 10
Processor: Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz / AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660 / AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870
Storage: 35 GB available space

 

[Zerileous]

Thank you for the detailed post. Before getting into the nitty-gritty, I'd like to make some commentary on brands. Many posters here do have a brand preference, some will just buy what seems best. While it may be impossible to be 100% free from bias, you won't see someone here claiming a certain brand is "trash" or so forth. AMD sells cards that will play those games, and the 1650 super is probably more than you need anyway. The problem with this system is not AMD or nVidia (they both make great products and also products that are not a great value, although AMD has some flaws with drivers right now), the problem is the lack of a discrete graphics solution. When we say integrated that means part of the CPU, power is limited by a lot of factors. Discrete is it's own card and required for serious gaming.

Pictures
In this picture the liquid cooler appears to be partially blocking the top slot. You marked the correct slots, from the top to bottom they are: PCIe x16, PCIe x1, AGP. Only the top slot will work for a graphics card. Moving the liquid cooler to the top of the case may be necessary to install a card in that slot. You can measure to see if it will fit.

PSU Good news is that I can see what appears to be a GPU power cable aka PCIe 6-pin power cable in your picture. The power supply itself is the box where all of those cables come out of. Also it is where the wall power plugs into the back of the system. There should be a sticker on that box with a table of voltages and amps listed. I would like to see a picture of that sticker if possible.

fansActually this cooling setup looks fine. The intake fan is not blocked by a bundle of wires or a drive. The exhaust fan being part of the cooler is also okay. You may consider adding an exhaust fan to the spot where the CPU cooler is located once you move that to the top of the case, but it may not be necessary.

SSHDDPlease consider getting an SSD at least to run your operating system. For quality of life I would even suggest taking like $40 out of your GPU budget to make this happen. Of course you would need to re-install windows which can be a challenge for some.

gamesHere is where things get a little tricky. I'm personally not very familiar with the older hardware so I don't want to say too much. Your CPU is single core, which probably isn't too big of a problem for the games you want to play, but it's also old and a little slow. It definitely will not keep up with a card like a 1650 Super, but the question being will it run the games listed. Of the games, only monster hunter lists a CPU that is newer than yours as the minimum. The Witcher 3 lists CPUs that are contemporary to yours but also more powerful so I would also be somewhat skeptical there. Dragons Dogma and starbound have requirements for CPUs that are older than yours, but also have multiple cores. My suspicion is that this is just because multi-core CPUs were common and not because the games can actually utilize multiple cores.

Overall, I can see the reasoning, if you can only afford a GPU now, of buying the 1650 Super and saving for a new system to put the 1650 Super in. But really the whole thing needs an upgrade and it might be easier to just do it all at once. Also I meant to mention this AM, I notice your motherboard is made by MSI and you chose an MSI graphics card. This is fine but also unnecessary, any brand will work.

 

[trents]

Shivani, the hardware needed to run your games is really pretty modest but does exceed the capability of what you currently have, both with regard the CPU and the graphics processor. If you upgrade to a 1660 super you will likely find that there is some improvement at some points in your games but not at others. As Zerileous said, you really need to upgrade the whole system for satisfactory results: CPU/GPU, memory and motherboard and maybe PSU. AMD makes some excellent newer APUs (Accelerated Graphics Processor, i.e., combines CPU with GPU) that I'm sure would meet your needs. The APU I have linked below has a very nice integrated graphics that would be good for most modern games at medium settings and even better for the ones you are wanting to run I believe. Looks like your PSU has a standard 24 pin main power connector so that is good if you were replacing the motherboard.

https://www.amazon.com/AMD-Ryzen-3400G-8-Thread-Processor/dp/B07SXNDKNM


https://www.amazon.com/MSI-ProSerie...+matx+max&qid=1590727267&s=electronics&sr=1-2


https://www.amazon.com/G-SKILL-Trid...b+g.skill&qid=1590727337&s=electronics&sr=1-8

With a little coaching I'm sure you could swap in these parts.

You're looking at about $325 to do this. Not that much more than a 1660 super by itself.

 

[Shivani]

I think for me the bitterness is just how my overall experience started, I do believe Amd can make quality products its just I would like to have a better start in how I can get my current pc to one that is slowly catered to me. I will of course take it slow and obviously not max out on everything because I want to make sure 1 i dont fry it by being stupid and i would like it to be something better with what I have. its not a bad build, I love how there is plenty of space to work with and in theory could turn into a great system over time. Just for me I'm not really seeing a whole ton of games out there that would peak my interest. most of my games I have currently took me awhile to be convinced to even get them or they were just freebies I got because i could.

I chose the graphics card without even realizing it was an msi, but I did do enough research to know it is compatible and thankfully with your help i do have the right cords.

for the the sshd i'm slightly concerned for since that is the hard drive and I have 5 years worth of stuff on it and i dont want to have the possibility of losing anything. especially family memories.

As for the budget I dont want to go over board with it because the cost of my build was about $500ish, so really by the end of the day if its just to much I will cave and save up to get a whole new computer. the motherboard is a bit of a touchy subject since i fear it might just turn into a case of getting a whole new computer

im not sure why, but i did have the picture of the amps and voltage, but here it is again since its not showing in my original post.

 

[Zerileous]

See with the PSU I also have a concern. On the label it states, "Max. combined wattage reflects peak performance." According to this database: http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page2713.htm, listed wattage is 240W for 12v. Using the way back machine I was able to follow the link to the manufacturer webpage (now gone) https://web.archive.org/web/2012110.../item-details.asp?EdpNo=3255391&Sku=ULT-LS400. It looks like it may be a different model. Or maybe they just switched from listing sustained to peak. Really it should still be enough, but it can be cutting it close. Not knowing more about the power supply, I can't give the upgrade my recommendation. Nor can I recommend it for a new system. The truth is, it will probably be just fine, but I cannot go as far as to recommend it. Also age wise, power supplies should be replaced by 10 years, this unit was probably intended to last 3-5 years.

My personal feeling on the 3400G is that it is substantially overpriced right now. It's price is actually $10 over the MSRP at launch. Odd things are happening in the electronics market and prices change a lot. The 3200G at $90 is much less expensive and Witcher 3 is playable, although not well by most standards

. You can look at the difference yourself (notice the first part of the video is at a higher resolution) and decide if it's worth $70 more. For an absolute budget build I think the 3200G is where it's at. Things will be playable but you'll be making some compromises. You'd be spending almost the same money as the 1660 Super but you'd be able to upgrade to a better GPU in the future, and even a better CPU in the same platform. If your budget is fixed right now, this is the route I would go.

Personally, if there is any chance that you would want to play something newer anytime soon, I would suggest getting away from the APU all together. Waiting a bit for availability, you could use a 3300x for $120, 1650 Super for $160, motherboard and RAM linked above $165, and for good measure a budget PSU like the EVGA BR for $70 and $40 will get you a 250GB SSD. That puts you at $555.

Why are you so embarrassed about this system? When did you purchase it? I'm sure it was a fair budget gaming performer in it's day, however it's day has long passed now.

 

[trents]

The PSU specs say one 12v+ rail giving 31 amps so if it's not exaggerated it should be adequate for powering a mid range GPU like the GTX 1660.

Yes, upgrading the motherboard would also require getting new RAM and a new CPU if you are looking to upgrade. But you really have no choice if you want better performance in those games.

There is no issue with losing your 5 years worth of stuff on the existing hard drive. Just back up your pictures, videos and docs. It can be done manually or there is software to do it for you.


Zerileous, component prices across the board are up right now. An exception seems to be RAM, maybe because of overproduction and inflated inventories from preCOVID.

 

[Shivani]

I'm embarrassed for it because I wanted to buy at least a decent gaming computer back in 2015, but according to everything age wise what i'm using was already 1-2 years old when i bought it. It turned into feeling like amd partnered with this third party company across the sea to just empty there warehouse for there new products that came out shortly after releasing my build. the only update to my graphics driver was making it compatible with windows ten, since then they came out with an amd boost(now called just amd radeon settings) for my discontinued build. which sure its helped but I can tell its just auto setting everything to low so that I can even start my games. in theory I should have been able to play lower end games such as starbound, terraria, and a few others with no problems, but sadly that wasn't the case. Over the years I've basically been shamed for my computer, and to be made to feel that I was just a cheap gamer, but dropping about $700 dollars for both my desktop and monitor that at the time was a huge amount of money for what I thought would be a decent start just turned into a domino effect of horrible experiences with each game i bought. I'm a single parent having to supply both me and childs gaming gets expensive thank god for backwards compatibility on xbox 1, but even still its horrible that someone could do that which made me feel i wasted so much of my time/money when i cant play half of my games and the other half barely being able to have an enjoyable play experience.
So sure I could play these games according to amd website but it would be at the lowest settings for all of them and even then It felt like I was working with 1-5 frame rating, or it would out right crash my computer playing city skylines(blue screen), and gta v terrified me because it looked like underdevelopment stages with grid boxes and gray blocks for cars, and zero detail on the buildings. even getting through monster hunters beginning portion to get to a point were i could save took me over 2 hours and the weird thing about it was character creation felt like I barely had a lose to frame rates since it turned into a focused area.
I also lost friendships over this computer, because they out right convinced me that this computer would be great in the long run only to experience what I have, after a year the person that was helping me(also the person whom suggested me to buy this computer) admitted that they got me to buy a crappy computer and that they have been having a laugh at my expense knowing i have dumped most likely over $1000 dollars for both the computer and games along the way. since then i have cut them out of my life and the people that contributed to the long con. All of this took me a long time to recover from mentally and emotionally, because my health completely declined at how someone could be so horrible as to do that to another person just wanting to evolve there gaming experience and I was blind sided by it all.
With everything suggested I would be better off buying a whole knew computer and most likely just giving it to my mother as a glorified office computer. At least then I know my mother would really appreciate it as a whole that I could never give it and I would have to worry to much about losing anything since we live together. I wish I had found this forum site long before purchasing it. You guys have really helped me worked past not only my horrible experience, but that you generally really wish the best in what builds can be capable of, and have shown me that there are people out there that genuinely care. thank you for helping me out and hey if you can suggest a new gaming computer for the long run I'll put my faith back into it to possibly just window shop.
I'm actually also tolling the idea of hunting for a switch to play animal crossing, sadly wasn't able to snatch the special edition but the all black version looks pretty sleek to me and i'm even trying to replace the battery on my kids wiiu pad, but the order got canceled by the shipper so if anyone can find me a link that will actually ship the order that would be great too lol. i have zelda games that would be great to play again without having to rebuy them for the switch. ^^;

 

[trents]

Were these friends who talked you into buying this "crappy" computer or just sales people?

If and when you buy a newer computer you would do well to educate yourself about what you need hardware wise to do what you want to do before you buy. You need to go into any major purchase like that with your eyes wide open so you won't be at the mercy of others.

 

[Shivani]

God they practically could be sharks at this point lol. I knew them from my minecraft gaming clique for about 2 ish years and eventually my dell computer died just because it was so damn old but we were able to recover our stuff from the hard drive it was just expensive to do so. which is where my fear of losing things come from. I was already talking about getting a new computer that could be used better for gaming while also having a user friendly os so that its not completely different for my mom. she's 62 and I wanted to make sure she would also be happy with the computer when she needs it for work and would still have that familiar layout that she is used to.

yeah, my thought process is to educate myself and i'm very glad that I was able to find this website, because now i have a place where i can safely learn what to look for in a gaming computer rather then being so trusting. Very hard lessons i learned when i was 25, its amazing how much 5 years makes a difference. I have even been learning how to properly maintain the inside to my computer as if i did it my dad's way it would be me taking vacuum to it, which to this day i still cringe remembering it because even I knew that was not a good idea at 13 years old. its also how we got the dell computer. ^^;
I've learned how to slightly take my computer apart to really get into it so that I know how to take it apart and be familiar with the placements and what order i need to take out/in the parts. I never realized just how far dust and such could really get into the tight spaces. I was mainly just learning as i went, but then I started thinking about how i could possibly upgrade my computer to be up to speed, but its very intimidating still and how much it takes to really learn how to make a great build is pretty impressive. I dont think I could do it just yet from scratch, but I do hope to one day be able to tune up a computer when I need to, its just at this point I think I will go ahead and buy a pre-built computer just this time I will research the heck out of the parts used within it like hunting down that perfect cheese cake recipe.

is there any tips you can give me to have a good start in what to look for and how would you best go about comparing different pre-builds?

 

[Zerileous]

There are lots of videos online that can help you, just don't watch the Verge. This is a good one to watch

You could mostly use any hardware.

Before we can recommend a computer, you'll need to provide us with a budget.

I just want to clarify something you've mentioned a couple of times. It's not likely that AMD had any relationship whatsoever with whoever built and sold your computer, other than selling them the part. Things might be different with the brands that sell millions of units, but otherwise there is no direct relationship.

 

[Shivani]

ah thank you for the video and budget wise i currently have 600 saved up, I'm willing to go up to $800. I want to window shop first so that I can get some barrings before making another major purchase and to also give me a chance to learn in what i really want in a computer. So I think really my starting point is basically just going through whats out there today and educating myself on what each part is for and how it contributes to the end product. I think if I can understand the concepts of the differences in products i'll be able to hone in on what I'm really wanting out of it. wanting to play games is just to vague, cause I can play games on anything.
As for the clarification I know its not a true partnership, its just for lack of a better explanation for it. If anything i'm sure they saw the product as being cheap since it was already 1 years old and could buy it in bulk to install in there computer to get the product out faster. supply and demand i guess. there were multiple types made the only difference being which graphics card did you want in the 3 choices given kinda thing? yeah, i cant explain it very well but maybe you can see what i'm trying to explain? yeah, i'm terrible at explaining it, but i'm willing to learn new things so i'm doing my best. thank you again and i'll be watching the video right away.