This is a review / first impressions of my experience upgrading my desktop PC as a dad that's out of touch with the current trends in desktop hardware.
So I've been long overdue for a PC upgrade for a long time now. My desktop PC was purchased in 2012 and had only had cursory upgrades (as in, graphics card/PSU replaced as they've died). But I've been out of the PC hardware game for a long time; no idea what's new, what's good, what's bad. So I asked around and was told from a number of sources that AMD is the way to go these days. Now, I've always been an Intel man from the day they started making CPUs. I was wary, but in particular I am trusting of the advice of a good friend who works in IT.
Get a Ryzen 5 3600x, he said. And a x570 board to go with it. So, says I, what x570? MSI, he says.
And off I go to see what they offer.
I looked at a few different options to see what specs were on offer. I really wanted wifi, obviously, because who doesn't, and bluetooth would be good for when I want to use my xbox one controller for gaming. But I also didn't want to spend stupid money on it. I'm a dad. I don't have the luxury of spare money to throw at stuff; it all goes to schooling, a seemingly endless supply of food for hungry mouths, clothes that get outgrown in what feels like weeks. So I had a look at the lower end of the scale of what MSI had to offer, and hey, the x570 gaming edge wifi did everything I wanted, for what I feel is a pretty fair price.
So I pulled the trigger. I arranged with a local store to get the new parts put together with what still worked out of my old PC and went in. Got some 3600mhz ram (I honestly don't recall the name, something starting with A?) to go along with it, because obviously the old junk I have is just that, junk. While I was at the store, the salesman pointed out "my" good taste in motherboards. The MSI board comes with PCIE 4.0, which to me was just jargon, but he explained that the upcoming generations of graphics cards can really utilize the hell out of that, and I'll get a greater performance boost out of it compared to 3.0 when I get around to upgrading my graphics card. Excellent I say, not really following other than "is gooder than the old one". Also, the salesman said, it's got a heatsink for an M.2 drive to keep temperatures down, and a whole pile of other onboard cooling. Great, I think, knowing we live in a country that can be sweltering at times and that temperature is the enemy, definitely picked the right motherboard here.
Everything was installed and running a few hours later. Since then I've been installing windows, drivers, all my old apps, the usual routine one does after a format. Things are blazing fast by comparison (sorry, my old 3770k, but you suck) and I couldn't be happier. I went into this a bit worried about the difficulty of finding the right hardware for the right price, but thankfully I had some good advice and a bit of luck.
One last thing. My old desktop had been running a USB hub for the past couple years. The ASUS motherboard simply didn't have enough ports for all the peripherals (kb/m, webcam, usb dvd, ext. hdd, graphics tablet, xbox controller and more). Not the case with this new MSI board. I have, for the first time in a long time, got spare USB ports. I might need to buy some more stuff just to take advantage of it.
MSI x570 & Ryzen 3600x upgrade, from a dad's POV