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Most Impactful upgrades

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91jmay

PCHF Member
Oct 16, 2020
2
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Hello all,
I am looking to upgrade my PC and would like some advice on the most impactful changes I could make to play PC games (World of Warcraft in particular). My specs are below:

Item Value
Name AMD Radeon (TM) R9 380 Series
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6939&SUBSYS_93801682&REV_F1\4&2FE1A02D&0&0008
Adapter Type AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x6939), Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. compatible
Adapter Description AMD Radeon (TM) R9 380 Series
Adapter RAM (2,147,483,648) bytes

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4690K CPU @ 3.50GHz, 3501 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 2603, 08/04/2015
SMBIOS Version 2.8
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
 
So others can better assist we need complete system specs.

If the computer is a desktop can you post the brand and model name or number of the power supply (PSU).

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s.

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:

In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.

In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.

Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.
 
you don't mention money - that's always going to have the most impact of any upgrade.

it'll be no surprise that the parts you are looking at would be: GPU, memory, CPU, PSU, SSD and motherboard.
you'll quickly discover after upgrading one of those, that it'll highlight the shortcomings of the next part down the pipeline.

if you know the games in question, check out their recommended specs and aim for something slightly more than that.
 
More important than any upgrade atm is the critically low amount of free storage space on the C: partition where Windows lives, we are up to version 2004 of Windows 10 but you are stuck on version 1903 as there is no room on the partition for the updates to install so they are failing.

Partition 1
Partition ID: Disk #0, Partition #1
Disk Letter: C:
File System: NTFS
Volume Serial Number: EE27A976
Size: 231 GB
Used Space: 222 GB (95%)
Free Space: 9.45 GB (5%)

For Windows to be able to run efficiently and to be able to update you need to have between 20 and 25% of the partition or drive available on a HDD and an SSD between 10 and 15% as free storage space at all times, if you don`t you risk Windows becoming corrupt or not being able to update which puts you at risk of malware attack.

Data only storage devices should not be allowed to get any lower than 10% of free storage space of the full capacity of the drive/partition on the drive, this also to avoid data corruption.

Please note that storage devices can physically fail if the amount of free storage space is allowed to drop below the required 10 or 20/25% minimum.
 
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