Upgrading my computer

[SrSosio]

Hi. I'm thinking about upgrading my current setup, as I would like to play DCS on VR and I believe it's a little bit short for that.

I have:

MSI B450 tomahawk max

Ryzen 5 3500

2x8 Gb G.Skill Ripjaws 3600 (already ordered a new set so it will be 32 Gb)

Geforce GTX 1070

 

Now that the new Nvidia cards are about to come out, I thought of purchasing one of them to accommodate the pc for VR.

I was thinking of the 3080, which is a huge upgrade for a reasonable price, and for googles, I want the hp reverb, but I'm going to wait for the gen 2 which is also about to come out.

My questions are:

Should I also upgrade the processor or it's not necessary?

I believe I can't upgrade up to a Ryzen 9 with the b450, so it would have to be a ryzen 7, correct?

At what point will my windows license fail to be valid if I change components in the pc?

 

Thank you very much

[eracer1111]

You'll need a new Windows license (I'm assuming Win10) if you swap motherboards. The rest of the components won't force you into that. On a side note... I built a computer for a customer and had major issues with the MOBO. I swapped it out for a different manufacturer/model and couldn't activate it with the existing Product ID. I called Microsoft and explained the situation, and they gave me a new license for free. So all is not lost.

[SrSosio]

Thank you eracer1111. Not planning on changing the motherboard if I don't have to. Thoughts about the specs above?

Ryzen 7 with B450 and a RTX 3080? does that make sense? is it needed? can I keep the Ryzen 5 and upgrade only the GPU or it will be too slow?

[LucShep]

Thank you eracer1111. Not planning on changing the motherboard if I don't have to. Thoughts about the specs above?

Ryzen 7 with B450 and a RTX 3080? does that make sense? is it needed? can I keep the Ryzen 5 and upgrade only the GPU or it will be too slow?

 

 

You have to consider the current state of DCS World (which may change later, at unknown time), usually only making full use of 2 cores.

You have a Ryzen 5 3500 (6c/6t) of same architecture as the Ryzen 7 3700x and 3800x (8c/16t). While they're superior processors, IMHO the IPC and clock differences are too little to justify the expense, if the interest is mainly DCS.

If wanting to upgrade the processor, I'd say to wait for upcoming AMD 4th Gen Ryzen CPUs to be released and check their reviews, then decide. You may get bios updates for your B450 mobo to support them.

Edited September 2, 2020 by LucShep

[SrSosio]

Thank you LucShep. I don't want to change the processor, I was just wondering if I needed to. So the RAM update and GPU should be ok? It's mainly DCS, yes, though I'll probably play some other vr games from time to time.

[LucShep]

Thank you LucShep. I don't want to change the processor, I was just wondering if I needed to. So the RAM update and GPU should be ok? It's mainly DCS, yes, though I'll probably play some other vr games from time to time.

 

IMO, yes.

Guess you could consider it investment in phases. :) You could then reuse the new graphics card and RAM memory on next CPU upgrade (which may or not involve new motherboard).