Brand new PC gamer need help!

[Chrishatch]

Hey yall im brand new to the pc gaming world. I ordered a pre built pc and it came without a graphics card, it has 2gb of graphics integrated into the system somehow. Motherboard had a pci express slot in it, do I need a specific type of graphics card, or will any do?
Here is what I have, straight from amazon! Built by CUK.
A3200m-k
ryzen 3 3200g with radeon vega 8 graphics
16gb ram
256gb ssd
500w psu
and I have added a 1b hhd.










asus a3200m-k
ryzen 3 3200g with radeon vega 8 graphics
500w psu
16gb ram
256gb ssd
and I have added a 1th hhd.

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Any GPU will do, they all fit into the same PCI Express slot. What you may consider is making sure your PSU have a right type of power connector that your future GPU needs.

You're currently running an integrated graphic card that could be "ok-ish" if you're not planning to do any modern gaming - but if you do, you will need to buy a separate graphic card.

Considering the specs, I would say something around Nvidia GeForce 1660 or Radeon RX 570 or RX 580 would suffice. Should be enough if your monitor is FullHD.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Hi, congratulations on the new PC!

2 things, could you look inisde the PC and tell us what the make and model of the PSU is? Some models come without enough cables to power some graphics cards.

Do you know what the case model is? It may not be large enough to fit some graphics cards.

What is the resolution of your display?

Finally, what is your budget?

 

[Oussebon]

Just to chime in with the above, what sorts of games are you intending to play?

Any specific titles come to mind?

 

[Chrishatch]

Hi, congratulations on the new PC!

2 things, could you look inisde the PC and tell us what the make and model of the PSU is? Some models come without enough cables to power some graphics cards.

Do you know what the case model is? It may not be large enough to fit some graphics cards.

What is the resolution of your display?

Finally, what is your budget?

Hey, thank you for tour help, I won’t be able to look at the PSU until this evening and I do not know the case model off the top of my head. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07SGYXWP5?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
That is the amazon like for the one I purchased.
Monitor is sceptre 24” 1080p 75hz
I currently have openly downloaded Apex Legends and WOW. Apex is running on very low graphics settings and the graphics quality in game is very iffy.

 

[Chrishatch]

Just to chime in with the above, what sorts of games are you intending to play?

Any specific titles come to mind?

Currently only have downloaded Apex Legends and WOW. Would like to get into Call of duty on pc as well.

 

[Zoid]

Hey, thank you for tour help, I won’t be able to look at the PSU until this evening and I do not know the case model off the top of my head. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07SGYXWP5?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
That is the amazon like for the one I purchased.
Monitor is sceptre 24” 1080p 75hz
I currently have openly downloaded Apex Legends and WOW. Apex is running on very low graphics settings and the graphics quality in game is very iffy.

The Ryzen 3 3200G is a fantastic APU at under $100, provided you have the right expectations of it. Unfortunately, running Apex Legends or CoD well at 1080p and above minimum graphics is setting your expectations a little too high. WoW will be no problem though.

As @OsaX Nymloth suggests, an RX 580 or a GTX 1660 would be a good choice for 1080p. You could get into an RX 580 for as low as $160 or so. What is your budget?

As others have said, you'll need to take a look at your PSU before buying a GPU to make sure you have the proper connections. 500W is enough to power a dedicated GPU, even if it isn't the highest quality PSU, but you'll want to verify that it can supply the 8 pin or 8+6 pin or whatever PCIe connection your GPU would need.

Also, it looks like your case supports graphics cards up to 315mm, so you should be fine with most cards, but check to be sure.

 

[Chrishatch]

The Ryzen 3 3200G is a fantastic APU at under $100, provided you have the right expectations of it. Unfortunately, running Apex Legends or CoD well at 1080p and above minimum graphics is setting your expectations a little too high. WoW will be no problem though.

As @OsaX Nymloth suggests, an RX 580 or a GTX 1660 would be a good choice for 1080p. You could get into an RX 580 for as low as $160 or so. What is your budget?

As others have said, you'll need to take a look at your PSU before buying a GPU to make sure you have the proper connections. 500W is enough to power a dedicated GPU, even if it isn't the highest quality PSU, but you'll want to verify that it can supply the 8 pin or 8+6 pin or whatever PCIe connection your GPU would need.

Also, it looks like your case supports graphics cards up to 315mm, so you should be fine with most cards, but check to be sure.

Okay so after reviewing the paperwork for the PSU, itis made by Thermaltake, and has a 6+2 pin PCI e connection.
As for my budget, I have already exhausted the budget that my wife had set for me when I decided I wanted a pc. So at this current moment in time $160 for a graphics card is not for me, not this month anyways. I will have to make due with what I have for now. Thank you so much for your helping me.

 

[Oussebon]

Just putting it out there, if it's the PC that is listed as $564.99 not including Windows, and if money is a touch limited, you could consider returning it for a refund and self building:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($139.99 @ B&H)
Motherboard: ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($69.98 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial BX500 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($39.99 @ Adorama)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 570 4 GB PULSE Video Card ($123.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Walmart)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12III 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($49.99 @ B&H)
Total: $553.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-02-25 14:32 EST-0500

 

[Zoid]

Okay so after reviewing the paperwork for the PSU, itis made by Thermaltake, and has a 6+2 pin PCI e connection.
As for my budget, I have already exhausted the budget that my wife had set for me when I decided I wanted a pc. So at this current moment in time $160 for a graphics card is not for me, not this month anyways. I will have to make due with what I have for now. Thank you so much for your helping me.

Ok, so your PSU would be able to support a GPU like the RX 570 or RX 580 as long as you get a model that only requires one 8-pin (or 6+2) connection.

@Oussebon is correct that you could build your own PC that would perform quite a bit better for the same price as the pre-built. If that is an option available to you then we would be happy to help you through that process.

For now I'm going to assume that returning your pre-built PC is not an option, in which case you're just wanting to make the most of what you have. I was going to suggest that you could try overclocking, but it appears your motherboard is an ASRock A320M which doesn't support it. If I'm wrong and you have one of the Z390 Pro 4 boards then you'd have more options. You can always try tweaking your RAM timings to see if you could squeeze out a bit of extra performance there. Since your APU uses regular RAM as its VRAM, memory speed can have a noticeable impact on performance.

If you are on an especially tight budget then I would recommend browsing the used market. Just a quick search on eBay is showing RX 570s as low as $70 or so, and you might be able to find even better deals on older cards. If you could snipe a GTX 960 or an R9 380 or something for $50 it would give you a really nice boost in performance for less than the cost of a new game.

If no GPU upgrade is possible at this time then you can try taking your games below the minimum settings by removing shadows and doing other tweaks to claw back a few FPS. This video from The LowSpecGamer demonstrates a few tweaks you can do in Apex Legends (you wouldn't need to go quite that drastic though since he's running it on an Athlon 200GE).

EDIT: I am dumb.

 

[Oussebon]

If he's got a Z390 board he's not going to get far with an AMD CPU

 

[Zoid]

If he's got a Z390 board he's not going to get far with an AMD CPU

Woops! I switched brands for a second there lol. Yeah, no, definitely not a Z390

 

[Chrishatch]

Ok, so your PSU would be able to support a GPU like the RX 570 or RX 580 as long as you get a model that only requires one 8-pin (or 6+2) connection.

@Oussebon is correct that you could build your own PC that would perform quite a bit better for the same price as the pre-built. If that is an option available to you then we would be happy to help you through that process.

For now I'm going to assume that returning your pre-built PC is not an option, in which case you're just wanting to make the most of what you have. I was going to suggest that you could try overclocking, but it appears your motherboard is an ASRock A320M which doesn't support it. If I'm wrong and you have one of the Z390 Pro 4 boards then you'd have more options. You can always try tweaking your RAM timings to see if you could squeeze out a bit of extra performance there. Since your APU uses regular RAM as its VRAM, memory speed can have a noticeable impact on performance.

If you are on an especially tight budget then I would recommend browsing the used market. Just a quick search on eBay is showing RX 570s as low as $70 or so, and you might be able to find even better deals on older cards. If you could snipe a GTX 960 or an R9 380 or something for $50 it would give you a really nice boost in performance for less than the cost of a new game.

If no GPU upgrade is possible at this time then you can try taking your games below the minimum settings by removing shadows and doing other tweaks to claw back a few FPS. This video from The LowSpecGamer demonstrates a few tweaks you can do in Apex Legends (you wouldn't need to go quite that drastic though since he's running it on an Athlon 200GE).

EDIT: I am dumb.

I will have to search ebay then for a good used deal, for that price I could make an upgrade happen much quicker. but for the mean time, how would I go about tweaking my RAM timings to see if I could get more out of the current setup?

 

[Oussebon]

AMD Ryzen Memory Tweaking & Overclocking Guide

Memory overclocking has a significant impact on performance of AMD Ryzen-powered machines, but the alleged complexity of memory tweaking on this platform, largely fueled by misinformation and lack of documentation, has kept some enthusiasts away from it. We want to change this.

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Chrishatch]

Ok, so your PSU would be able to support a GPU like the RX 570 or RX 580 as long as you get a model that only requires one 8-pin (or 6+2) connection.

@Oussebon is correct that you could build your own PC that would perform quite a bit better for the same price as the pre-built. If that is an option available to you then we would be happy to help you through that process.

For now I'm going to assume that returning your pre-built PC is not an option, in which case you're just wanting to make the most of what you have. I was going to suggest that you could try overclocking, but it appears your motherboard is an ASRock A320M which doesn't support it. If I'm wrong and you have one of the Z390 Pro 4 boards then you'd have more options. You can always try tweaking your RAM timings to see if you could squeeze out a bit of extra performance there. Since your APU uses regular RAM as its VRAM, memory speed can have a noticeable impact on performance.

If you are on an especially tight budget then I would recommend browsing the used market. Just a quick search on eBay is showing RX 570s as low as $70 or so, and you might be able to find even better deals on older cards. If you could snipe a GTX 960 or an R9 380 or something for $50 it would give you a really nice boost in performance for less than the cost of a new game.

If no GPU upgrade is possible at this time then you can try taking your games below the minimum settings by removing shadows and doing other tweaks to claw back a few FPS. This video from The LowSpecGamer demonstrates a few tweaks you can do in Apex Legends (you wouldn't need to go quite that drastic though since he's running it on an Athlon 200GE).

EDIT: I am dumb.

Bought a rx580 this weekend and holy **** what a world of difference! I am very pleased with it now! Running apex on high settings and getting average 60 FPS

 

[Zoid]

Bought a rx580 this weekend and holy **** what a world of difference! I am very pleased with it now! Running apex on high settings and getting average 60 FPS

That's awesome! Glad to hear you're getting the performance you want now. Happy gaming!