Upgrade All Or Just Some Parts Of My PC?

Vanch

Vanch

Vanch

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Hey guys, it's about time I thought about upgrading my PC as it's been hanging on by a thread for the past couple of years and now it seems like it's on it's last legs. My current specs are as follows:

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In your honest opinions does this whole rig need upgrading? The graphics card is 6 years old now I think haha. Should I just buy a whole new PC, or could I keep any of the parts from this one? What I'm looking for is a PC that can play all the latest & upcoming games on HIGH (don't need it to be ULTRA at all) without any lag.

I'm basically gonna have an £800 budget for the tower itself. I've already got a decent monitor & keyboard, mouse, speakers etc.


What line of graphics cards should I be looking at when upgrading, in order to stay future proof for the next few years at least, and should I go i7 instead of i5? I should say, I am an avid Nvidia and Intel kind of guy and know next to nothing about AMD at all, so I'd be looking to get an Nvidia card and an Intel CPU. Problem is, I just don't know where to start and how to spend the cash correctly :/

Would massively appreciate some help, thank you!
 
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Two things will breathe some extra oomph into your system:

1) A SSD (for Windows, apps and games - use your WDC drive for file storage).
2) A new graphics card. If the pricing is right (no-one knows yet) the soon to be released Nvidia 1070 could be a good buy.

I'd upgrade those two areas first and see how much it improves things (quite a significant amount I would think). You can always upgrade further things subsequently if you need.

A Z170 motherboard + i5-6600k + 16GB DDR4 should set you up nicely for gaming, combined with a SSD and something like the 1070 if your budget allows. For gaming you probably won't see much difference between i5 and i7 for existing titles. This may change a bit with DX12 games, but the price difference between i5 and i7 is probably better invested in a graphics card.
 
Start with a fresh install of Windows 10 on an ssd. Your graphics card is definitely starting to age. In a couple of weeks we'll have non reference 1070s available which might offer good value or bring other prices down.

Gains from 2500K to skylake is a greatly debated. However this video shows very little improvenent from sandy to skylake at 4ghz.

 
Only worth going from a 2500K to a 6700K (I7) in my opinion.

I did the exact same jump :D

To do that jump, you'll need..

Motherboard
CPU (+ a cooler)
RAM


SSD is a must for ANY system.

You could just buy an SSD alone and your system would fly.

I would look at getting an SSD and GFX card first. If you still want more, get CPU/RAM/MOBO




SSDs, Samsung Evo 850 in either 256GB or 512GB. Then use your HDD as a storage drive.
 
If its only for gaming then you wont see much from a cpu and mobo upgrade. If you've got a stock intel cooler then get yourself a coolermaster 212 evo and overclock it to 4.3/4.4 on stock voltage, get an ssd, and upgrade your graphics card to one of the new ones coming out 1080, 1070, or polaris. Just make sure you've got a power supple that is suitable.
Your graphics card choice would be dependent on the resolution that you are gaming at, so if you're happy with your current monitor and just want more juice then look for a gpu that matches up well with the desired resolution and refresh rate.
 
I have the same CPU and it still plays everything I throw at it but I'd try overclocking yours as looks like its at stock speeds. Easy enough to get 4.50GHz by following guides online.

Personally I'd look at upgrading the GPU but depends what resolution you play it. Whether you're happy with 1080p or want 4K.

Also +1 to those suggesting an SSD. They make a massive improvement and they aren't priced too bad at the moment.

edit: didn't see Vish's post above which pretty much echo's what they said.
 
SSD + GPU + fresh install will resolve most performance issues.

But are you actually having any problems with it? Is it crashing? Have you cleaned out the CPU cooler? Re-applied the TIM? Hmm... which CPU cooler do you have?

There's one critical component you didn't detail: the PSU. Which one do you have? A bad PSU can cause all sorts of problems, and a decent replacement is only £50 or so.
 
Awesome, that's a great help.

I'm gonna get a SSD, but what size will I need exactly? I remember my friend used a SSD in the past to install Windows on and it made his PC run unbelievably slow for some reason. In the end we just scrapped the SSD and reinstalled Windows on a normal HD. The SSD he was using was around 100gb though I think... Could that have been why?

If I get a SSD, what size should I get? I'm guessing it'd be used for my OS and my games, and then I'd just keep things like movies, music etc on a different HD. I just don't wanna get a too small SSD and have it run like crap haha.

Also, I pretty much know what kind of CPU I want now and it'll require a Socket 1151 Motherboard. When it comes to motherboards, it is probably the thing I'm least knowledgeable about. Can you guys recommend any good 1151 motherboards which will do the job well. I noticed some 1151 boards are around £40, and some are around £200. I just want one that'll fit in an ATX case and do it's job without any problems.
 
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Vanch said:
Awesome, that's a great help.

I'm gonna get a SSD, but what size will I need exactly? I remember my friend used a SSD in the past to install Windows on and it made his PC run unbelievably slow for some reason. In the end we just scrapped the SSD and reinstalled Windows on a normal HD. The SSD he was using was around 100gb though I think... Could that have been why?

If I get a SSD, what size should I get? I'm guessing it'd be used for my OS and my games, and then I'd just keep things like movies, music etc on a different HD. I just don't wanna get a too small SSD and have it run like crap haha.

Also, I pretty much know what kind of CPU I want now and it'll require a Socket 1151 Motherboard. When it comes to motherboards, it is probably the thing I'm least knowledgeable about. Can you guys recommend any good 1151 motherboards which will do the job well. I noticed some 1151 boards are around £40, and some are around £200. I just want one that'll fit in an ATX case and do it's job without any problems.
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There must have been another issue causing it to run slow or the SSD was faulty. No way is an SSD going to run slower than a standard HD regardless of what size it is. The size of the SSD has no impact on the speed it will run. SSDs generally start at 120GB which will be fine for Windows, programs and apps. If you want to have games on the SSD - and this does make the levels load significantly faster - then you're going to want some more space as some of the newest games are coming out up to 50GB!!
 
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Vanch said:
I'm gonna get a SSD, but what size will I need exactly? I remember my friend used a SSD in the past to install Windows on and it made his PC run unbelievably slow for some reason. In the end we just scrapped the SSD and reinstalled Windows on a normal HD. The SSD he was using was around 100gb though I think... Could that have been why?

If I get a SSD, what size should I get? I'm guessing it'd be used for my OS and my games, and then I'd just keep things like movies, music etc on a different HD. I just don't wanna get a too small SSD and have it run like crap haha.
Click to expand...

500GB is the sweet spot currently in terms of price per GB and gives you plenty of room to install Windows, apps and games and leave some spare space to ensure good performance (overfilling a SSD can slow it down, which is likely the problem your friend had).

Something like the Samsung EVO 850 500GB would be a good buy.
 
How much space should I leave on the SSD for it not to run slow? I think that WAS the problem my friend had with his SSD which is why we ended up installing the OS on a normal HD instead.
 
Vanch said:
How much space should I leave on the SSD for it not to run slow? I think that WAS the problem my friend had with his SSD which is why we ended up installing the OS on a normal HD instead.
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Depends on the drive technology / manufacturer.

But using Samsung as an example, the amount of space that Samsung recommend to allocate to "over provisioning" on their 850 Evo drives is 10% of total capacity. This is set via their Samsung Magician software and becomes space that you cannot write to (it is made unavailable to the operating system). The over provisioned space is used to optimise performance and extend drive lifespan.

Even once you've over provisioned the drive it's probably still not advisable to totally cram the disk to the limits, probably allow at least another 10% of free space so that the operating system has space to play with.

This is one of the downsides of using a SSD, you get tremendous speed but you have to accept that you're handing over part of your storage space to get that speed and also to protect the lifespan of the drive.
 
For an SSD 250gb would be enough so you don't fill it up. 128gb is too small, just save your games on your HDD and use the SSD as a boot drive.
 
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