... Another one of those threads (budget £1,000-£1,250ish...) gaming PC advice.

DeeeBeee

DeeeBeee

DeeeBeee

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Hi all,

Long time reader, first time registered/poster ;-)

I've had my i5-3570K 3.4 (clocked to 4.2) for a fair while now as I got more into console gaming and just tended to use the PC for editing photos/work related stuff like Office. I recently "upgraded" the GFX card to a Geforce GTX 760 and put in another 8GB of RAM as a friend was selling them cheap and it was a nice bump over what I had in there.

That's given me the bug to get back into PC gaming and I think an upgrade is long overdue. Problem is I'm so out of the loop with it all. I've got a half idea after doing some reading on articles about the new AMD Ryzen 7 2700X but I've no idea about what motherboard and even case / cooling would be best suited to the system.

I was also looking at a decent GFX card like a new GeForce 2070 (2080 seems a bit of a stretch for my ideal budget). I've got an LG 27UK650 and ASUS VG248QE so would like to be able to keep my dual monitor setup going - I'm not looking for the 4k 60 for gaming but thought that the 2070 seemed a good balance for cost/performance?

I've currently got an SSD in my i5 but its only a 128 and the mechanical is only a 500gb so I don't think I could really salvage any parts from that system - I'd ideally want 500gb SSD so I can get a few games on there and maybe a 1TB mechanical drive for storage.

I'd really appreciate it if someone who actually knows what they are talking about (i.e. NOT me) could give me some advice mainly around which motherboard, CPU, RAM and GFX card I should opt for as there are so many options and this being a big purchase I wouldn't want to purchase something I later regret. Also cooling wise - remembering that even a stock 2700X sounds like it'd blow me away with performance compared to what I currently have so I don't think i'd necessarily want to overclock the system.

Budget wise I'm looking at the £1k mark, but when looking at the difference in price between a 2060 and 2070 and the performance bump I'm happy to go a bit over that (say up to £250ish maybe a bit more). I have windows 10 so I don't need any software, same goes for keyboard/mouse/speakers and so on.

Use wise, it'd be gaming, and used for work/design. Appreciate anyone who takes the time to respond.

Many thanks.
 
Welcome aboard, ex-filthy lurker.

How about keep the 120GB SSD as boot drive and add a 1TB SSD for games/other stuff? The mech drive could remain as back-up for your most important files for now.

Also, don't buy new CPU/mobo/RAM yet. In games that don't use more than four cores, and at 4.2GHz on that i5-3570K, there won't be a huge amount of difference with 2700X. You'll only see smoother play in games that use more. Best upgrade CPU around summer, when you see the new Ryzen 3XXX options and can compare to Intel.

Suggest you add new SSD and GPU (that will give you way more performance boost than CPU) and keep going a few months.
 
How much cash can you save from now till July ?

2070 gtx might be a bit overkill for that monitor , 2060ti should drive 90fps at high easily and save some cash .

At 1080p your still speed bound, for a ryzen 2600x to match intel i5 9400 (both 6 cores) , needs to run at 4.3ghz with 3466hz ram speed ..

I5 9600k clocks to 5ghz is a killer, but personally tend to push people to 8 core 9700k if they already have 4 core i5/i7 K chips. Rather double your cores if your going to upgrade
Ryzen should be interesting in July. Running out begging for clock for clock speed on new r20 benchmark. Should equal intel but cheaper...
 
Thanks for the welcome and replies guys its appreciated.

Using the SSD as just a windows drive would be a good idea, along with the mech drive. Only issue is I do a lot of photography and use RAW so I've been thinking about a 1/2tb mechanical but looking at the cost they aren't too bad (but not something I'd have to do straight away). It tends to be WOW mostly at the moment which I think only uses 1 core! but the idea of the upgrade was to get away from console gaming - July time for the motherboard/CPU upgrade then sounds like a good plan if you think its worth waiting on, I can save a fair bit of extra £ before then as well to give me more options.

That being said then if I went for the 2070 or 2060ti (to save a bit of cash - that monitor is 4k/HDR though? I got it mainly for my PS4 PRO) would I have any problems with my motherboard do you think? Its a "ASUS P8Z77-M". Also is there anything specific I should look at with regards to a case which is future proof? (i.e. size and cooling). My existing case if fine but its quite large and I was wondering if I could get something with a slightly smaller form factor - wouldn't want to change it over though only to find I'll need to change again come July and the new mobo/chip.

What you've both said makes a lot of sense and I'm happy to do it in stages (to be honest I didn't think there was much point keeping the existing chip and board!), but what I don't want is to a part upgrade i'd need to upgrade again around July - for example the larger SSD will absolutely be fine in a new system, but I'm not so sure about the GPU, would say a 2060ti be ok on my current board? - i'll give it a look. I'm also not 100% sure on whether my PSU would need to be upgraded? The original one went pop and I replaced it with a "OCZ ZS Series 650W 80+ Bronze Power Supply (PSU)" a few years back which I think should be ok?

Thanks again for taking the time to reply, been really helpful.
 
PSU was said to have Japanese capacitors back in the day, though in other aspects a bit meh*. Depends how long you've had it really. If you were thinking it would be best to get a new PSU for new CPU/mobo/RAM etc, then may as well get a new quality PSU for any GPU upgrade now.

* It has two PCIe connectors for GPU. One 6-pin and one 6+2-pin. So GPU choice would depend on how many connectors it needed. It also doesn't provide all its rated power on the +12v rail, but at around 550W there, enough for most cards. Had a three year warranty, so if it's older than that I'd personally get rid before putting new parts in. It doesn't "need" to be but it's not a bad idea.

The mobo should be fine with new GPUs going by people using new GPUs with Sandy and Ivybridge boards. Might need a BIOS update, perhaps. You have a CPU overclock so I'll just say this even though you probably know - if it comes to that, do make sure to set everything back to default before flashing the BIOS. Then overclock again after (or save the profile if it has the option).

Keep your case for now. Consider case upgrade come July or so.

I think what you want to know is around how much to spend on GPU (possibly PSU) right now, so that there's still room in the £1K budget for everything else later, right?
 
Yeah exactly it Danny, if it's July though I'd have a good chunk extra to spend on the CPU/mobo so could spend a little more now (e.g. decent 2070 maybe?... All depends on if I'd get the benefit)

The current PSU is 650W but sounds like a good idea to upgrade that now, what would be the best to go for to future proof a new upgrade? And what brand? I've had Corsair in the past and been happy with those.

Thanks for the reminder on the overclock and bios upgrade, think I did it fairly recently but will double check.
 
DeeeBeee said:
Yeah exactly it Danny, if it's July though I'd have a good chunk extra to spend on the CPU/mobo so could spend a little more now (e.g. decent 2070 maybe?... All depends on if I'd get the benefit)
Click to expand...

Well, 2070 would be quite overspecced for 1080p 144Hz. Would obviously help with the 4K screen if you were to game with it which you say you don't need. It would also be a fine choice for 1440p 144Hz. Picked out a couple of options, a 2070 (for 4K or 1440p monitor upgrade near future) and a perhaps more sensible 2060:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £870.48 (includes shipping: £10.50)
​

Why these two? The Zotac comes with 5 year warranty if you register online, and the EVGA can get 5 years if you register and purchase additional 2 years for $30/25 euros. The RTX cards can still come with a kind of memory or memory controller flaw that can make them fail sooner or later. Particularly the 2080Ti as the memory is clocked higher but can also affect other series and indeed might affect them longer term. So that's why these two. Also, they are decent models at decent price-point (the XC Ultra because of the special offer).


DeeeBeee said:
The current PSU is 650W but sounds like a good idea to upgrade that now, what would be the best to go for to future proof a new upgrade? And what brand? I've had Corsair in the past and been happy with those.
Click to expand...

Corsair has OEMs like Seasonic, HEC, Channel Well Technologies and others make their PSUs for them. These are fully modular and all come with 10 year warranty. Any would be fine. 550W fine, if you want to have more headroom then 650 (specced a Corsair 750 as it's on offer and cheaper than the 650 model):

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £483.55 (includes shipping: £12.60)
​
 
Danny thanks so much for the info that is exactly what I needed to know and thanks for the info on brands and the warranty. The 4k option would be nice, I'll take a look to see if I can stretch to the 2070 but really I don't think it's that necessary.
Thanks again
 
DeeeBeee said:
The current PSU is 650W
Click to expand...
Only in sticker.
By meaningfull standards it's 550W, because all significant power consumers load 12V.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/ZS_650W/2.html
So at least without undervolting or use of Power save profile to tone down power draw Vegas would hammer it heavily.

Though that's still one of the few OCZ PSUs which weren't completely mediocre/cheapos with more money spend on bling bling than quality.
 
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