Meaningful Gaming Upgrade for £1000?

arty

arty

arty

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Joined
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Hi, I'm thinking of upgrading my PC, and am wondering whether I can get a meaningful improvement for around £1000. I currently have:

- Intel i7-6700K
- Asus Z170 Pro Gaming Motherboard
- 16GB RAM (DDR4 2133Mhz)
- GeForce GTX 1080 (which is crashing, even underclocked :()
- Superflower 750W 'Platinum' modular PSU (SF-750F14MP)
- Fractal Designs case, motley collection of (slow) SSDs, fans etc.

Primary use will be Windows gaming. Separately I also want to buy a 4K monitor (not included in this budget!). Currently playing Satisfactory, Baldur's Gate 3, and a few others, but in future will probably dip into Starfield, Diablo 4 and the like - nothing ultra fast-paced.

Secondary use will be dual-booting into Linux for dev work and general tinkering.

I'm not sure whether simply upgrading my graphics card will be sufficient for the kinds of games I play, but I suspect not. Assuming I need to buy everything, I'd like:

- CPU (+ cooler I guess)
- Motherboard
- decent graphics card
- 32GB RAM (principally for dev work / future-proofing)
- ideally a couple of fast SSDs (say 500GB and 1 TB)
- to keep my existing case, PSU and other peripherals

Does anyone reckon this is worth doing for a grand? If not, what sort of money would I need to spend? I'm not really interested in the super-expensive high-end gaming stuff any more, so would prefer to go (upper?) mid-range.

Thanks a lot for any wisdom! :)
 
Upgrading to a 4K monitor makes this more difficult because it will ramp up what you need from the graphics card.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £1,025.94 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

(Use of CPU's box cooler assumed)

If you swap the GPU for OCUK's Powercolor 6800 XT then it comes with Starfield bundled, which is arguably better value apart from the stock power consumption and inferior upscaling.

arty said:
Currently playing Satisfactory, Baldur's Gate 3, and a few others, but in future will probably dip into Starfield, Diablo 4 and the like - nothing ultra fast-paced.

...

I'm not sure whether simply upgrading my graphics card will be sufficient for the kinds of games I play, but I suspect not.
Click to expand...

It might be sufficient, but it is hard to say right now. Starfield's system requirements do imply that it could be enough.
 
Wow, speedy response for a bank holiday - thanks! :D

I appreciate that this would be moving the goalposts somewhat, but would £1500 be a better (i.e. more realistic) budget? I am interested in the new AMD CPUs, though I know they're a lot more expensive.

Also, Nvidia always used to be better supported in Linux than ATI (now AMD, obviously). Do you happen to know whether this is still the case? Don't worry if not - I can also do my own research, of course.

EDIT - Yep, seems I was wrong; things have changed as evidenced by this thread: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/cheap-amd-card-for-linux.18957085/ - so perhaps an AMD graphics card would be better.
 
Last edited:
arty said:
I appreciate that this would be moving the goalposts somewhat, but would £1500 be a better (i.e. more realistic) budget? I am interested in the new AMD CPUs, though I know they're a lot more expensive.
Click to expand...

A 4070 / 6800 is perfectly capable of playing at 4K, especially if you use upscaling and/or have modest expectations, but I suspect their ability to achieve native gameplay @ high/ultra settings at this resolution (in AAA) will expire within a few years. This level of performance was considered 4K capable not long ago, but they're 1440p cards now.

arty said:
I appreciate that this would be moving the goalposts somewhat, but would £1500 be a better (i.e. more realistic) budget? I am interested in the new AMD CPUs, though I know they're a lot more expensive.
Click to expand...

Definitely, you could make the upgrade a lot higher-end and it'll have better legs over the next 4-5 years.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £1,475.89 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

Cooler: this (under £50).
 
Intel Core i7-13700F (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail
CP-6BD-IN
£350 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
MSI B760 Gaming Plus WIFI (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard
MB-37M-MS
£145 (incl. VAT)
£130 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
TeamGroup Vulcan 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C36 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FLBD532G5600HC36BDC01)
MY-0BB-TG
£90 (incl. VAT)
£80 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Thanks a lot, I'll definitely consider increasing my budget, then :) Looks like 4K is pretty hard on the graphics cards!
 
arty said:
Looks like 4K is pretty hard on the graphics cards!
Click to expand...

It depends on your expectations and the age of the games, since even a £300 card can play 4K if you're playing older stuff/indie games, but running/maintaining a 4K system for AAA games with everything on max, yes, that gets very expensive, very fast.
 
Tetras said:
It depends on your expectations and the age of the games, since even a £300 card can play 4K if you're playing older stuff/indie games, but running/maintaining a 4K system for AAA games with everything on max, yes, that gets very expensive, very fast.
Click to expand...
As @Tetras says, it can get expensive very fast. Would you consider using 4K for work and older titles and scaling down to 1440p for newer titles or playing with DLSS or FSR? Because in that case, assuming you are not looking at high refresh (100fps+ at 4K) you are not limited to a RTX 4090
 
Noughtboy said:
As @Tetras says, it can get expensive very fast. Would you consider using 4K for work and older titles and scaling down to 1440p for newer titles or playing with DLSS or FSR? Because in that case, assuming you are not looking at high refresh (100fps+ at 4K) you are not limited to a RTX 4090
Click to expand...
I’m not really familiar with DLSS or FSR, but for FPS games I’d be happy with a lower res. Text sharpness for work and some slower-paced games (e.g. Baldur’s Gate) would be more important to me really.
 
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