Worth Upgrading or ?

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So the lad turned 18 a few weeks ago and inherited some money and wanted to buy a new gaming pc, was looking at the R12 alienware as 'it looks cool' and another that I had pointed out. then we realised a relative had left his pc for the boy to have and tinker with...We dug it out and wondering if its worth upgrading. I reckon it will be close to £850 to get what he wants.

Now he will ONLY use this for gaming, not even for youtube..Its literally for playing games. He wants ray tracing capability but have suggested he waits and see if he needs it now or later. he plays red dead, farcry etc, not really any fast paced FPS

So this is the setup on the pc we have
Silver Stone Case--1 large cooling fan and 3 smaller ones-all the ports and connections you could want
Asus Z87 Deluxe/Dual motherboard
I7 4770k cpu
Be Queit cpu cooler
MSI N670GTX-2GB
Great Power X14s4p4 PSU
5 x 3TB WD HDD( and yes I did mean x5---15tb...what for I dont know)
Asus Bluray drive
Hp DVDR drive
HP lightscribe drive
No ram in at the minute
Acer CB270HU

Now we dont need the optical units and this case is a bit of a behemoth so my thinking was to add/change the below for now and he can do the rest piece by piece and learn maybe(although he did inherit a nice sum so will probably say get better stuff for it)

Corsair 16GB RGB PRO RAM
WD Black SN850 1tb SSD
New smaller case if possible to fit(although not necessary it would look better

So I have seen a number of options for the graphics card for now. TBH I dont want to go through the minute details, and he has no interest in doing anything else then having a pc that will turn on, be quiet and fast. So what does he actually need, these are available localy and not out of budget. Are they going to be good enough for modern games for the next 18-24 months or is he worth paying a little more and being able to forget about for ages?
Gefor RTX3060 x2 12gb-top of the 'budget' budget
RTX2060 6GB
1660 Super Dual(I see a lot of pre-builds with these)
GTX 1050TI 4gb

Going to swap the monitor out for a Asus 24" TUF 165Hz one
And going for K57 RGB keyboard and the harpoon RGB mouse.


So do I also HAVE to change anything else to make it good enough for gaming? The CPU is dated but is it ok?


Or am I better off just telling him to spend to get a new one....Budget for upgrade around £1000 but new system with peripherals would be around £1800 so what should I do hahah

Thanks in anticipation
 
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Is it really that bad that the rest of it needs to go? Will the CPU not be ok for another year or so? Or if I upgrade the CPU now and the GPU will that not make it more current?

I appreciate the full build you have sent although the 2nd is a bit overkill for him I think lol.

My question really is then, is changing the CPU and GPU just not going to work? As i understood the motherboard was a decent one, more than enough for what he wants, all the case and power supply and CPU cooler etc, although a few years old are pretty much unused.

I know that I should go 'new' and shiny shiny but if I can upgrade for a similar price to what a new build would be like then Id rather not have more e-waste(Im also presuming no market for the bits I have)

He is only playing 1080p at the moment, but I really really would like to reduce the waste and money spent, plus its a little sentimental as his relative left for him.

BUT if its all really that trash then I suppose there is nothing for it
 
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There is nothing that can really be reused, except maybe for the SSD and HDDs, but really better go for brand new and fast, modern M.2 SSD.
 
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I know but if it will do what he needs it to do with some upgrades then I would rather have kept it...he will not know the difference between the motherboards etc, but will accept that it needs to go.... surprised that even the case is trash as its brand new pretty much.

Can I get any money back for any of it anywhere? Like the 3tb ssd drives?
 
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Soldato
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I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the i7 4770k cpu. It might well be a bit long in the tooth now and will limit refresh rates in modern games, but it's still perfectly useable imo. I'd say have a go at upgrading the gpu, ram (get second hand if needed, not sure what it has atm), add an ssd, and maybe swap the PSU for a more reputable model. Then if performance is affecting you kid's enjoyment of games then you could get a new cpu, mobo, and ram.

Not sure which Far Cry game you mean - the most recent far cry 6 is really heavy on the cpu I believe due to being a poorly optimised console port and performance with the 4770k probably would be poor, but other ones not as much. Still would support at least 60fps though I think - eg benchmark done with 4790k which should perform similarly: https://youtu.be/wcob33yF7v0
To some people 60fps is 'unplayable', but personally think it's fine (yes playing cs:go etc a low refresh rate will give you a competitive disadvantage, but if that's not important to you then it doesn't really matter (and Tbf in cs:go the 4770k would allow decent refresh rates anyway) ). Of course higher refresh rates look better, but 60fps isn't too bad imo.

Read Dead redemption 2 should be fine too: https://youtu.be/j9HV9V5nzOc (skip to 9:34).
....
Now he will ONLY use this for gaming, not even for youtube..Its literally for playing games. He wants ray tracing capability but have suggested he waits and see if he needs it now or later. he plays red dead, farcry etc, not really any fast paced FPS

...

Now we dont need the optical units and this case is a bit of a behemoth so my thinking was to add/change the below for now and he can do the rest piece by piece and learn maybe(although he did inherit a nice sum so will probably say get better stuff for it)

Corsair 16GB RGB PRO RAM
WD Black SN850 1tb SSD
New smaller case if possible to fit(although not necessary it would look better

So I have seen a number of options for the graphics card for now. TBH I dont want to go through the minute details, and he has no interest in doing anything else then having a pc that will turn on, be quiet and fast. So what does he actually need, these are available localy and not out of budget. Are they going to be good enough for modern games for the next 18-24 months or is he worth paying a little more and being able to forget about for ages?
Gefor RTX3060 x2 12gb-top of the 'budget' budget
RTX2060 6GB
1660 Super Dual(I see a lot of pre-builds with these)
GTX 1050TI 4gb

Going to swap the monitor out for a Asus 24" TUF 165Hz one
And going for K57 RGB keyboard and the harpoon RGB mouse.


...

Or am I better off just telling him to spend to get a new one....Budget for upgrade around £1000 but new system with peripherals would be around £1800 so what should I do hahah
Personally I would say you might as well upgrade what you have unless you have any use for a second pc on which case you could keep the old system whole and build an entirely new pc.

Screen, mouse and keyboard sound fine to me. I think the screen may be a VA panel and personally I prefer IPS due to better colours and no grey smearing and better viewing angles, but then VA does usually get you better contrast and darker blacks, so pros and cons both ways.

For 1080p gaming you don't need a top of the line gpu, and I think either the 2060 6gb or rtx 3060 as you mentioned would be fine, as would a 6600xt from AMD. If you have a bit of time / patience then the best way to get a new card is to get an nvidia founders edition (anything up to a 3080 would be cheaper than what you'll pay from a shop for a rtx 3060), which are sold at original RRP rather than the current inflated prices. The stock is only available for very short periods of time (under a minute for some models) whenever stock arrives so you basically need to get alerts when stock comes in (seems to be roughly every 2-3 weeks) to stand a chance. Best way seems to be download the Telegram app m, then joint the 'FE PartAlert' channel to get alerts.

Re your other pondered upgrades, careful - I don't think your motherboard supports m.2 nvme drives or ddr4 RAM, so you've need to get a SATA SSD and Ddr3 memory. Not sure what memory you have in there at the moment, but if it is 8gb then going up to 16gb would probably be worthwhile - I'd try and get some second hand.
 
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Soldato
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AMD cards do really well with what would be considered a weak CPU on Nvidia.

Id probably drop in RX 6600XT, 6700XT and see how well it runs.
 
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The issue with that is he wants RT and both those cards suck at RT.
Worth noting the second half of the sentence says: "but have suggested he waits and see if he needs it now or later".

Personally not been blown away by it, don't think it's worth planning a build to enable ray tracing at high refresh rates unless you have a much larger budget. I doubt ray tracing on an rtx 3060 will really hold up that well if future games start to use it more.
 
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Soldato
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He says he wants Ray Tracing as that's the 'fad' I dont think he will notice that much and only if he had them side by side.

Plus he is getting the xbox and ps5 when stocks return
When done well raytracing can look quite spectacular and will only become more prominent in games as time goes on. Nvidia cards also have the bonus of DLSS while also being able to use AMDs FSR and also have the Nvenc encoder for streaming.

I certainly wouldn't consider a 6600XT over a 3060ti even though the former is £150 cheaper as its quite a bit slower around 15-20% and also lacks the extra features while only running at PCIe 4.0 x8 while the 6700XT is around 5% faster it also costs around £100 more and has much weaker RT performance and no DLSS although it does have 12gb VRAM.

The best bang for buck are the FE cards as they retail at MSRP and can't be beaten for value in the current climate although they take a bit of preparation and patience to get. 3060ti FE £369, 3070FE £469, 3070ti FE £529 and 3080FE £650 all offer excellent value for money.
 
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So next question is... What can I do to it now to keep it going for a little bit.

I dont think he will want ray tracing and if he does then when he gets his full inheritance in 3 years when hes 21 he can buy a top of the range pc.

Will the Mobo be ok for that long.

Im happy to get new mobo, gpu and ram now if that means will be good enough to use for gaming for next couple of years.

But would be easier for me to not replace mobo
 
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