Circa-2011 gaming machine getting old - what are the options?

potato58

potato58

potato58

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Howdy,

I had some great help on this forum around Summer 2011 building my first PC. It's had a couple of small upgrades since then but it's starting to show its age.

I'm wondering what the options are for upgrading or replacing the rig in the next month or two. (I'm currently on Windows 7 and want to use my free upgrade before I lose it.)

I do a bit of general-purpose stuff with the PC but it's a gaming machine first and foremost. Currently using a 1080 120hz monitor from 2011 (LG W2363D) but I'd like to upgrade my monitor further down the line. I'm pretty set on picking up a new 1070 card soon.

My other essential requirement is that it can power my lovely Sennheiser HD 598 headphones. I understand these need a headphone amp or something and am currently using a cheapo old Xonar DG soundcard which sounds brilliant - noticeably better than the mobo sound. I don't know if that old soundcard will still work with Windows 10. I only use stereo speakers or headphones so don't need any surround-sound features.

Here are the current specs:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM
(at stock speed - I get confused every time I look at overclocking)

GTX 670 2GB

Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
(Is this still ok for Windows 10 and a modern graphics card?)

Lepa B-Series 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply
(Do these get old and worn out?)

Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit

Xonar DG soundcard (cost about £23)

128GB SSD for Windows and 1TB WD Caviar Black for data and games.
(Are these still ok? How long are they supposed to last anyway?)

Everything in there was had thousands and thousands of hours of use.
Many thanks in advance!
 
With regards to the gaming, it's a shame you're not sure about overclocking. All you really need to do is give it a decent overclock and throw in a new graphics card and that will do you imo. CPU advances are so incremental now, that the 2500k still performs admirably at 4Ghz+.

Your motherboard is still fine for a new card and win 10. I should know, I'm on the same. Maybe boost your SSD capacity, but other than that, I cant see anything there that is really holding you up.

If you really don't want to overclock, whats your budget? CPU's go from very affordable to utterly ridiculous.
 
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My trouble is I tend to over-research everything so by the time I've read ten different guides to overclocking and watched a few youtube videos all the inconsistencies and contradictions get me down and I'm paralysed with angst. It's just put me off. But I accept that's completely stupid and that I should just do it.

Edit: Thanks also for other comments :)

Extra edit: Budget is flexible but I'm very much wanting value for money - not splashing out unnecessarily.
 
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When you say shows its age, how so? If it's only in gaming performance, then which games? CPU or GPU limited games? The most likely culprit there is the GTX 670 in my opinion. Most games will perform just fine with the 2500k today, from my experience.
 
As Zefan says, the games you're running make a difference. Games like Total War really struggle on my i5 when it's at stock. The overclock makes a big difference.
 
Robfosters - you know you said we're on the same motherboard... how have you sorted out your drivers? I've just been looking on the Asus site and latest drivers were for Windows 8 - there's nothing for 10. I want to do a clean install of 10 and I'm wondering if it'll work without drivers (chipset, intel graphics, usb3, bluetooth etc). Will Windows just figure it out automatically?

Robfosters - thanks for suggesting the Defcon 3 bundles. If I decide to go down the new-system route they look very tempting.


Zefan - I guess what I mean is that I want to run new and future games at high settings and I'm increasingly having to turn graphics settings down to get a good framerate. I guess that makes the GPU the limiting factor? I'm into all sorts of games - I'll be playing all the big AAA single-player games for sure and I want to catch up with some others like Fallout 4 and the Witcher 3.

This morning I'm leaning towards doing the overclock and buying a 1070. The PC seems to have other plans though and has been crashing on boot all morning - I've got everything non-essential unplugged now and I think I'll install windows 10 and see if it likes it before putting my GPU, soundcard, extra drives etc back in. Am I right in thinking I can just install 10 with the Windows 7 key now, without having to do an actual 'upgrade' installation?
 
Big secondary SSD for games, Windows 10, 1070 or 480, overclock CPU. Job done. :)

Wont need to worry about drivers for Windows 10. Have upgraded about 5 oldish PC's to 10 and had zero issues, only drivers I have required were GPU ones.
 
Thanks a lot for the help everyone.

I've spent the last couple of days sorting out and upgrading to Windows 10 then doing a clean install and I'm more or less back up and running now - drivers were a bigger hassle than I expected and my optical drive doesn't even seem to exist in Device Manager anymore, but I never used it anyway so who cares...

I quite like Windows 10 by the way. Can't see what all the hate is about.

Today I've been fiddling around with the overclock stuff, watching youtube vids and reading guides but I got completely confused and gave up again. At one point I was running at 4.5 with prime95 going for an hour though! I got worried one of the settings I'd randomly mashed in the BIOS might be wrong though so I've reset it all now.

Anyway I'll make a post under Overclocking if I try it again tomorrow.

Do we know when the third-partry 1070 cards should be out? (MSI, gigabyte, Asus etc).
 
When you make you overclocking post, include screenshots as it makes it way easier for people to see what options are on your motherboard as every one of them is different.
 
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