PC upgrade (as significant as possible) for up to £300?

Gonzo100100 · 10 Oct 2015 at 00:31

Hello,
I was wondering if I upgrade my PC and commit to it I don’t know… £300, will I be able to see significant change in gaming performance? For now I am able to play comfortably in the titles like The Witcher 3, GTA V with 25% on low and 75% on medium settings.
I was thinking if I just bought something as…
Asus GeForce GTX 960 DirectCU2 OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-359-AS
How that would help me?
Finally, if £300 is insufficient to have quite solid upgrade, how much would be enough and what components should I change?
Anyway, if £300 is too little I will most likely stay on what I have for another year or two and then build something from scratch.

My current build:

Graphic Card:
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470
Motherboard:
- Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H
Processor:
- Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz
RAM:
- 4x Physical Memory 2,048 MB; 1,333 MHz
Power Supply:
- OCZ MODXStream-Pro 500W
Disk drives:
- C300-CTFDDAC128MAG
- M4-CT512M4SSD2

Thank you for your help.

stulid · 10 Oct 2015 at 00:35

GFX card.

Going from a GTX470 to a GTX970 for example is going to be massive.

Do you have a SSD? Overclock the CPU (get a big heatsink for £20+)

GAM8LE · 10 Oct 2015 at 00:42

I would say don't get a 960. Even though what you have to a 960 would be a good jump a 970 would be a better idea, even the cheapest:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-013-PL&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1010

Then as above, if you don't have an ssd get a smaller memory size ssd to install games onto. Ssd's are better due to the high read/erite speed compared to mech hdd's.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-054-CR&groupid=701&catid=2104

120gb may not get a lot of big titles installed based on what you play, but will be a benefit for those big titles regardless.

This will give a very good increase in games as I'm assuming your playing 1080p? 970 is great for 1080p and even 1440p tbh but 4k? Not so much.

I think you have a decent basis to work off and last for a while on moderate gfx settings.

Gonzo100100 · 10 Oct 2015 at 00:50

stulid said:
Do you have a SSD? Overclock the CPU (get a big heatsink for £20+)

I actually already have nocuta nh-u12p
I have 2x SSD 128GB and 512GB
I play on 1920x1080
So, in that case, it will be enough to change only the graphic card, for GTX970?
Do I have to worry about any compatibility issues?

stulid · 10 Oct 2015 at 00:52

Update the boards BIOS (use Qflash to do that which is found in the BIOS), place the BIOS on a USB thumb drive and tell Qflash to update from that location.

And that should be you good to go.

The GTX970 Windforce is £259 but check the length of the card against the space in your case.

GAM8LE · 10 Oct 2015 at 00:58

Gonzo100100 said:
I actually already have nocuta nh-u12p
I have 2x SSD 128GB and 512GB
I play on 1920x1080
So, in that case, it will be enough to change only the graphic card, for GTX970?
Do I have to worry about any compatibility issues?

stulid said:
Update the boards BIOS (use Qflash to do that which is found in the BIOS), place the BIOS on a USB thumb drive and tell Qflash to update from that location.

And that should be you good to go.

The GTX970 Windforce is £259 but check the length of the card against the space in your case.

Good stuff on the ssd front.

In that case I would recommend exactly the same as stulid. 970 plus a good cpu cooler for that £300 prob inc postage and you are good to go for a while.

Gonzo100100 · 10 Oct 2015 at 01:06

It looks like you answered all of my questions; I am going to have a little upgrade. ;] Thank you for your help.