PC Upgrade for Gaming

Pookzz

Pookzz

Pookzz

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Joined
11 Apr 2018
Posts
86
Hey guys! So i'm no PC specialist, but I'm looking to upgrade my PC relatively soon. My current set up is:
ASRock H81 PRO BTC
i5-4460
Nvidia Geforce GTX 970
16gb HyperX Savage DDR3 RAM
Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250gb
1TB SSHD

To my understanding, the CPU is what needs to be upgraded first, as the 970 still seems to be a decent GPU. Obviously that would mean a new motherboard as well.
I only recently upgraded the RAM, and a lot of newer CPU's seem to be mainly supporting DDR4 now, and the best CPU I can seem to find for DDR3 is the i7-6700k, but as I said, I'm no specialist, and not even 100% sure this is the area I should be targeting first.

However, today I cleaned out my entire PC, removed GPU and CPU to clean it all, replaced an old fan, and applied Thermal Paste, but my PC is still running the same temperature. Just being idle, it's 52-54 degrees celsius, and so far i've tried World of Warcraft(70-75 degrees), Sims 3(80 degrees), Battle for Azeroth alpha(90+ degrees?!), so I am very concerned about this. According to CPUID it's my GPU that is running this hot. When I first got my PC, it was about 30 degrees idle, and on WoW it'd be about 50, the only game that used to make it reach about 80 was Battlefield 4 and then Battlefield 1.
(Just want to edit and state that since I cleaned it, the temperature under load has gone crazy. Before I wouldn't even have to turn my fans on manually to play WoW, just leave it on auto, and they would rarely ramp up from idle state. Now they are going full power and hitting 91 degrees. How can cleaning out the dust make it get even hotter instead of reducing the temp? I'm lost here)

I'm really not sure what to do now. I was hoping to just get a new MOBO and new CPU and i'd be set for a while, but I'm worried something is wrong with my GPU, and any new GPU is only going to be bottlenecked by my CPU, resulting in me needing to replace everything. :(

Any help would be super appreciated. I'm a big noob when it comes to all this stuff!
 
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It's about getting the best bang/buck when upgrading - and for you it would be a new GPU, as already mentioned. Sure, you could upgrade the CPU etc which will help but not as much as a new GPU will :)
 
Really? I was told that my GPU was still quite good, and my CPU was the thing that needed upgrading. Hmm.. what GPU would you recommend upgrading to then? say £400-£500 range I guess, if it's a little more, I'm sure I could push myself :P Would something better not get bottlenecked by my CPU though?
 
Run afterburner to measure cpu and Gpu usage in games and your normal usage. This will show which is the bottleneck as it will hit around 100% more often.

For your Gpu temps check again for dust as you may have simply blown it into one place on the Gpu creating a hot spot, also check fans are OK. Removing dust with a can of compressed air normally lowers temps blasting out all the dust.
 
Yeah I'll check that out. I know on battlefield 1 my CPU hits 100% usage, I'll check on other games when I get back from work.
 
Pookzz said:
Yeah I'll check that out. I know on battlefield 1 my CPU hits 100% usage, I'll check on other games when I get back from work.
Click to expand...

BF1 used to brutalise my i5-760 @ 3.8Ghz, I had to limit frame rate in the end to keep it from hitting 100% CPU and it was no where near maxing out my RX480.

My [email protected] averages about 30% in game for BF1 on multiplayer giving much smoother gaming at 100-144fps, normally nearer 144fps and maxes out at 50c using NH-U12S SE-AM4 CPU Cooler. The stock cooler is fine to about 3.7Ghz but I just wanted lower temps.
 
Well, I just took my PC apart again, took the GPU apart and applied some new thermal paste. Spots that were landing me at 90 degrees yesterday is now 60-65 degrees, so seems that solved it considering the card is 3 years old.
DarkHorizon472 said:
BF1 used to brutalise my i5-760 @ 3.8Ghz, I had to limit frame rate in the end to keep it from hitting 100% CPU and it was no where near maxing out my RX480.
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Click to expand...
I tried all the things suggested to limit the 100% CPU usage on BF1 and none of them worked. Tried limiting the frames, changing from dx11 and dx12, turning off the Origin Overlay, turning of Shadowplay, everything like that but nothing stopped it from being 100% and making it stutter, so I don't get to play BF1 because the stutter drives me mad :(
 
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