PC Upgrade

Dr Delphi · 12 Mar 2017 at 11:20

I'm looking to upgrade my i5 3rd generation processor to something that has a little more grunt (mostly gaming and some work) - what would people suggest - is it worth looking at a second hand i7 3770k, or look at a whole new package - looking around 600 GBP.

Current spec:

i5 3330 (S1155)
Corsair H100
MSI Z77A-G45
16GB Geil 10700H DDR3
EVGA 780 GTX 3GB
2 x SSDs (1 for windows, 1 for games)

jay0906 · 12 Mar 2017 at 11:40

Depening on whether you could find a used 3770k at a reasonble price I would honestly just upgrade. Should be able to get a 7600k, motherboard and ram for under 600.

Quartz · 12 Mar 2017 at 12:21

For gaming just upgrade your GPU; a GTX 1070 will be more than sufficient. You're not going to see a significant improvement in CPU power unless you overclock the replacement.

jay0906 · 12 Mar 2017 at 12:29

Might face some bottlenecking issues running a 1070 with that cpu though. While I'm sure you could adjust settings to make things playable it's life span is coming to an end.

Dr Delphi · 12 Mar 2017 at 14:12

Typically i've literally just picked up an EVGA 1070 SC due to be delivered this week - what processor would you pair with it? I've found a cheap 3570k that I could just drop into my motherboard and then look to overclock it - would that be likely to bottleneck the 1070?

jay0906 · 12 Mar 2017 at 14:48

Depends on what resolution you play at. At 1080p you may notice some bottlenecking in cpu intensive games but an overclock should help alleviate that for the most part.

Dr Delphi · 12 Mar 2017 at 15:05

jay0906 said:
Depends on what resolution you play at. At 1080p you may notice some bottlenecking in cpu intensive games but an overclock should help alleviate that for the most part.

At the moment I am forced to game at 1080p but I do have a triple monitor set up that I would like to go back to using fully (5760 x 1080) with a view to moving to a gsync monitor when I can next afford an upgrade.

jay0906 · 12 Mar 2017 at 15:57

Anyway I think you can get by for a year or so till intel releases something worth upgrading to. Albeit at the cost of turning down some settings in selected games.

Dr Delphi · 12 Mar 2017 at 21:38

I'll hold fire then and see what the frames are like with a 1070 and my i5-3330, if theyre terrible I might have to just look at a 7600K bundle.