Rebuild/Upgrade advice

TheSoupladel · 15 Mar 2018 at 12:35

I have a small pot of money with which to rebuild/upgrade my PC, but as this pot is limited, I am unsure where to invest it.

So my current set up is an I7 2700k with 16Gb Ram and a Nvidia 680 GTX gfx card, I have a Samsung SSD as the boot drive, there are other drives in my system but they aren’t entirely relevant to this question

I have a minimum of £300 to spend, but potentially could stretch that to £500.

i am not expecting to get a 4K gaming beast out of this but I am looking to arrive at a modest gaming system, so the question is would I be better off spending the money on a new gfx card or a motherboard/cpu/ram combo and stick with the existing card?

i know the ideal scenario would be to get both, but that isn’t going to happen on my budget.

i am not precious about sticking with Intel/Nvidia and have been looking at the Ryzen CPU’s as an option.

any suggestions would be helpful

mrbazmondo · 15 Mar 2018 at 14:58

Compare your cpu against whatever you're considering on here:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
Your CPU looks reasonable to me.
I'd probably just go with the GFX card. I've just bought a RX580 for £299 when it was on sale. Keep an eye on the graphics card forums. It was announced on there that it was to be reduced before it went on sale.
You can also roughly compare GFX cards on here:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/GPU_mega_page.html

Terrorfirmer · 15 Mar 2018 at 15:35

Just card is OK, that CPU is still reasonably good especially if overclocked. Some RX cards have issues with older chipsets though so look into that first.

Big problem right now is card prices are beyond horrific. Cards that were £349 now £559.

To get a meaningful upgrade the minimum card is GTX1060 6GB in my opinion...but it's priced way above what it should be.

tamzzy · 15 Mar 2018 at 15:36

Get an rx580 8gb or 1060 6gb
Rest of the build is fine. The 2700k can be overclocked (if not already done so) to 4.8ghz+ with semi decent cooling.

mrbazmondo · 15 Mar 2018 at 15:43

Alternatively you could just get yourself a shiny new monitor.

TheSoupladel · 15 Mar 2018 at 15:50

As it happens my PC has been neglected of late, so much so that the pump on my Corsair all in one cooler had failed (it was always a bit dodgy) so in addition to a new gfx card, I will also need a new cooler anyway.

tamzzy · 15 Mar 2018 at 16:05

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Palit GeForce GTX 1060 Jetstream RGB 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £329.99
1 x Alpenfohn Brocken ECO CPU Cooler - 120 mm= £25.99

Total: £366.48 (includes shipping: £10.50)

#sorted

TheSoupladel · 15 Mar 2018 at 16:58

That cooler looks very reminiscent of the coolermaster 212 but is it good enough for overclocking the 2700k north of 4.0 GHz?

tamzzy · 15 Mar 2018 at 17:04

If their rated 160w tdp is to be believed, then yeah.
Sandy bridge is the last consumer chip that intel soldered. So that'll help with keeping the CPU cool

TheSoupladel · 15 Mar 2018 at 17:09

I experimented with overclocking at the time i built it but as it was largely top spec, i didn't feel it was needed at the time and set it back to stock

tamzzy · 15 Mar 2018 at 19:10

You'll get some more miles out of an overclocked 2700k yet. At least a good 18 months if not 24.
Great chip (or rather, showing the lack of CPU progress)

Space Monkey · 16 Mar 2018 at 16:41

tamzzy said:
My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Palit GeForce GTX 1060 Jetstream RGB 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £329.99

1 x Alpenfohn Brocken ECO CPU Cooler - 120 mm= £25.99

Total: £366.48 (includes shipping: £10.50)

#sorted

The GPU is a good shout, it's even £10 cheaper now, but personally I'd get a better cooler, but that's just my opinion

tamzzy · 16 Mar 2018 at 17:05

Space Monkey said:
I'd get a better cooler, but that's just my opinion

yeah, but depends on op's ram. if he's using some uber-tall ones, then the beefy 1kg heatsinks may not fit.
or...an aio/clc lol

Space Monkey · 16 Mar 2018 at 17:08

tamzzy said:
yeah, but depends on op's ram. if he's using some uber-tall ones, then the beefy 1kg heatsinks may not fit.
or...an aio/clc lol

True, would need to know before spec'ing