Upgrade advice wanted please

[duvet77]

Not been on here for a long time (probably since my last upgrade) but would appreciate some advice on the best upgrade route for gaming.

I currently have i5 4690k on an MSI Z97i gaming board with 8Gb RAM and a GTX970, none of which is overclocked.

Games currently being played or awaiting play are Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Dishonor Death of the outsider, Forza Horizon 4, Soma, Watch Dogs 2. I'll be wanting to play the new CoD Modern Warfare and Cyberpunk when released. Also want to play Battlefield V.

I have a LG ultrawide monitor 2560x1080 at 60Hz. I believe it can do 75Hz but doesn't with my current setup. I have no plans to replace this monitor anytime soon.

My thoughts so far have been to get a Ryzen 3600, B450 Tomahawk max and 16Gb RAM and maybe an RTX2060. Trouble is I don't have the budget to upgrade everything at once so my options are:

1: Upgrade CPU/mobo/RAM and overclock GTX 970
2: Upgrade GFX card and overclock i5.
3: Something else if both those are bad ideas

Not sure on best route to take... are ryzen/MSI motherboard bios issues fully resolved or am I better of waiting a couple of months? Would an RTX 2060 (maybe super) be wasted on the I5? Will a GFX card I buy now run Cyberpunk at a decent level?

I have about £400 to spend now, and probably the same again come xmas.

Thanks

PS. What every I buy needs to fit on the NZXT 510.

 

[NovaKill4]

Either way you do it you are going to bottleneck one of them.
Do you currently struggle to run any games on high settings?

I would personally do the GPU first and overclock the hell out of the I5 providing you have sufficent cooling.
For 2560x1080 @ 60/75hz and with the budget you have you would be best off going for an AMD card, a 5700XT or non XT would be fine or even a Vega64 if you wanted to keep costs down, tbh you could probably get away with a Vega56 and still have high/max settings.
Does the monitor have freesync?

What PSU have you got?

 

[orbitalwalsh]

b550 should be out September but will have to double check ?

 

[duvet77]

Either way you do it you are going to bottleneck one of them.
Do you currently struggle to run any games on high settings?

I would personally do the GPU first and overclock the hell out of the I5 providing you have sufficent cooling.
For 2560x1080 @ 60/75hz and with the budget you have you would be best off going for an AMD card, a 5700XT or non XT would be fine or even a Vega64 if you wanted to keep costs down, tbh you could probably get away with a Vega56 and still have high/max settings.
Does the monitor have freesync?

What PSU have you got?

Thanks for the reply

PSU is a 550w antec and yes I believe the monitor has freesync.

I’ll look into the 5700. Not sure I want to spend more than £400 on gpu but don’t want to go too cheap as it will be while before I upgrade again.

ETA: yes, I struggle to run some games. Watchdogs 2 is practically unplayable, I think because of the cpu but can’t say I particularly enjoy the game anyway. Battlefield 1 struggled if I remember rightly. Most other games have been playable at reasonable settings but that’ll change as new games come out. I am quite tolerant of lower frame rates though, often seeing less than 60 fps, but I would like a steady 75.

 

[NovaKill4]

5700xt or non xt it is then, i think there is one non blower style xt on pre order for under £400.
Just having an AMD card and utilizing freesync should make games smoother when the frame rate drops under the refresh rate.

Can you post the exact model of PSU, AMD reccomend a minimum of 600w but providing yours is a good quality unit you should be fine.

 

[duvet77]

PSU is Antec TruePower Classic 550w '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply
I'm open to upgrading it if necessary. Would quite like a modular one when i get the new case.

is the non-blower style GPU preferred?

 

[an0nym0us]

is the non-blower style GPU preferred?

With non-blower style GPUs, all the exhaust air is released into the PC case. Assuming your PC case has decent enough airflow to adequately deal with the exhaust air, then this is the preferred option. This is because the blower style GPUs have a smaller fan so generally run hotter and louder.

If your PC case has poor airflow and can't exhaust hot air very well, a blower style GPU might be the better option as the GPUs hot air is released out the back of the card and not into the PC case.

 

[duvet77]

Makes sense. There seems to be a lot of blower style RX 5700 cards compared to Nvidia RTX... do the AMD cards run cooler so get away with the blower?

Or have they just not got round to making other styles yet?

 

[NovaKill4]

Or have they just not got round to making other styles yet?

Sort of, the other styles have just been released so stock is starting to flow through.

Regarding the PSU, you should be fine but i would upgarde if its older than 5 years, if you are getting a new case and want a modular one then that gives the perfect reason

Good quality unit with a 10 year warrenty from Corsair if it comes back in stock soon enough.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Corsair RM Series RM650 650W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply (CP-9020194-UK)= £76.99

Total: £85.69 (includes shipping: £8.70)​

​

 

[duvet77]

Cheers.

 

[duvet77]

Can’t believe it was over two years since I asked for upgrade advice and I still have the same CPU as in the original post. I did upgrade the GTX 970 to a RTX 2070 and put a better PSU in, but now I need to do the rest.

I was leaning towards a ryzen 5600x after considering the i5 11400 and 11600, but then I wondered whether I should wait for the new i5 to come out.

I need CPU, motherboard, RAM and SSD… recommendations please for gaming and unreal.

 

[Craig_d1]

I'd wait 5 weeks for intel launch..AMD will probably have to respond to it, otherwise they risk loosing all the gains they've made. I personally think they'll just drop the price if the new intel come out on top so they remain competetive, until they launch their 3d vcache chips(who knows when) and am5/6000 series mobo/cpu next year

If you can't wait,
1) CPU, Ryzen best bang for buck cpu for gaming still 5600X. Argument can be made for going for 8 core 5800X as game developers look at the 8 core new consoles, but seeing as bulk of pc cpu sales are 6 core, and that % is increasing on steam database, think 6 still fine. If you want to stream etc at same time then go 8 core. Couple of good air coolers cica £30 that are more than enough for the 5600X
2) B550 Tomahawk is a good quality board at £129, though has no wifi. The B550 Gaming Edge wifi is the next step up, same board, wifi 6 thrown in and more fins on the vrm heatsink making it run cooler...it was priced at £139, but higher at mo. I'm guessing will drop down for black fri (but saw it for £140 the other day if you search)..not on OCuk though.
Asus Rog stix gaming F wifi board is good too. Think OCuk have it on offer at mo £159...Asus doing a promo, so you can pair it with corsair ram and get caskback at the same time. F board doesn't have front case i/o usb c header though, you need to go gaming e or xe.
3) Ram, crucial ballistix 2x8gb s/b ok 3600C16. Corsair 3600C18 bit slower but talking couple fps ..need to check cashback against it and asus mobo, though don't think OCuk that competetive when it comes to corsair ram. Do you want rgb/not bothered?
4) NVME drive for OS etc. Some put 2nd in for storage/loading games. WD SN550 prob good enough, then SN750 and SN850 if you want gen 4. Corsair actually been doing some discounts on their, but all depends on your budget

is it still going in the NZXT 510 case?

 

[Craig_d1]

Put in the X570 tomahawk in there also as has wifi 6 and with discount better than the B550 boards with wifi atm..plus both nvme's are gen4 compatible. With Win11 and direct storage coming in to play will be interesting to see how the faster nvme's perform. The corsair MP400 is on offer and sits between the sn550/sn750 for read/write performance, and the SN850 right at the top end for gen4 performance atm and on offer@£139. Both air coolers more than capable for the ryzen cpu, the Artic may go well with the case, the brocken a smidge cheaper, also slightly offset to give room for the ram sticks..a 2nd fan can also be added to increase airflow..went non rgb

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £250.99
• 1 x MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard= £129.95...................................no wifi on this board to be clear
• 1 x Crucial Ballistix 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C16 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit= £79.99
• 1 x Arctic Freezer 34 eSports Duo Black/White CPU Cooler - 2 x 120mm= £34.99
• 1 x Alpenfohn Brocken ECO Advanced CPU Cooler - 120 mm= £29.99
• 1 x WD Blue SN550 1TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0C)= £89.99
• 1 x WD Black SN750 1TB M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T3X0C)= £119.99
• 1 x WD Black SN850 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS100T1X0E)= £139.99
• 1 x Corsair MP400 series 1TB NVMe PCIe M.2 Solid State Drive (CSSD-F1000GBMP400)= £104.99
• 1 x MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WiFi (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 ATX Motherboard= £179.99

Total: £1,171.96 (includes shipping: £11.10)
​

 

[duvet77]

Thanks for the detailed response, it's much appreciated.

The case is still the 510 and I don't really need wifi.

Does the 5600x not come with a cooler, or is a better one recommend anyway?

I think since I've waited this long for an upgrade, it won't hurt to wait another 5 weeks if the Intel release is going to change things significantly.

Thanks

 

[mickyflinn]

Thanks for the detailed response, it's much appreciated.

The case is still the 510 and I don't really need wifi.

Does the 5600x not come with a cooler, or is a better one recommend anyway?

I think since I've waited this long for an upgrade, it won't hurt to wait another 5 weeks if the Intel release is going to change things significantly.

Thanks

The 5600x does come with a cooler but an aftermarket cooler lowers tdmps anx less noise.

No harm in waiting but Mite be pre pre order on Alderlake so expect those wait times to extend.

 

[duvet77]

I couldn’t wait in the end so went for the Ryzen. It was a good shout on the white cooler. I got white RAM too and it looks pretty smart.

I’m not as nimble fingered as I used to be and my eyes aren’t what they were so building it was a bit fiddly, but Just finished and it booted first time. I just need to tidy my cables up now.

Do I need to do something in Bios to get the full ram speed?

thanks

 

[Craig_d1]

I couldn’t wait in the end so went for the Ryzen. It was a good shout on the white cooler. I got white RAM too and it looks pretty smart.

I’m not as nimble fingered as I used to be and my eyes aren’t what they were so building it was a bit fiddly, but Just finished and it booted first time. I just need to tidy my cables up now.

Do I need to do something in Bios to get the full ram speed?

thanks

Need a photo
For the Ram, you need to enable XMP in the bios..

did you go for the tomahawk mobo in the end?

 

[duvet77]

Thanks, I’ll do that.

Yeah the tomahawk. I wasn’t sure if I’d need to update the bios for the cpu but it worked out of the box.

Can you post photos directly or do they need to be hosted somewhere?

 

[Craig_d1]

Thanks, I’ll do that.

Yeah the tomahawk. I wasn’t sure if I’d need to update the bios for the cpu but it worked out of the box.

Can you post photos directly or do they need to be hosted somewhere?

I couldn't copy and paste photo from my google gallery. Ended up uploading photo's directly onto my pc. Then set up a Imgur account, and uploaded from there(couldn't upload from google photo's). Then once they're in the imgur gallery you can copy them. It gives a link for posting onto forums. Copy link, then in forum hit the paperclip button just above this text(3rd block along, set of 2 icons, left one), and paste the link into the box that comes up. Press insert and then when you post, the photo will be there...hope that makes sense.
Glad cpu worked straight out of the box. Mine did too so one job saved. Think mobo's coming down the line now are all up to date. 5000 series been out long enough that the new mobo's being produced already have a more up to date bios that recognises them