Upgrade advice

[bonscot1]

Hi all,

I am headed off to university in late September and have had this PC since the summer of 2015.
I am worried that it is going to fail on me whilst I am there.
I want to give it a good enough of an upgrade so it will both last as long as possible and also be able to play most new games that come out in the next 4 or so years.
The newest addition is the SSD drive which I got in 2016 (I don't know why i waited so long) but all other parts were bought at the same time and were new (Except the case and the water cooling).
The current Specs are as follows:

Motherboard: MSI Z97 Gaming 3
CPU: Intel core I5 4690K
GPU: MSI AMD Radeon R9 390 (8GB)
PSU: Corsair CXM 600W Modular
RAM: 4x 4GB HyperX Fury DDR3 1866MHz
Case: Corsair CC-9011090-WW Carbide 540 ATX Cube
CPU Cooling: Corsair water cooling (Not sure on exact model)
HDD: 2x 1TB WD Blue
SSD: Kingston 128GB - Mainly boot drive but also has a game on it

For the most part I would like to keep the upgrades as low cost as possible, but throw whatever you think would be best at me and I will consider it (In terms of GPU, if you do suggest an upgrade, please try and keep it NVIDIA based).
Just say if you need more info!

Usually I would sort this out myself, however, since it is vital I get this right whilst I have money, I am asking the experts.

Thanks for any help at all!

 

[Oblivion007]

This is similar to my rig prior to some recent upgrades.

I upgraded my R9 390 to a Vega 64, but the Vega 56 is may be the sweet point for you for value to performance.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 56 Pulse 8GB HBM2 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11276-02-40G)= £278.99
• 1 x Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 64 Nitro+ 8GB HBM2 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £349.99

Total: £639.48 (includes shipping: £10.50)​

​

In terms of CPU upgrade, you will probably want to wait until the new AMD cpus are released as the rumours are suggesting unbeatable price to performance. This is what I am waiting to do. This does of course mean upgrading your motherboard and memory as well but if you want the pc to last the next four years of uni then this will be required in any event.

 

[Plec]

Budget would be useful?

What resolution do you game at?

Is the 4690 clocked?

But for cheap as possible - the GPU will be the cheapest upgrade and price of Nvidia card, if that is your preference, will depend on monitor resolution. The happy coincidence is that the Nvidia flavour has the lowest power draw - so would suit your ageing PSU more.

Vega 64 is a great value card with 2 free games - but your 600W CXM will feel the strain.

*And a larger SSD would be a bonus if you had the budget...

EDIT: Could also consider second hand i7-4790k (along with new GPU) - approx £120 and sell your 4690 (probably more on ebay - just realised you don't have access to MM)

 

[bonscot1]

Budget would be useful?

What resolution do you game at?

Is the 4690 clocked?

But for cheap as possible - the GPU will be the cheapest upgrade and price of Nvidia card, if that is your preference, will depend on monitor resolution. The happy coincidence is that the Nvidia flavour has the lowest power draw - so would suit your ageing PSU more.

Vega 64 is a great value card with 2 free games - but your 600W CXM will feel the strain.

*And a larger SSD would be a bonus if you had the budget...

EDIT: Could also consider second hand i7-4790k (along with new GPU) - approx £120 and sell your 4690 (probably more on ebay - just realised you don't have access to MM)

Cheers for the help, I was initially thinking of getting the newer 4790K and upgrading GPU to whatever I felt appropriate (Still not sure as to what atm), but then I also know that motherboards and RAM have a tendency to die too.
The issue is, if I am replacing basically everything, I may as well sell my pc and go from scratch - but that would be in the realms of 1600 ish ideally, vs the what, 600, i might spend on upgrading.
The 4690 isn't overclocked.
I will have to wait until I am back from work to check the monitor resolution because I can't actually remember.
But I do have somewhat of a high budget to spend as I have been in work for the past 2 years (I am 20 now) - I am just trying to keep as much of that saving intact as possible to make the next few years much easier.
And due to this I have come to the resolution that upgrading the PC now, rather than having it break on me in the future would be the best port of call in terms of funding.

Thankyou for the replies so far!

 

[heatonpkmassive]

Clock that chip, you can get much more out of it.

 

[EsaT]

Welcome aboard.

That case is good to go for long time, if you have no problems wth it.
(mine is approaching 11 year age)
Also HDDs are perfectly usable, just slow for games.

While SSDs have come down in price, one cost effective option for big game library would be buying affordable WD Blue 3D/Crucial MX500 as main drive (for OS and demanding games) and PrimoCache for using say 30-50GB SSD partition for caching HDDs.
First load of data happens at speed of HDD, but next load of those assets happens at speed of SSD:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/did-some-benchmarking-of-an-ssd-caching-solution.2533859/
That size cache could hold multiple older games before getting filled.
(at which point oldest/least used cached data is "evicted" to make room for new)

In read cache mode SSD caching is also very "safe" in case of PC problems:
All data on cached HDDs can be accessed completely normally from live-Linux or attaching drive to any other PC.


Quad core CPUs are going to get run over by next-gen consoles.
So that's going to need replacing at some point.
And I don't mean just paying overprice for another outdated/low end by now quad core.
PS5 has been basically confirmed to use Zen2 based 8 core/16 thread CPU.

Fortunately Zen2 should soon bring good boost to performance available for money and more future proofness in cores/thread.
In two months CPU market might look quite different.
£300-350 enthusiast level might get 12 cores/24 threads and 16c/32t monster is possible for top model at price level of Intel's butt rape&robbery overpriced 9900K.


That Corsair is standard cheap PSU, so if it has been used lot don't see it as good for longer term reliability.
Certainly wouldn't use Vega 64 without Power save profile on it.
Seasonic Focus Plus Gold is where bang meets the buck and comes with 10 year warranty.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search?sSearch=seasonic+focus+plus+gold
Bitfenix Formula would be budget choise for modern design with good capacitors, but fixed cabling and just 5 year warranty.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search?sSearch=bitfenix+formula


Also as you mentioned that "water cooling" being older than PC, it's likely degraded some amount.
Scythe Mugen 5 would be bang per buck choise with only step behind the best performance.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search?sSearch=mugen+5
It beats majority of waterpipe coolers in performance per noise.
Because regardless of all marketing pee spewed around, waterpipes in place of heatpipes don't make heat magically disappear.
It needs to be dissipated into air and slim radiators just don't have excess of surface area, while pump and higher number of fans create noise.


And Nvidia isn't hot on giving bang per buck, just banging your butt and mouth and pumping up prices. (like Intel)
Hopefully AMD can next bring some price disruption to GPUs with Navi.
Anyway better to plan upgrading GPU again in couple years if wanting consistently good performance per money.
No matter how ludicrous price you'll pay now, it won't be high end in two years, it just loses even more of its value.

 

[bonscot1]

Welcome aboard.

That case is good to go for long time, if you have no problems wth it.
(mine is approaching 11 year age)
Also HDDs are perfectly usable, just slow for games.

While SSDs have come down in price, one cost effective option for big game library would be buying affordable WD Blue 3D/Crucial MX500 as main drive (for OS and demanding games) and PrimoCache for using say 30-50GB SSD partition for caching HDDs.
First load of data happens at speed of HDD, but next load of those assets happens at speed of SSD:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/did-some-benchmarking-of-an-ssd-caching-solution.2533859/
That size cache could hold multiple older games before getting filled.
(at which point oldest/least used cached data is "evicted" to make room for new)

In read cache mode SSD caching is also very "safe" in case of PC problems:
All data on cached HDDs can be accessed completely normally from live-Linux or attaching drive to any other PC.


Quad core CPUs are going to get run over by next-gen consoles.
So that's going to need replacing at some point.
And I don't mean just paying overprice for another outdated/low end by now quad core.
PS5 has been basically confirmed to use Zen2 based 8 core/16 thread CPU.

Fortunately Zen2 should soon bring good boost to performance available for money and more future proofness in cores/thread.
In two months CPU market might look quite different.
£300-350 enthusiast level might get 12 cores/24 threads and 16c/32t monster is possible for top model at price level of Intel's butt rape&robbery overpriced 9900K.


That Corsair is standard cheap PSU, so if it has been used lot don't see it as good for longer term reliability.
Certainly wouldn't use Vega 64 without Power save profile on it.
Seasonic Focus Plus Gold is where bang meets the buck and comes with 10 year warranty.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search?sSearch=seasonic+focus+plus+gold
Bitfenix Formula would be budget choise for modern design with good capacitors, but fixed cabling and just 5 year warranty.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search?sSearch=bitfenix+formula


Also as you mentioned that "water cooling" being older than PC, it's likely degraded some amount.
Scythe Mugen 5 would be bang per buck choise with only step behind the best performance.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search?sSearch=mugen+5
It beats majority of waterpipe coolers in performance per noise.
Because regardless of all marketing pee spewed around, waterpipes in place of heatpipes don't make heat magically disappear.
It needs to be dissipated into air and slim radiators just don't have excess of surface area, while pump and higher number of fans create noise.


And Nvidia isn't hot on giving bang per buck, just banging your butt and mouth and pumping up prices. (like Intel)
Hopefully AMD can next bring some price disruption to GPUs with Navi.
Anyway better to plan upgrading GPU again in couple years if wanting consistently good performance per money.
No matter how ludicrous price you'll pay now, it won't be high end in two years, it just loses even more of its value.

Wow, thankyou for such a long reply.
I was considering the update to the PSU anyway, so thankyou for the recommendation.
I dont plan to get rid of the case any time soon as it is incredible in my opinion.
I will look further into the SSD caching that you have suggested - though i'm not too worried about my current HDD speeds.
And I think I will go with your recommendation then and wait a little bit of time before buying anything CPU/GPU!

That water cooling, I never even considered sorting that, and it is relatively cheap to sort so I think I may go for it.

What about the RAM cards and motherboard, do you think there is much worry surrounding them at all?

 

[EsaT]

That water cooling, I never even considered sorting that, and it is relatively cheap to sort so I think I may go for it.

What about the RAM cards and motherboard, do you think there is much worry surrounding them at all?

If that water cooler was cheap model, especially single fan radiator sized, then any better heatpipe cooler likely beats it in cooling per noise.
And might be just question of time how soon something fails and CPU starts cooking at idle.
While heatpipes are space applications reliable/non-wearing, waterpipes have many degradation/wear mechanisms.

Price of RAM has been decreasing, so waiting for Zen2 isn't bad for that.
You really don't want to know what price of 16GB was year ago...

Unless Zen2 brings some new clock speed control mechanism needing chipset level changes, current AM4 motherboards could stay as valid price competitive options.
New X570 mobos might be quite expensive and for normal gaming use that PCIe v4.0 doesn't give much.
More affordable B550 chipset is apparently released only later.
(compared to Intel AMD doesn't heavily cripple lower chipsets)

Some luxury motherboard really doesn't give anything for gaming over properly designed reasonable priced ones.
Or at least anything which could keep its value for long time.

 

[heatonpkmassive]

And I think I will go with your recommendation then and wait a little bit of time before buying anything CPU/GPU!

It remains to be seen whether AMD can bring something to the graphics card market that'll shake things up to the extent we'd all like, so GPU is probably less important in this respect, although very much still worth waiting.

But I'm very optimistic that Ryzen 3 is going to be a lot of performance for a decent price, that's definitely worth waiting for. Although what I said before also still applies, that chip should clock up nice if you have good cooling, read up, it can be done quickly and easily. Maybe eke out a little more performance for the last few months of running it.

This one's run at 4.6 for about 4 years I think