Upgrade old PC?

ajf · 27 Aug 2018 at 00:47

i’ve got an old PC with the following:
I5 3570k
16gb ram
Nvidia 560ti gpu
42” 4k Samsung TV as monitor

Never been much of a gamer, but want to get a few newer games and obviously this PC is not going to be great for modern games.
Is it worth spending money or a decent gpu -1070 or something - or will I end up with a bottleneck with the CPU?

heatonpkmassive · 27 Aug 2018 at 01:00

Is it overclocked? If not, do that and chuck a 1070/1070ti/1080 in there.

ajf · 27 Aug 2018 at 03:06

Mildly. I think I got it to about 3.9Ghz with my limited skills!
I’ll look at adding a card then. Glad to know the rest is still OK

Resistance · 27 Aug 2018 at 03:22

Do a BIOS update

fastwunz · 27 Aug 2018 at 08:28

The rest of your system is more than adequate - a new GPU will utterly transform it

adidan · 27 Aug 2018 at 08:56

I'll echo the above.

My i7 3770 is still going strong and hasn't seemed to have many problems since dropping in a 1080. Tempted to upgrade but am trying to be patient and see what October brings with Intel and probably even hang bang to check Zen2 next year. But that's the latest I'll wait

ajf · 27 Aug 2018 at 21:51

Thank you all.
One thing I just need to check is the power leads on the psu. i think it has an 8 pin one but not 100% !
Why the comment re BIOS update as well?
Compatibility issues?

LuckyBenski · 28 Aug 2018 at 00:44

ajf said:
Thank you all.
One thing I just need to check is the power leads on the psu. i think it has an 8 pin one but not 100% !
Why the comment re BIOS update as well?
Compatibility issues?

Probably referring to recent security flaws uncovered in Intel architecture. There are fixes applied for lots of motherboards.

fastwunz · 28 Aug 2018 at 09:11

To be fair, due to the risk of it going very wrong, I wouldn’t be updating my BIOS unless I had an actual need to

Marine-RX179 · 28 Aug 2018 at 10:57

CPU Bottleneck would be a noticeable issue if gaming on 1080p 120/144Hz monitor, but not so much if you are gaming in general for on 60/75Hz monitor as graphic card is generally the bigger bottleneck and is what's more likely to not let your system run games at 60/75fps.

You CPU should be able to easily overclock to at least 4.2GHz, provided that you are not using a stock CPU cooler that comes with the CPU but a better one.

At the moment I have my even older 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz and running with a Vega64 (around same performance as 1080) on my 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor and on my 4K Samsung KS8000 TV, and even for a CPU intensive game like Monster Hunter World I manage to so far hold at least a solid 60fps on CPU side.

Quartz · 28 Aug 2018 at 11:09

ajf said:
Is it worth spending money or a decent gpu -1070 or something - or will I end up with a bottleneck with the CPU?

I was happily gaming on a 3770S until earlier this year. All you need is a new GPU.

Terrorfirmer · 28 Aug 2018 at 16:10

The 3570K overclocked will be fine for 95% of games at 1080p but there are a few that might have a few hiccups at times like Battlefield 1 online and presumably Battlefield V....BF1 64p is a real killer, first game that actually showed up a weakness in my 2500K at the time.

Not a big deal as you can just drop in a 3770K at a later point.

Todd Greene · 30 Aug 2018 at 00:55

as others said overclock the cpu and look at 4k capable gpu's to see what performance level you are after for it

fastwunz · 30 Aug 2018 at 01:25

Terrorfirmer said:
The 3570K overclocked will be fine for 95% of games at 1080p but there are a few that might have a few hiccups at times like Battlefield 1 online and presumably Battlefield V....BF1 64p is a real killer, first game that actually showed up a weakness in my 2500K at the time.

Not a big deal as you can just drop in a 3770K at a later point.

I was running a 2500k and BF1 struggled.

Popped a 2700k in and the difference was night and day