Upgrade or not worth?

Coowhan · 8 Apr 2020 at 01:28

Have been toying with the idea of buying an upgrade bundle from OC to the new Overclocked i9 9900k and new 390 Motherboard platform with a new case etc. When I bought my current PC it was the end of generation on the Z270 platform which puts me in a place I can't really upgrade the CPU from there. I'm assuming if I bought a new 2080 for example my CPU might hold it back in newer games? Also if I went with the Z390 platform I don't really want to be in the same position with upgrading as I am now but I suppose that's always a losing battle thinking like that when it comes to new technology. I also fancy upgrading my case as I'm not a fan of my current one. Fancy hopping on the RGB train. My current PC spec:

EVGA SuperNova P2 850W '80 Plus Platinum' Modular Power Supply
Kolink Vault Midi Tower Gaming Case - Black/Red LED
Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz (Kaby Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor
OcUK GeForce GTX 1080 "Founders Edition" 8192MB GDDR5X PCI-Express Graphics Card
Samsung 860 EVO 250GB SSD 2.5 SATA 6GBPS 64 LAYER 3D V-NAND SOLID STATE DRIVE
Seagate BarraCuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD
Corsair Hydro Series H100i v2 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Gigabyte Aorus GA-Z270X-Gaming K5 Intel Z270 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C15 3000MHz Dual Channel

I don't know if it is worth the money to upgrade to say a 2080 and an i9 9900k over this right now or should I wait out a bit longer for a larger upgrade, or possibly be looking at something else entirely? I'm just running my games on 1080p for the moment but am looking at upgrading my monitor also to run 1440p. PC is just used for games. Ultimately I'm itching to buy a new machine after 3 years and it is maybe just this lockdown getting to me after looking at all these different builds haha...

WaitNBleeD · 8 Apr 2020 at 10:56

My spec is very similar to yours (I7 8700k, EVGA Geforce 1080TI) and I was contemplating an upgrade myself.

Was going to go for something along the lines of a Ryzen 9 and a 5700 XT/2070 super/2080.

Watched a lot of build/comparison videos, benchmarks etc. Then I came across a random video that made me decide to stick put until at least another 12+ months down the line!.
The video was a random YouTube "What GFX Card for 1440p gaming in 2020 yadda yadda yadda" type of vid that popped up on my suggested list.

I watched it and the guy simply said at the end "Don't go in thinking "what do I need in order to futureproof?", go in thinking, "what exactly do I need for gaming RIGHT NOW!".
You can't fully be up to date with PC components as they are evolving so quickly, and the price for attempting to "futureproof" doesn't really give you that much more value for the money imo!

I think in the current state, my (and indeed your) computer is more than capable of running the latest games lovely in 1440p @ 60fps on high settings, or around about!. I have the Dell S2716DG and it's gorgeous. I get around 70-105 fps in Apex Legends, and 65-85 fps in Modern Warfare. Totally playable and buttery smooth. Sometimes we can concentrate on the numbers too much and rather than enjoying a game running just fine, we get hung up on the number and think "How can I make it higher?"
Modern components won't do amazingly better unless you throw down second mortgage kinds of money, and 4k is still a rather expensive option for a lot of us.

If the games that you love to play run just fine, and you know that titles over the next 12-18 months will be running good enough too, then I suggest sticking put until you 100% need to. I'm looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077, Dying light 2, Outriders and R6:Quarantine to name a few. I know my PC will handle them and look good.

It's nice to have new expensive shiny, don't get me wrong!, but in the current situation (I'm looking at you Covid-19!!) prices are a bit erratic for certain items and that's another reason I'm more than happy to wait it out and continue enjoying todays games!

varkanoid · 8 Apr 2020 at 11:35

This "CPU holding me back" is a load of rubbish in most cases and the people peddling it dont know any better.. A 7700k with a 2080 will be fine. I dont get why people have used a quad core i7 for several generations then all of a sudden its going to hold you back because its not 6/8 core. I've had a 2080ti and now a 2080 with my 8700k and I had a 1080ti with a 6700k and can run everything fine max on 1440p. Just overclock the 7700k and dont worry about numbers just go with your own experience. I dont expect to upgrade my CPU for about another 4-5 years.

Coowhan · 8 Apr 2020 at 15:06

WaitNBleeD said:
My spec is very similar to yours (I7 8700k, EVGA Geforce 1080TI) and I was contemplating an upgrade myself.

Was going to go for something along the lines of a Ryzen 9 and a 5700 XT/2070 super/2080.

Watched a lot of build/comparison videos, benchmarks etc. Then I came across a random video that made me decide to stick put until at least another 12+ months down the line!.
The video was a random YouTube "What GFX Card for 1440p gaming in 2020 yadda yadda yadda" type of vid that popped up on my suggested list.

I watched it and the guy simply said at the end "Don't go in thinking "what do I need in order to futureproof?", go in thinking, "what exactly do I need for gaming RIGHT NOW!".
You can't fully be up to date with PC components as they are evolving so quickly, and the price for attempting to "futureproof" doesn't really give you that much more value for the money imo!

I think in the current state, my (and indeed your) computer is more than capable of running the latest games lovely in 1440p @ 60fps on high settings, or around about!. I have the Dell S2716DG and it's gorgeous. I get around 70-105 fps in Apex Legends, and 65-85 fps in Modern Warfare. Totally playable and buttery smooth. Sometimes we can concentrate on the numbers too much and rather than enjoying a game running just fine, we get hung up on the number and think "How can I make it higher?"
Modern components won't do amazingly better unless you throw down second mortgage kinds of money, and 4k is still a rather expensive option for a lot of us.

If the games that you love to play run just fine, and you know that titles over the next 12-18 months will be running good enough too, then I suggest sticking put until you 100% need to. I'm looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077, Dying light 2, Outriders and R6:Quarantine to name a few. I know my PC will handle them and look good.

It's nice to have new expensive shiny, don't get me wrong!, but in the current situation (I'm looking at you Covid-19!!) prices are a bit erratic for certain items and that's another reason I'm more than happy to wait it out and continue enjoying todays games!

Yeah the more I look into it and look at various tests on youtube the upgrade does not appear substantial at all. Can't justify paying like 1,500+ on upgrades for the sake of what seems like marginal upgrades at the moment. Think i'll just leave as is for now. Games I play seem to play for the most part fine, although have been playing modern warfare a lot recently and getting quite a lot of sudden fps drops but apparently this is a known problem, even to people with like 2080's. Seem to have made a right mess of that game with all the issues..

Joxeon · 8 Apr 2020 at 15:46

Buy a b450 tomahawk, mortar or pro carbon with a 3700x then sell your old 7700k and z270 which will mean you pretty much break even on cost but double your cores with an option to upgrade to 4700/4900 in a couple of years, then wait 5 months and grab an rtx 3070 or 3080.

That's what I would do.