Upgrading my old PC

BroganHogan

BroganHogan

BroganHogan

Associate
Joined
15 Aug 2013
Posts
19
Hello overclockers, I've been recently wanting to upgrade my PC with the little budget of £700 however I have no idea what parts would be most appropriate for it. I currently have a MSI B75MA-P45 motherboard, GTX 650 ti graphics, i5 processor (not able to check what model at the moment) 8gb of ram and a 430PSU

I just want to use the PC for gaming so any guidance would be great.

Regards, Brogan.
 
Hi and welcome, Brogan.

You can buy used i7-3770 at CEX for £120 with some warranty, or look for cheaper elsewhere. OcUK don't sell them anymore. Add a 250/500GB SSD if you don't have one. Then a nice video card (which one should depend on which monitor you are using). Depending on the video card, you may need a beefier PSU. Is it a Corsair CX 430W by any chance? Would be good to know which brand/model exactly.

RAM I wouldn't upgrade to 16GB unless absolutely necessary, because you won't be able to carry it through to a future build (will need DDR4 or newer). Same with the i7-3770, but it'll save you from forking out on a whole new build for a while longer. You may not need to spend the full £700 on this upgrade for a noticeable improvement.

So, some questions:

Which monitor?
Which PSU?
Do you have an SSD?
Which case are you using?
Are you using an aftermarket CPU cooler or Intel stock cooler?
Can you give an example of some of the games you play (preferably any the system struggles with).
 
Thank you for your quick reply.
The monitor is 1080P,
The PSU is indeed a corsair CX430M I do not have an SSD (using a little 250 hard drive at the moment)
The cpu cooler is stock.

I'll definitely have a look about the local CEX for that CPU, would be great to get a high end processor at that price.

The case is medium to small size, I would upload a photo to the thread if I knew how to.

Just found the processor is an i5-4590

The PC struggles with larger games such as battlefield, dayz, GTA etc
 
Thanks for the info.

One thing - the i5-4590 (Socket 1150) would not work with a MSI B75MA-P45 (Socket 1155), so hold your horses on an i7-3770 (Socket 1155) till you figure that out. Maybe try downloading CPU-Z, should tell you which CPU and motherboard you have exactly.

If CPU really is an i5-4590 then I would get the video card and SSD first, and see what performance is like, before thinking of an i7 (although the games you've mentioned do benefit from more cores or threads).

As for a video card: RX 480/580 8GB or GTX 1060 6GB (spending not more than £200-250) is optimal value for money for 1080p 60Hz gaming. GTX 1070 if you feel like splashing more.

PSU: basically, if video card requires 2 x PCI-E power connectors, buy a better one. If just 1 x PCI-E then stick with the same one.
 
BroganHogan said:
The case is medium to small size, I would upload a photo to the thread if I knew how to.
Click to expand...

Try imgur.com

Click the New Post button, Upload Images. Once it's uploaded, hover your mouse pointer over the pic till you see the dropdown button with the option "Get Share Links", then choose BBCode option, and paste the link directly into your post here.

5FHLzxn.png
 
I apologise, I changed it a while back to a H97 plus to fit the processor. Ill go ahead and order both the SSD and graphics card if you think that's the best shout. Would you say the 1070 worth the extra dosh or should I stick to 1060?
 
The image didn't post.

And gotcha re: H97 board.

The video card will be limiting you more than the CPU right now, so yeah I think video card + SSD first. We can advise on which video card once we know the case, or case measurements.

An SSD for that motherboard - from OcUK I can only recommend Crucial MX300 right now, as the slightly better Samsung 850 EVO 250/500GB are way too expensive. Not sure what's going on there, compared to some other places.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £257.68
(includes shipping: £8.70)



​


Think of the GTX 1070 as usually 1/4 to 1/3 faster than 480/580/1060, depending on the game/resolution. And consider if it's worth it for the price. You would get a nicer experience yes, but maybe you'd have spent a bit too much for it for a 1080p 60Hz experience at the end of the day. Or you can treat yourself. At £300-325 I'd say jump on it (as long as the model was decent) but currently they're a bit too high for my liking (and too close to the cheapest 1080s on the market, making a cheap 1080 better value than a 1070).
 
fhPiK
fhPiK
Have no clue as to why it isn't uploading. I'm planning on getting a new shell anyway as my current one is very old and quite small. Any cheap recommendations?

Thank you for that rule of thumb, never quite understood the differences between the high end cards. As you said, I'll order that SSD, and the 1060. What's the best 1060 model in your eyes?
 
BroganHogan said:
fhPiK
fhPiK
Have no clue as to why it isn't uploading.
Click to expand...

Not sure why that's happening, the BBCode link should open without any extra formatting.


BroganHogan said:
I'm planning on getting a new shell anyway as my current one is very old and quite small. Any cheap recommendations?
Click to expand...

Is your H97 board ATX or micro-ATX size?



BroganHogan said:
Thank you for that rule of thumb, never quite understood the differences between the high end cards. As you said, I'll order that SSD, and the 1060. What's the best 1060 model in your eyes?
Click to expand...

The best will be the most expensive ones, but not much better at all than much cheaper ones. These two look good value right now:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £472.48
(includes shipping: £10.50)



​


The Giga model for its two fans and UK-based customer support, and the Zotac for its 5-year warranty (if you register it on their website).
 
Sorry for the very lengthy reply time. I have bought the components and put them into my computer, however another problem has struck. ANY single game I join whether it be battlefield 3 or as simple as minecraft I get major stuttering and lag. What could this be? Perhaps it's the graphics card playing up? I did a benchmark test which might help find out what the problem is
49f1fb11f1512972119e1c99afdc8058
 
BroganHogan said:
Sorry for the very lengthy reply time. I have bought the components and put them into my computer, however another problem has struck. ANY single game I join whether it be battlefield 3 or as simple as minecraft I get major stuttering and lag. What could this be? Perhaps it's the graphics card playing up? I did a benchmark test which might help find out what the problem is
49f1fb11f1512972119e1c99afdc8058
Click to expand...

Hi again Brogan.

The image didn't post. Try again, maybe try another image hosting site (just search for that on google), see if it works better for you.

Also, please confirm what components you ended up buying.

Please state the exact brand/model of the H97 motherboard.

And whether you carried out a clean Windows install on the SSD, with the HDD removed during the process.

Any close-up pictures (showing all the cables connected) you can take of the interior of the setup might be helpful.
 
Last edited:
2wyQImd
Please tell me at least that uploaded?? I ended up purchasing a 600W PSU, MX300 SSD, and the GTX 1060. I removed the old HDD and replaced it with the SSD with a fresh windows on it
 
Cheers. One pic of the case interior has uploaded, and one pic showing some hardware info.

Need to know which H97 motherboard exactly (I see it's an Asus of some sort but the model I can't tell), and which 600W Psu.
 
The exact model of the motherboard is the H97 Plus Rev X.0x, the PSU is a corsair CX600 builder series. I am certain all the components are working properly, it just seems to flop every time I play any game
 
There's something not right there. The second image says 'Nvidia Geforce GX 1060-6GB, but list 3 GB of VRAM. The 3 GB GTX 1060 is very much an inferior card to the 6 GB GTX 1060. THe GPU is cut back and the VRAM is halved.
 
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