Caught the PC upgrade bug, but would love some advice!

[VicG]

Hi everyone,

I recently (well, with the help of my more hardware savvy brother-in law) upgraded the RAM from 16gb HyperX Savage to 32gb Fury) in my 7 year old desktop. It's given me the bug to look into what other potential upgrades I could perhaps consider going forward. Though I'm not unhappy with my setup at all, I'm aware it's starting to age a bit and may struggle at some point.

Gamewise, I play a variety of stuff to simple point and click adventure games to FPS games like Cyberpunk (most definitely looking forward to Starfield this year - hopefully). I also use the machine for pretty much everything, from watching to movies to simple web surfing and streaming games from the PS5.

I'm considering a upgrade to the graphics card, as that might be the easiest but am aware my motherboard and CPU/PSU and are long in the tooth, so not even sure if they'd be compatible with more modern cards (such as the Asus 4070 ti, as horribly overpriced as they are).

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£209.99 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15S 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler (£89.95 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Memory: Kingston FURY Beast 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£71.09 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 850 Evo 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£259.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital WD_BLACK 6 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive (£189.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: NVIDIA Founders Edition GeForce GTX 1080 8 GB Video Card
Case: Corsair Graphite Series 780T ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair RM850x 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM - DVD 64-bit
Mouse: Razer DeathAdder V2 Wired Optical Mouse (£39.49 @ Amazon UK)
Speakers: Logitech Z200 10 W Speakers (£41.98 @ Currys PC World Business)
Total: £901.49
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-04-20 19:07 BST+0100

Hopefully I've copied the correct format from PCpartpicker! Any advice or guidance would really be appreciated.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Welcome Difficult one here as your motherboard is the limiting factor. Best CPU you can find is a 7700K which isnt going to get you much further than what you have, basically the same.

You could use any current GPU no problem with that motherboard and CPU, the issue is how much the CPU is going to hold you back, that kind of depends on a few things.

What kind of games do you play and what is your maximum budget for the upgrades? Also what is the resolution and frame rate of your monitor?

 

[VicG]

Thanks for the welcome and the response! Yes, I had suspected the CPU might be an issue in terms of throttling performance (a term I only heard recently while doing some research into the subject!).

In terms of games, I play a wide range, but mostly a wide variety of old style point and click adventure games (think Longest Journey/Blackwell Legacy/Sherlock Holmes series), all the way up to modern FPS games like Cyberpunk, as well as Jedi Fallen Order and Marvel's Spider-Man. Looking forward to playing Starfield on release, that's the one I'm really looking forward to (I know no specs have been released for that yet).

I'm lucky enough to have about £1300 available (though I'd ideally use as little of that as possible!)

The refresh rate is 60Hz (it's an Acer Predator monitor, also about 7 years old - the resolution is 1920x1080).

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Are you sure its a 60hz monitor? Do you know the exact model number?

First thing I would look at is replacing that with something higher resolution and refresh rate, any of the latest graphics cards will be underutilized with that. A new CPU the same.

Heres one quick option I threw together might have some more thoughts with more time tomorrow, and other migth jump in too.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-13600K 3.5 GHz 14-Core Processor (£299.99 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool AK620 68.99 CFM CPU Cooler (£65.00 @ Computer Orbit)
Motherboard: MSI PRO Z690-A WIFI DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard (£179.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: ASRock Phantom Gaming D OC Radeon RX 6800 16 GB Video Card (£495.59 @ Newegg UK)
Case: Corsair Graphite Series 780T ATX Full Tower Case
Monitor: Gigabyte G27Q 27.0" 2560 x 1440 144 Hz Monitor (£291.48 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £1332.05
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-04-20 19:58 BST+0100

 

[VicG]

That's really interesting, thank you for the info. I'll definitely look into all of that. Really appreciate your help.

 

[Why_Me]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...r4-atx-lga1700-motherboard-b760-gaming-x-ddr4
Gigabyte B760 GAMING X DDR4 £158.46

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B760-GAMING-X-DDR4-rev-10

or ...

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...-atx-lga1700-motherboard-pro-b760-p-wifi-ddr4
MSI PRO B760-P WIFI DDR4 £156.60

PRO B760-P WIFI DDR4

PRO series motherboards tuned for better performance by 12 Duet Rail Power System, DDR4 memory with Memory Boost, Lightning Gen4 PCIe, Extended Heatsink, M.2 Shield Frozr, 2.5G LAN, Front Type-C

www.msi.com

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...-12400f-25-ghz-6-core-processor-bx8071512400f
Intel Core i5-12400F £158.99

Intel® Core™ i5-12400F Processor (18M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz) Product Specifications

Intel® Core™ i5-12400F Processor (18M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz) quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...o-dark-6647-cfm-cpu-cooler-r-ak400-bknnmn-g-2
DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK CPU Cooler £34.99

AK400 ZERO DARK - DeepCool

The DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK is an all-black variant of our highly compatible AK400 CPU cooler featuring a classic four heat pipe tower layout with a unique matrix fin design and a high-performance FDB fan that delivers excellent heat dissipation and extremely low noise levels. - DeepCool was...

www.deepcool.com

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...tb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-wds200t3x0e
Western Digital Black SN770 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVME SSD £121.73

Total: £472.71 inc VAT

 

[VicG]

That's fantastic, thank you. You've all been a huge help.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I missed you saying you'd rather spend less than the 1300. That being the case I support @Why_Me 's suggestion as its still a huge upgrade on the CPU for a lot cheaper.

I'd still say look into a 2560x1440 high refresh monitor, and try it out with your GTX 1080, its still a decent card and I think you'll find a monitor with Freesync/Gsync support is a big step up from 60hz without vrr.

 

[VicG]

Yes, I'll definitely do that; tbh, changing the monitor hadn't even occurred to me. Just goes to show, without posting here I'd have been just guessing!