Upgrade advice for an ageing PC please.

[Llamatron]

Could anyone please tell me what my priorities should be for upgrading my PC? It's starting to show its age I think, not up to the minimum specs of some games or VR. I'd like it to be fairly mid range for the next few years. Thanks, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Motherboard: MSI B85-G43 (MS-7816)
CPU: Intel Core i5 4570
GPU: Nvidia GTX 970 4GB
RAM: 8GB DDR3
PSU: Corsair Builder Series CX 600W V2 '80 Plus Bronze'.
Monitor: ASUS VE247 1920x1080 refresh rate 30-83Khz
Main drive: Crucial MX500 CT1000MX500SSD1 1 TB (3D NAND, SATA, 2.5 Inch, Internal SSD)

[CursedPanther]

What is your budget?

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zChdCL

[Talby]

PSU would not hurt to replace (quite a favor actually) - check out the Rosewill Capstone 650M[www.newegg.com]for $60 and the 750M[www.newegg.com] for $75... Killer deal for a top-tier unit. I picked up the 550M for $45 before they went out of stock.

[Komrade]

Budget and country?

[Autumn_]

notkennyS eredeti hozzászólása:

Budget and country?

This.

[Llamatron]

UK and would be buying a unit a month as budget is tight, spending about £300 max I think - maybe a little more if absolutely necessary. Therefore, I'd like to know which would be top priority.

[Llamatron]

Talby eredeti hozzászólása:

PSU would not hurt to replace (quite a favor actually) - check out the Rosewill Capstone 650M[www.newegg.com]for $60 and the 750M[www.newegg.com] for $75... Killer deal for a top-tier unit. I picked up the 550M for $45 before they went out of stock.

Thanks for the advice. :) I'll check that out.

[Ochso]

Team Shrimpy eredeti hozzászólása:

UK and would be buying a unit a month as budget is tight, spending about £300 max I think - maybe a little more if absolutely necessary. Therefore, I'd like to know which would be top priority.

Perfectly understandable ,

for what its worth my two penneth. If I am wrong then please correct

It is all dependent on how much of the system you are willing to scrap based on what types of games you wish to play.

For example your Mobo limits you to cpus that run on the LGA 1150 socket.
Best you could get would be the 4th generation i7 4790K I believe . ( most probably refurbished / used)

Your memory upgrade could well be problematic as matching a potential purchase of extra DDR3 modules to your existing ones. ( ideally your would be looking at 16Gb )

Graphics card Most probably look at the AMD 590 8gb or Nvidia 1660super 8gb realistically anything more would be a waste until a cpu & mobo change.

The PSU as has been mentioned it a fairly straightforward upgrade should you wish to renew the rails.

Of course a new Mobo / cpu may well mean a new win10 license . ( circa £10 if you get an oem)

You may well find that building a complete new system incl box and keeping your currenty system as is may in the long run may be more cost effective. ( monitor you could get a hdmi splitter if it does not support multiple inputs.

Anyhoo just a couple of thoughts.

Hopefully they may help.

Good luck

[Magma Dragoon]

Team Shrimpy eredeti hozzászólása:

UK and would be buying a unit a month as budget is tight, spending about £300 max I think - maybe a little more if absolutely necessary. Therefore, I'd like to know which would be top priority.

I'd recommend a 3600, B450 Tomahawk max, and 3000mhz or faster RAM, but that will cost around 375. Be on the look out for bundle discounts.

1660 Super is a significant graphics upgrade if you can't afford a platform upgrade.

[Komrade]

Magma Dragoon eredeti hozzászólása:

Team Shrimpy eredeti hozzászólása:

UK and would be buying a unit a month as budget is tight, spending about £300 max I think - maybe a little more if absolutely necessary. Therefore, I'd like to know which would be top priority.

I'd recommend a 3600, B450 Tomahawk max, and 3000mhz or faster RAM, but that will cost around 375. Be on the look out for bundle discounts.

1660 Super is a significant graphics upgrade if you can't afford a platform upgrade.

Costs about $327 not $375.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/rYR8WD

[L37]

IMO upgrading this system with very limited budget will end up being a waste of money.
You replace motherboard/ram/CPU and get nothing because everything is bottlenecked by GPU anyway.
Replace GPU and it turns out that 1660/super/ti will be like ~20-30% upgrade at best - totally not worth the money. Buy better GPU like 2070 super or 5700XT and a lot of stuff will be bottlenecked by CPU (and it will probably exceed budget too).
Replace PSU... why? Current one works and is totally fine. This is just a way to spend some money for no reason.
About the only thing you can do is buy extra 8GB of ram, preferrably second-hand and cheap as it will be useless in future, and may be try to find cheap second-hand i7 for your socket. This things will not be very useful in "future", but at least they will provide some immediate benefits.

[Magma Dragoon]

L37 eredeti hozzászólása:

IMO upgrading this system with very limited budget will end up being a waste of money.
You replace motherboard/ram/CPU and get nothing because everything is bottlenecked by GPU anyway.
Replace GPU and it turns out that 1660/super/ti will be like ~20-30% upgrade at best - totally not worth the money. Buy better GPU like 2070 super or 5700XT and a lot of stuff will be bottlenecked by CPU (and it will probably exceed budget too).
Replace PSU... why? Current one works and is totally fine. This is just a way to spend some money for no reason.
About the only thing you can do is buy extra 8GB of ram, preferrably second-hand and cheap as it will be useless in future, and may be try to find cheap second-hand i7 for your socket. This things will not be very useful in "future", but at least they will provide some immediate benefits.

I have never seen a used 4 core i7s for sale at a reasonable price

[L37]

Magma Dragoon eredeti hozzászólása:

I have never seen a used 4 core i7s for sale at a reasonable price

That might be a problem, yes.
There is also a possibility to get something like xeon E3-1240 v3/E3-1246 v3, those are usually cheaper and are essentially equivalent to i7 without iGPU.

[Snow]

L37 eredeti hozzászólása:

There is also a possibility to get something like xeon E3-1240 v3/E3-1246 v3, those are usually cheaper and are essentially equivalent to i7 without iGPU.

^ this.
Just make sure your mobo is compatible before getting one.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Team Shrimpy eredeti hozzászólása:

UK and would be buying a unit a month as budget is tight, spending about £300 max I think - maybe a little more if absolutely necessary. Therefore, I'd like to know which would be top priority.

Ok then I would do it in two parts, first CPU, motherboard and RAM since you need all three together to work:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/rYR8WD

Then use your GTX 970 until you can buy better graphics card, RTX 2060 that is £300 or RTX 2060 Super, RTX 2070 Super if you can manage that.
GTX 970 is about the level of previous generation GTX 1060 3GB.