Potential Upgrade

Yelnahs

Hi guys,

You helped me put together the below spec 2 years ago for a gaming PC and i'm looking at the possibility of an upgrade. Budget would be about the 600-800 euro mark.

I used to keep up to date with the latest technology but have been slacking in the past few years. As I mentioned below is my current spec and it runs all modern games and a pretty high spec.

Would it simply be a case of upgrading my graphics card and leave it at that or will the below spec bottleneck it if I go down that route? If everything is running smoothly (most play arma 2 and 3 and their mods) is there actually any point upgrading?

Thanks in advance

ASRock Z68 Pro3 Gen3 S1155 Intel Z68 DDR3 ATX
MSI GeForce GTX 670 - 2GB
QuietPC Noctua NH-U9B SE2 Dual Fan Quiet CPU Cooler
Fractal Design Define R3 Black Pearl Mid-Tower USB 3.0 Case
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz LGA1155 6MB
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) HyperX DDR3 1333MHz DIMM 240-pin CL9 Blu
OCZ Technology 128GB Agility Series SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive
Corsair Memory 650W Professional Series Gold AX650 High Performance PSU
LG Electronics 10x Internal BD Combo Retail Kit

TerrorFirmer

Overclock the 2500K if you haven't already.

Sell the 670 for about €150.

Buy GTX970 for about €350.

Total upgrade cost €200, and you'll be tearing through new games at ultra settings flawlessly.

Yelnahs

Great stuff TerrorFirmer, exactly what I was looking for.

Cheers

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Overclock the 2500K if you haven't already.

Sell the 670 for about €150.

Buy GTX970 for about €350.

Total upgrade cost €200, and you'll be tearing through new games at ultra settings flawlessly.

Yelnahs

Hi guys,
Time for my bi-annual treat myself to an upgrade. Current specs are as follows:

ASRock Z68 Pro3 Gen3 S1155 Intel Z68 DDR3 ATX
MSI GeForce GTX 970 - 4GB
QuietPC Noctua NH-U9B SE2 Dual Fan Quiet CPU Cooler
Fractal Design Define R3 Black Pearl Mid-Tower USB 3.0 Case
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz LGA1155 6MB
Kingston 16GB (4 x 4GB) HyperX DDR3 1333MHz DIMM 240-pin CL9 Blu
OCZ Technology 128GB Agility Series SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive - I now have 3 of these
Corsair Memory 650W Professional Series Gold AX650 High Performance PSU
LG Electronics 10x Internal BD Combo Retail Kit
I have recently bought a mechanical keyword, new ASUS monitor and I have the 'final mouse'.
My question for you guys is, is there any point upgrading my CPU and motherboard? The above spec is tearing nicely through BF1 at the moment but I feel the CPU/Motherboard might be bottlenecking the GPU.

Thanks as always folks.

SterlingArcher

You could get an i5 6600k 220 pound
Msi z170 board 88 pound
Msi Gtx 1070 398 pound
Will total around 819 euro.

Selling your 970 cpu and mobo and ram will pay for ram, new case push for an i7 (if you pleased).

Just so you know new Intel kaby lake supposed to be dropping January.

K.O.Kiki

Yelnahs wrote: »

Hi guys,
Time for my bi-annual treat myself to an upgrade. Current specs are as follows:

ASRock Z68 Pro3 Gen3 S1155 Intel Z68 DDR3 ATX
MSI GeForce GTX 970 - 4GB
QuietPC Noctua NH-U9B SE2 Dual Fan Quiet CPU Cooler
Fractal Design Define R3 Black Pearl Mid-Tower USB 3.0 Case
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz LGA1155 6MB
Kingston 16GB (4 x 4GB) HyperX DDR3 1333MHz DIMM 240-pin CL9 Blu
OCZ Technology 128GB Agility Series SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive - I now have 3 of these
Corsair Memory 650W Professional Series Gold AX650 High Performance PSU
LG Electronics 10x Internal BD Combo Retail Kit
I have recently bought a mechanical keyword, new ASUS monitor and I have the 'final mouse'.
My question for you guys is, is there any point upgrading my CPU and motherboard? The above spec is tearing nicely through BF1 at the moment but I feel the CPU/Motherboard might be bottlenecking the GPU.

Thanks as always folks.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-finally-time-to-upgrade-your-core-i5-2500k

I'd sell the current RAM, upgrade to DDR3-2133, and start overclocking the CPU.

GPU upgrade would be fine too.

Also, note that for SSDs, 1x large drive is usually faster than many smaller (128Gb) drives.
So maybe buy a nice 500Gb+ SSD

Yelnahs

Thanks guys, much appreciated. Food for thought alright.
And thanks for the SSD tip K.O, I've been accumulating a few of them over the past few years hence why I have a few smaller ones. I'll keep you posted

TerrorFirmer

I would disagree with going Skylake i5, BF1 is a resource hog and eats up additional cores and threads - an upgrade to an i7-3770 would be around €150, 16GB of DDR3-1600Mhz around €50, and will be an excellent upgrade allowing you to keep your same board, etc with no hassle.

2500K and 8GB DDR3 1333mhz should handily get you €100 of that back.

A 3770 K-model would be ideal but they are actually pretty pricey and not very economical (around 250 I think), so even a i7-2600K with a nice overclock is a solid choice too at the €150 price point.

That would stave off the need for any upgrades for a good while, requires minimum effort and give you a huge performance boost in games like BF1 (esp. minimum frames)