Worth upgrading or not?

54and56

Hi all,

Two years ago myself and my son (with ton's of help from this forum) built him a gaming PC for Xmas 2014. He was 14 and it has been the best thing ever. He uses it a lot (too much sometimes but that's a different story) and he's become interested in technology (HW and SW) in general as well as becoming a lot more interested in science and maths some of which I credit to being sparked by the gaming PC build which really captured his imagination.

We purchased all the components from http://www.hardwareversand.de/en which I believe is now rebranded as http://www.kmcomputer.de at a total cost of €702 delivered.

The components are:

• 8GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series DDR3-1600, CL9 (RAM)
• Cooltek GT-01 weiß, ATX, ohne Netzteil (THE PC CASE)
• Crucial MX100 SSD 128GB (2,5", 7mm) (FAST START UP HARD DISK DRIVE)
• Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3, Sockel 1150, ATX (MOTHERBOARD)
• Intel Core i5-4590, 4x 3.30GHz, boxed (PROCESSOR)
• Samsung SH-224DB schwarz (CD/DVD DRIVE)
• Sapphire Radeon R9 280 Dual-X OC mit MANTLE und Gaming Evolved Client, 3GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort (GRAPHICS CARD)
• Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s (HARD DISK DRIVE)
• Thermaltake Berlin 630W (PSU/POWER UNIT)
• A 23" Dell 1080p display was purchased separately for circa €100.

The only issue ever experienced with the rig is that the graphics card has a rendering problem during game play on an intermittent basis where it puts pixels in the wrong location and "casts a shadow" on the screen so black shapes constantly move and despite contacting Radeon support etc it remains a problem so my son is thinking of upgrading the video card to this MSI GeForce GTX 1060 DirectX 12 GTX which will cost €261.

Given the rig is two years old is this a good/bad idea? The rig works perfectly in every other manner and the video card if perfect for streaming Netflix and low end games like Minecraft etc but it misbehaves when playing higher end games like World of Warcraft, Fifa 16, Call of Duty, Overwatch, TF2, Heros of the Storm, Skyrim, Ark and Rrocket League etc which he is increasingly gravitating to as he gets older.

Will the card he's looking to buy work well/be compatible with the other existing components of the rig? Is there a better value card which will deliver the performance he's looking for? Is it worth upgrading or should we live with it for another 12-18 months and then go again and build a higher spec replacement machine for say €1,200?

I'm conscious that Black Friday is just around the corner so if upgrading the video card is a good idea I'm hoping to take advantage of some Black Friday deal or other in the coming days.

Cheers.

Digital Solitude

The 280 isn't going to be worth much as it's not working correctly but the rest of the rig is sound, will balance any GPU thrown into it in most cases.

I'd say a 1060 is a good buy, Mindfactory are doing a deal on RX 480s atm I believe aswell, but expensive shipping so may not be cost effective.

A 3gb 1060 would be a good upgrade and cost about 200

Moon54

I agree, the core build is perfectly fine, and should be for several more years no problem.

A 4GB RX480 or 3GB GTX1060 would be a nice upgrade performance-wise on the r9 280. (The 6gb GTX1060 might be overkill as there's only about 5-10% performance difference vs ~€80 extra cost.)

Have a look at Amazon.co.uk if you're buying as they have free delivery,
I see they have a 3GB GTX1060 there for £186, ~€217 delivered (pay in sterling, select free delivery at checkout),
4GB RX480's are slightly more expensive, ~£206 but it does have an extra 1GB VRAM.

ScumLord

Graphics card is the one part that will likely need to be upgraded on a regular basis if you want to keep up with the eye candy. Every two - three years sounds about right, depending on how close to the bleeding edge you want to get.

There's no need to start from scratch and even if you wanted to do that down the line buying the card now doesn't prevent that, it's just one less component to buy if you did buy an entirely new build.

Generally I seem to get up to 10 years out of a rig with the graphics card being upgraded every two - three years, maybe ram added. Maybe that mother board will take a faster CPU too.

Kiith

I'm in a similar position, and think i'll pick up a 1070 and another 8gb of RAM at some stage over the next month or so. May need to look into the cooling in my case, as the R9 290 is getting quite hot when run at higher settings.

Mode note - moved over to PC Building & Upgrading for more help

54and56

Super advice guys, really appreciate it. Sounds like the young lad is overtaking the auld lad in the technology stakes :eek: I should be happy I guess!!

54and56

FYI the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB is now on Black Friday sale for £249 with free delivery.