Old PC for Son

wingnut32

Folks Im looking to get some advice for upgrading an old pc for my 13 year old son. He plays H1Z1 most of the time and is beginning to get into frame rates etc. We are going to upgrade it together next week for his birthday. Im going to need a good monitor too and my budget would be around 800. The old PC has the following:

Silverstone LC20 Case
ASUS P8Z77V Mobo
XFX R7800 Graphics
8GB Ripjaw DDR3
i5-3570k
3TB WD Sata 3
120gb Corsair Neutron SSD
Antec 380W PSU

Any advice would be appreciated!

Joshua J

Personally I'd just get a GTX 1060 and a good 1080p monitor. Anything more than a 1060 you're looking at getting a new psu. It'll play anything at high/ultra 60fps no prob as the rest of your setup is good.

TerrorFirmer

Yes, I don't think you'd need anything more in any case. The processor is pretty much fine, and a GTX1060 is a fairly major step up over a HD7850/7870.

GTX1060 6GB + decent 24" monitor would set you back about €400-450.

wingnut32

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Yes, I don't think you'd need anything more in any case. The processor is pretty much fine, and a GTX1060 is a fairly major step up over a HD7850/7870.

GTX1060 6GB + decent 24" monitor would set you back about €400-450.

Thanks, ill go you with your recommendations, any advice for a good monitor. He's telling me you can get a good one that will do 1080p at 144hz.

Joshua J

Also I'm pretty sure you have the same psu as I have and it only comes with one 6-pin power for graphics card. GTX 1060 can have either 6 or 8-pin afaik depending on manufacturer so make sure to check specs. You could buy a 6 to 8 pin adapter but messy imo.

Samuel T. Cogley

New PSU, RX580 and a freesync monitor IMHO. 1080p over 100hz. Everything else is pretty decent.

TerrorFirmer

The choice would be 1080p 144hz vs 1440p 60hz in a similar price band. I'd personally prefer 1440p 60hz but many people prefer the high fluidity 144hz gives.

On a 144hz monitor though in order to gain maximum frames I would recommend that you overclock the 3570K to squeeze a little more out of it. It's an old but good processor, but a graphics card can only drive as many frames as the CPU can deliver.

144hz monitors really thrive on strong CPU's like either overclocked older i7s (like the 3770K for your motherboard) or the latest Skylake i7's.

Graphics card isn't as important as you can lower graphical settings to hit higher framerates - but an i5-3570 will mean in many AAA titles you won't ever be able to achieve greater than 60-70fps no matter what graphics settings are used so a 144hz monitor will largely be redundant.

Hopefully that makes sense to you - 3570K and GTX1060 are a fine match for a standard 60hz monitor, but not ideal for 144hz in terms of the latest demanding games.

wingnut32

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

The choice would be 1080p 144hz vs 1440p 60hz in a similar price band. I'd personally prefer 1440p 60hz but many people prefer the high fluidity 144hz gives.

On a 144hz monitor though in order to gain maximum frames I would recommend that you overclock the 3570K to squeeze a little more out of it. It's an old but good processor, but a graphics card can only drive as many frames as the CPU can deliver.

144hz monitors really thrive on strong CPU's like either overclocked older i7s (like the 3770K for your motherboard) or the latest Skylake i7's.

Graphics card isn't as important as you can lower graphical settings to hit higher framerates - but an i5-3570 will mean in many AAA titles you won't ever be able to achieve greater than 60-70fps no matter what graphics settings are used so a 144hz monitor will largely be redundant.

Hopefully that makes sense to you - 3570K and GTX1060 are a fine match for a standard 60hz monitor, but not ideal for 144hz in terms of the latest demanding games.

It makes sense, Im dusting my old PC brain off today! Id be tempted to go all out as id probably use the PC also fro time to time, as I said we have a budget of 800 that could be stretched but maybe its better to go with the gtx1060 recommendation and let him upgrade it over time.

K.O.Kiki

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

New PSU, RX580 and a freesync monitor IMHO. 1080p over 100hz. Everything else is pretty decent.

AMD RX cards are impossible to find right now as all the crypto-miners are buying up stock.

Samuel T. Cogley

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

AMD RX cards are impossible to find right now as all the crypto-miners are buying up stock.

Again?! I really thought that had died a death - bought a 7990 out of someone's garage back in the day.

Is AMD still the go to for this sort of stuff or has nVidia closed the gap (I thought they had) or a software thing?

(Hope you don't mind the brief Off topic OP)