Upgrades for the young gamer

long_b

Young fellas birthday coming up - couple of questions if you don't mind?

He's currently running an i7 3rd Gen with a 750ti - would there be a good upgrade card wise or is it likely Cpu bound?

He plays Minecraft (Bedwars etc), Arc (a little frustrating for him due to crashes ), School of Dragons and a few others.
Would a gaming mouse be any good to him or is that only for more complicated games ?

Thanks in advance!

Skerries

just a new GPU would be fine as the cpu is not a bottleneck but you should be able to still play at medium settings with that card
depending on your budget an RX580 or a GTX1060 would be a big jump but there are cheaper cards that would still be a major improvement over the old one
Gaming Mice are more for twitchy games like FPS multiplayer where DPI helps or there are MMO mice with multiple buttons for short cuts
You can buy some very decent looking gaming mice for not too much such as the Perixx

long_b

Thanks for the advice there

The specs of his PC are

Dell Optiplex 7010
Intel i7-3770 processor @ 3.4Ghz
Windows 7
Nvidia gtx 750ti oc edition (2gb)
8gb dell RAM
1TB HDD
Corsair vx450W PSU

Do you think that Psu would handle an R9 270?
That would be around my budget (second hand)
Would that be a good choice?

moonlighting

if it was me i would get an ssd. 120 - 240 gb could be picked up cheap.
install win 10 on it.
go with the upgraded gpu.
the power supply should be ok. only change if it gives trouble

long_b

moonlighting wrote: »

if it was me i would get an ssd. 120 - 240 gb could be picked up cheap.
install win 10 on it.
go with the upgraded gpu.
the power supply should be ok. only change if it gives trouble

Thanks for that!

In my post I forgot to say that I put in an SSD and he's now using the big HDD for storage.

What would be a good card for about 150 second hand? I'd be buying off adverts

moonlighting

something like gtx 970 range

long_b

Found a nice 970 on adverts.
It's about the same price as a 3GB 1060 card.

From reading up on Ark it has high vram usage so would the 4GB 970 be better than the 3GB 1060? Some places say you need >4GB RAM for Ark so maybe neither would be enough?

moonlighting

4GB 970 will be best for Ark

TerrorFirmer

The GTX750Ti is a major bottleneck in that setup, the 3770 is still a very good CPU.

I would 100% get a new GTX1060 3GB over a 2nd hand GTX970 though. Full several year warranty, uses less power and they're the same speed - the GTX970 only really has 3.5GB effective vram so there's nothing between them realistically.

GTX970's only worth it if you got it for around €150.

You could pony up for a GTX1060 6GB and be done with it - ARC is a very, very demanding game so it'd be a good investment. Apart from the extra VRAM, the 6GB version of the GTX1060 is also faster than the 3GB version.

2nd hand for €150, you sometimes get GTX970's and R9 290's (though 450w isn't really enough for the latter so not really an option).

As you go down the scale you start dropping severely in performance really and older cards are a lot more power hungry so it's not really worth it unless you're strictly limited to €100 or whatever. Cards like GTX770, R9 280X, still huge upgrades on a 750Ti.

Brand new, a GTX1050Ti 4GB for €150 is a decent card though it's a fair bit slower than a GTX970 (though a lot faster than a GTX750Ti!).

You should get €50-60 back for your GTX750Ti as well.

long_b

Great stuff - thanks for that TF

Next question is.. Will these cards fit?
Here's a lad putting a 1050 Ti into the same model that we have

https://youtu.be/UIT3HZVGFJo?t=40

super_furry

Was going to suggest a second-half GTX980, but didn't realise a new 1060 would be cheaper. And it's slightly more powerful too. You should definitely go for that.

Generic Dreadhead

The ultimate upgrade is an ergonomically sound chair with good back and lumbar support. I'm half kidding

TerrorFirmer

long_b wrote: »

Great stuff - thanks for that TF

Next question is.. Will these cards fit?
Here's a lad putting a 1050 Ti into the same model that we have

https://youtu.be/UIT3HZVGFJo?t=40

Some models will be long and get blocked by the HDD cage, but there are a few small models of the GTX1060 including a 'mini' model made by Zotac which is usually pretty cheap.

You won't have any problem getting one to fit.

long_b

So the current card is 22cm and just about fits. There are some power leads (?) going in to the motherboard that juuust fit under the current card.

So looks like a single fan 1060 would be needed. Are cards with one fan louder that these with two?

K.O.Kiki

long_b wrote: »

So the current card is 22cm and just about fits. There are some power leads (?) going in to the motherboard that juuust fit under the current card.

So looks like a single fan 1060 would be needed. Are cards with one fan louder that these with two?

https://uk.hardware.info/reviews/7131/18/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb-and-6gb-review-8-models-tested-noise-levels-and-temperatures

They generally are louder.
======
If you're looking to get a mouse, Logitech G102/G203, ASUS ROG Sica or Cougar Minos X3 are great budget picks.

TerrorFirmer

Louder, but not that loud generally speaking. The GTX1060 isn't a hot running card. I wouldn't worry. Odds are your case fans will be as loud as the card cooler under moderate loud.

Skerries

is there a power connector from the power supply unit going into your current card?
I ask as those Optiplexes are usually light on PSU connections

long_b

Skerries wrote: »

is there a power connector from the power supply unit going into your current card?
I ask as those Optiplexes are usually light on PSU connections

Thanks for asking - the previous owner put in a Corsair Cpu so it has a 6 pin going into the current card

I don't have any extra fans in the case

Thinking about the 1050ti as that would be a big improvement but still leave a definite step up to the 1060 6GB if needed.