PC Upgrade: Advice wanted!

Ronan26 · April 10, 2020

Hey guys,

Ideally I'm looking to get the most worthwhile upgrades while keeping any existing parts that are still up to the task. With that being said, I really am open to any and all suggestions. My Current PC:

i7-6700k, GTX 970 (Asus), Kingston SSDNow V300 120gb, WD Blue 1TB, Kingston 2x8gb @ 2133 Mhz, Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3-CF.

The PC is primariy used for 1080p 1920x1080 res gaming. I am looking to run nearly any game at 1440p or 1080p for the foreseeable future, games like ARK: Survival Evolved, Rust, Call of Duty: MW, Civ 6 (I Understand these aren't extremely graphics intensive). I also do a fair amount of multitasking, and currently use two monitors, with three being a possibility in the future.

The main upgrades I am looking at include:

- New Graphics card

- New Case

- M.2 SSD

- New CPU Fan

- RGB Controller (Since my MOBO doesn't have one I believe?)(Only because I want to grab some RGB Fans and such)

- Another 1TB HD

- More RAM (Not needed, but some advice on good value RGB Ram would be great, only as a luxury)

- New Motherboard (If it would be neccessary to use newer parts or get the most out of my specs)

I'm wanting to upgrade to keep my PC "up to date"/relevant, with my current specs getting fairly old now. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want some RGB as well, but thats non-essential but prefered. The PC was bought as a pre-build when I knew little about computers, but I now feel comfortable being able to upgrade it myself, but I would still like some councel.

The parts I've been looking at and are fairly certain on include:

- MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming X 6G

- Deepcool Matrexx 70 A-RGB Tempered Glass Case

- WD Green 120gb M.2 SSD

I will also be buying more fans, as to overclock my CPU properly and whatever graphics card I get.

Budget of roughly $1000 AUD, +/- $200 if needed.

It is also my understanding that I technically could use my current motherboard to use both the GTX 960 AND GTX 1660s? But one of my PCIE lanes is only 4x so wouldn't be as effective? And also that most PC functions including games don't utilize the power of two gpu's?

I Think that's everything, Thanks for any and all advice!

Excalibur20 · April 11, 2020

9 hours ago, Ronan26 said:

Hey guys,

Ideally I'm looking to get the most worthwhile upgrades while keeping any existing parts that are still up to the task. With that being said, I really am open to any and all suggestions. My Current PC:

i7-6700k, GTX 970 (Asus), Kingston SSDNow V300 120gb, WD Blue 1TB, Kingston 2x8gb @ 2133 Mhz, Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3-CF.

The PC is primariy used for 1080p 1920x1080 res gaming. I am looking to run nearly any game at 1440p or 1080p for the foreseeable future, games like ARK: Survival Evolved, Rust, Call of Duty: MW, Civ 6 (I Understand these aren't extremely graphics intensive). I also do a fair amount of multitasking, and currently use two monitors, with three being a possibility in the future.

The main upgrades I am looking at include:

- New Graphics card

- New Case

- M.2 SSD

- New CPU Fan

- RGB Controller (Since my MOBO doesn't have one I believe?)(Only because I want to grab some RGB Fans and such)

- Another 1TB HD

- More RAM (Not needed, but some advice on good value RGB Ram would be great, only as a luxury)

- New Motherboard (If it would be neccessary to use newer parts or get the most out of my specs)

I'm wanting to upgrade to keep my PC "up to date"/relevant, with my current specs getting fairly old now. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want some RGB as well, but thats non-essential but prefered. The PC was bought as a pre-build when I knew little about computers, but I now feel comfortable being able to upgrade it myself, but I would still like some councel.

The parts I've been looking at and are fairly certain on include:

- MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming X 6G

- Deepcool Matrexx 70 A-RGB Tempered Glass Case

- WD Green 120gb M.2 SSD

I will also be buying more fans, as to overclock my CPU properly and whatever graphics card I get.

Budget of roughly $1000 AUD, +/- $200 if needed.

It is also my understanding that I technically could use my current motherboard to use both the GTX 960 AND GTX 1660s? But one of my PCIE lanes is only 4x so wouldn't be as effective? And also that most PC functions including games don't utilize the power of two gpu's?

I Think that's everything, Thanks for any and all advice!

I would upgrade your GPU to a RTX 2060, you can find some for as low as $300. For a cooler I would go with the Scythe Fuma 2. It's been getting a lot of praise and it's performance is comparable to a Noctua D15, but it only costs $60. I dunno if you need more RAM depending on how much mutitasking you do, but I would get faster RAM ( at least 3200 or possibly 3600). For your SSD you could go with a Crucial P2 drive. It's $60 for 500gb so it offers better value than the WD Green.

(All prices listed are in USD)

TylerDurden! · April 11, 2020

10 hours ago, Ronan26 said:

WD Green 120gb M.2 SSD

you have a m.2 slot that supports nvme, get a nvme drive, not a m.2 SSD. This is one of the best improvements for system booting and responsiveness. Check out the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro drives, they are fast and not expensive

Ronan26 · April 11, 2020

3 hours ago, TylerDurden! said:

you have a m.2 slot that supports nvme, get a nvme drive, not a m.2 SSD. This is one of the best improvements for system booting and responsiveness. Check out the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro drives, they are fast and not expensive

Will do, Thank you!

Ronan26 · April 11, 2020

4 hours ago, Excalibur20 said:

I would upgrade your GPU to a RTX 2060, you can find some for as low as $300. For a cooler I would go with the Scythe Fuma 2. It's been getting a lot of praise and it's performance is comparable to a Noctua D15, but it only costs $60. I dunno if you need more RAM depending on how much mutitasking you do, but I would get faster RAM ( at least 3200 or possibly 3600). For your SSD you could go with a Crucial P2 drive. It's $60 for 500gb so it offers better value than the WD Green.

(All prices listed are in USD)

I have been looking at the 2060 range, I'll try and find a better deal, Thanks!