GPU or CPU which to upgrade next!?

[Drezdun]

Hey everyone so its that time of year when I get my stipend for volunteer fire fighting and I generally like to splurge it on something selfish for myself. It’s around $1000 CAD. 

 

Currently my my rig is a i5 7600k oc to 5ghz cooled with a h110i with noctua fans on an asus prime z270-a motherboard 16 gigs of Corsair ddr4 3000 and a gigabyte g1 gaming gtx1080 that I took the stock cooler off and using a nzxt bracket is being cooled by a h80i with push pull noctua fans

 

I play my games at 1440p on my acer predator monitor which has gsync and 165hz refresh rate. 

i use my machine exclusively for gaming, no productivity or video editing. 

 

My my question is my cpu holding me back. I’m trying to decide on buying a 2080/ti or upgrading my cpu and motherboard to a 9700k 

 

whats everyones thoughts on this? Is the 9700k currently the best cpu to get for pure gaming or am I better off upgrading my gpu. I have no interest in rtx features right now because the performance hit is too great. Dlss is interesting but not being implemented yet is a let down. 

 

 

Picture for attention 

[XR6]

cpu. the 1080 is still a great card.

[corrado33]

Honestly. Nothing. If you have a 7600 that can OC to 5 GHz that's a nice chip. Your only upgrade path for the 7600k would be the 7700k, and honestly it's not worth it. 

 

Wait a year then go with whatever is new at the time. 

 

If you wanted to upgrade the CPU seriously you'd have to buy another motherboard as well. That's still come in under $1000 though. I'd probably go with whatever 8th gen or 9th gen intel chip is on sale at the time. 9th gen didn't really improve MUCH over the 8th gen... they run hotter and have more cores... but cores aren't great for gaming. 

[Drezdun]

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

Honestly. Nothing. If you have a 7600 that can OC to 5 GHz that's a nice chip. Your only upgrade path for the 7600k would be the 7700k, and honestly it's not worth it. 

 

Wait a year then go with whatever is new at the time. 

 

If you wanted to upgrade the CPU you'd have to buy another motherboard as well. That's still come in under $1000 though. 

yeah I don’t mind buying a new motherboard to go along with the cpu. I just want to know if replacing both will produce tangible results while gaming to justify the cost. 

[corrado33]

2 minutes ago, Drezdun said:

yeah I don’t mind buying a new motherboard to go along with the cpu. I just want to know if replacing both will produce tangible results while gaming to justify the cost. 

Tangible? Ehhhhh.... You can answer your own question though, in the games you play, is your CPU pegged at 100% all the time? If not, then you don't need an upgrade. If so, then you could use one. 

 

Personally I think your current gaming rig is fine. I'm sure you can play everything at ultra yeah? My opinion is this: You already have a very nice, stable OCed chip. If you upgrade and buy a new one, it may not even reach 5 GHz. (Of course the 9900k turbo IS 5 GHz... but that's it.) Some users here have reported the 8th and 9th gen chips not over clocking well at all. 

 

It's your choice. You'll probably increase a a bit of fps, depending on the game of course, but most games these days are more GPU bound than CPU bound, and you already have a really nice GPU. 

[DailyProcrastinator]

I would look at used 7700k's, the GTX 1080 is a good GPU and I wouldn't really invest in a new motherboard. That's just my opinion.

[Jurrunio]

what games do you play? I want to say CPU upgrade is better, but I'd rather wait for Zen 2 to see what's what. Definitely not a new graphics card yet, performance uplift to 2080 isn't big enough to justify the price. used 1080ti at a good price ($500) maybe worth it?  Honestly this build to hit 1440p 165fps needs a CPU and GPU upgrade as a whole.

[xg32]

44 minutes ago, Drezdun said:

.

i vote neither, the 2080 ti isn't really an upgrade for the ages, it'll do 1440p/144 but u'll need a cpu upgrade for that, and zen 2 is gonna at least match the 9900k, if you have to satisfy that upgrade itch, 9900k wouldn't be the worst choice.

[Drezdun]

36 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Tangible? Ehhhhh.... You can answer your own question though, in the games you play, is your CPU pegged at 100% all the time? If not, then you don't need an upgrade. If so, then you could use one. 

 

Personally I think your current gaming rig is fine. I'm sure you can play everything at ultra yeah? My opinion is this: You already have a very nice, stable OCed chip. If you upgrade and buy a new one, it may not even reach 5 GHz. (Of course the 9900k turbo IS 5 GHz... but that's it.) Some users here have reported the 8th and 9th gen chips not over clocking well at all. 

 

It's your choice. You'll probably increase a a bit of fps, depending on the game of course, but most games these days are more GPU bound than CPU bound, and you already have a really nice GPU. 

Yeah my cpu is currently pegged at 100% always during gaming. 

[Tristerin]

Upgrade to the best Intel cause that's what you mentioned as preference + mobo and have $$$ to afford.  Sell your chip and board and any money left over, decide what to do with that 1080 (sell as well and upgrade to best GPU - 2080ti) or keep because its good to go as you can likely OC the piss out of it with that setup

[Drezdun]

Curr

15 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

what games do you play? I want to say CPU upgrade is better, but I'd rather wait for Zen 2 to see what's what. Definitely not a new graphics card yet, performance uplift to 2080 isn't big enough to justify the price. used 1080ti at a good price ($500) maybe worth it?  Honestly this build to hit 1440p 165fps needs a CPU and GPU upgrade as a whole.

Currently playing BFV. Sounds like the consensus is to just leave it all be. Which I’m fine with as well. It’s not like I’m getting bad performance I was just worried I was holding my 1080 back a lot with the 7600k. 

 

Ill just toss the $ into savings and sit in it for a year and see what gets released. 

[Drezdun]

1 minute ago, Tristerin said:

Upgrade to the best Intel cause that's what you mentioned as preference + mobo and have $$$ to afford.  Sell your chip and board and any money left over, decide what to do with that 1080 (sell as well and upgrade to best GPU - 2080ti) or keep because its good to go as you can likely OC the piss out of it with that setup

I don’t remember exactly what I maged to get out of my card on overclock but I do remember I couldn’t get it to 2000mhz stable on the core. It’s slightly below that. Maybe like 1930mhz 

[pstarlord]

Little off topic, how are you liking the Kraken GPU AIO?  

[Drezdun]

1 minute ago, pstarlord said:

Little off topic, how are you liking the Kraken GPU AIO?  

It’s awesome. The install was super easy and it’s amazingly quiet with noctua fans. That was the main reason I went for it. Got tired of listening to the fans in my right ear while gaming. And it managed to squeeze a little more of an OC out of my card at the same time as being crazy quiet. 

[Drezdun]

Also just wanted to add how awesome this community is. Being a new user I wasn’t sure what to expect. You guys are great. Thank you all for the help and insight. 

[EspinalAndres]

great pc, I would look for an used i7 7700K, or if you have spare money just go for the 9700k + board.

Your i5 maybe at 100% in AAA games always, right?

[Drezdun]

7 minutes ago, EspinalAndres said:

great pc, I would look for an used i7 7700K, or if you have spare money just go for the 9700k + board.

Your i5 maybe at 100% in AAA games always, right?

Yeah it’s always pegged at 100

[pstarlord]

44 minutes ago, Drezdun said:

It’s awesome. The install was super easy and it’s amazingly quiet with noctua fans. That was the main reason I went for it. Got tired of listening to the fans in my right ear while gaming. And it managed to squeeze a little more of an OC out of my card at the same time as being crazy quiet. 

Oh good to hear.  I've been curious about those for a while.