help What limitations i have upgrading my pc

[PC Newbie79]

 

I inherited a custom PC my father head created in 2015 ish. I am wanting to upgrade my PC to get better frame rate for playing Anthem. In game on max settings or medium setting was getting between 10 fps when a lot of action was happening and 20-30 when moderate action was happening. I know pretty much nothing about PCs. I have been doing some research on my PC and figuring out what components it has. It has a XFX R9 290 Double Dissipation edition 4GB with GDDR5. Intel I7-4770K 3.5 GHZ (8CPU). From what i understand in the bios the CPU is not being over clocked. Have zero idea how to do that. My motherboard is GIGABYTE GA -Z87X-UD3H all powered with a 850 watt thermaltake Toughpower Grand power supply.16 GB of DDR4 RAM. I just want to know if i can just slap in a better graphics card like a GTX 1070 Ti would make me get better FPS. Or should i get a new CPU? I just want to replace the least amount of parts and get better frame rates. Any suggestions of new CPUS or GPUS that would work would be awesome.

 

[Spotty]

3 minutes ago, PC Newbie79 said:

It has a XFX R9 290 Double Dissipation edition 4GB with GDDR5. Intel I7-4770K 3.5 GHZ (8CPU). From what i understand in the bios the CPU is not being over clocked. Have zero idea how to do that. My motherboard is GIGABYTE GA -Z87X-UD3H all powered with a 850 watt thermaltake Toughpower Grand power supply.16 GB of DDR4 RAM.

Seems like your father built a pretty good system for its time.

 

4 minutes ago, PC Newbie79 said:

In game on max settings or medium setting was getting between 10 fps when a lot of action was happening and 20-30 when moderate action was happening.

What resolution are you playing at? You should be getting much better performance than that from the system you have, unless you're playing at 4K or something...

 

5 minutes ago, PC Newbie79 said:

I just want to know if i can just slap in a better graphics card like a GTX 1070 Ti would make me get better FPS. Or should i get a new CPU? I just want to replace the least amount of parts and get better frame rates.

First thing to do would be find out what is currently holding you back. You can use software like MSI Afterburner and enable its built in overlay to show things like CPU Usage % and GPU Usage %. This will put an overlay on to your screen while you play which shows you useful information about your system.
I would also recommend checking the CPU and GPU temperatures while you're playing as well. It's possible that you're thermally throttling. If you haven't dusted the PC since you received it from your father, there may just be dust built up in the coolers which is causing the CPU/GPU to overheat. This will severely impact performance as they will throttle themselves down to protect themselves from overheating.

[TheBean]

cpu is fine for the next 2 or 3 years. but if you want to play modern AAA games you NEED to upgrade gpu to atleast 1060 (options are 1060, 1070, 1070ti, rtx 2060, vega 56/64, 1080). 

[mxk]

Welcome to the forum! Just a heads up, make sure you quote people when you reply to them so they see a notification saying that you replied. Just click the arrow in our comment boxes to quote us (circled in the pic, also keep in mind the response in the pic is unrelated). If you already know, completely disregard this.

 

Your limitations are the CPU, since the best you can do is a 4790k (your 4770k is about the same). I don't know much about Haswell motherboards so I'm not sure if it is a good overclocker, but I'm sure there are much better boards for overclocking your CPU.

 

Your PSU isn't too good of quality, you could do better on that. The wattage is fine, but it's really the internal design.

[TheBean]

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

Seems like your father built a pretty good system for its time.

 

What resolution are you playing at? You should be getting much better performance than that from the system you have, unless you're playing at 4K or something...

 

First thing to do would be find out what is currently holding you back. You can use software like MSI Afterburner and enable its built in overlay to show things like CPU Usage % and GPU Usage %. This will put an overlay on to your screen while you play which shows you useful information about your system.
I would also recommend checking the CPU and GPU temperatures while you're playing as well. It's possible that you're thermally throttling. If you haven't dusted the PC since you received it from your father, there may just be dust built up in the coolers which is causing the CPU/GPU to overheat. This will severely impact performance as they will throttle themselves down to protect themselves from overheating.

i would tone that down. he states that he doesnt know anything. gotta explain yourself. 

[Radium_Angel]

7 minutes ago, PC Newbie79 said:

GIGABYTE GA -Z87X-UD3H

Assuming it's Rev 1.x (they made several, probably silk-screened on the board somewhere) your board only supports 4th gen CPUs. Here is the list

 

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z87X-UD3H-rev-1x#support-cpu

Which is pretty close to the best it'll support.

 

The GFX card is another matter, and *roughly* 75% better in all respects

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1070-Ti-vs-AMD-R9-290/3943vs2171

 

I wouldn't bother with overclocking, it's stupid in the days and age of multi-core multi-gigahertz CPUs, and more of then than not, you're likely to fry something if you don't know what you are doing.

 

 

[TheBean]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

it's stupid in the days and age of multi-core multi-gigahertz CPUs

not true

 

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

you're likely to fry something if you don't know what you are doing.

true

[Spotty]

Just now, Saksham said:

but if you want to play modern AAA games you NEED to upgrade gpu to atleast 1060

That's ridiculous. There's really not that much difference in performance between a R9 290 and a GTX 1060/RX 580.
 

Just now, Saksham said:

i would tone that down. he states that he doesnt know anything. gotta explain yourself. 

To use MSI Afterburner...

1. Install MSI Afterburner: https://www.msi.com/page/afterburner
2. Enable the On Screen display (Settings > On Screen Display)
3. Set a keybinding to toggle On Screen Display on/off
4. Assign what you want to be shown on the On Screen Display (Settings > Monitoring).
5. If not already selected, select CPU Usage %, GPU Usage %, CPU Temperature, GPU Temperature
6. Play the game and use the keybinding set in Step 3 to enable the on screen display in game
7. Take a screenshot of what it's displaying and post it here

 

Your 4770k and R9 290 might be overheating. Open the side panel of the computer (the big box part) and inspect the coolers for dust build up. If dust is present, remove dust by spraying it with compressed air (do this outside).

[TrigrH]

Step 1: blow out all the dust.

As for upgrades:

Check the CPU cooler, if it says intel on it, replace it. Overclock the CPU. Buy a better graphics card.

 

Done

[PC Newbie79]

42 minutes ago, Spotty said:

That's ridiculous. There's really not that much difference in performance between a R9 290 and a GTX 1060/RX 580.
 

To use MSI Afterburner...

1. Install MSI Afterburner: https://www.msi.com/page/afterburner
2. Enable the On Screen display (Settings > On Screen Display)
3. Set a keybinding to toggle On Screen Display on/off
4. Assign what you want to be shown on the On Screen Display (Settings > Monitoring).
5. If not already selected, select CPU Usage %, GPU Usage %, CPU Temperature, GPU Temperature
6. Play the game and use the keybinding set in Step 3 to enable the on screen display in game
7. Take a screenshot of what it's displaying and post it here

 

Your 4770k and R9 290 might be overheating. Open the side panel of the computer (the big box part) and inspect the coolers for dust build up. If dust is present, remove dust by spraying it with compressed air (do this outside).

The Beta will be open this Friday again to play. I have downloaded the MSI software and will do as you instructed me. Thank you so much for the help and advice. The case is very simple to open and clean. There most definitely is dust in the PC. Both of my air compressors are broken ATM. Its nothing insane but could be a lot cleaner. My bios has a temperature gauge in it the settings. As soon as i start playing anthem the fans all kick on and start blowing and sucking. There is 5 fans on the case. One large fan on the front and another on the side. one medium size fan behind the GPU on the back top. Then two fans in one unit sucking air from the top. Also the CPU fan( corsair) it has two tubes running from them to some mount on the side of my two fan unit on the top of my pc. My PC case is huge and is much easier to clean section at a time. I also enjoy taking it apart somewhat to clean it and understand how it was put in and how to clean and maintain my own stuff. i just want to be able to disconnect the cooler from my cpu and clean the top two fan section thing. My PC Fills with dust very easily and very often. I know i cant take the fan part thing of my CPU. i just want the tubes disconnected to clean the top fans. My case is Thermaltake LVL 10 GT.

[PC Newbie79]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

Assuming it's Rev 1.x (they made several, probably silk-screened on the board somewhere) your board only supports 4th gen CPUs. Here is the list

 

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z87X-UD3H-rev-1x#support-cpu

Which is pretty close to the best it'll support.

 

The GFX card is another matter, and *roughly* 75% better in all respects

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1070-Ti-vs-AMD-R9-290/3943vs2171

 

I wouldn't bother with overclocking, it's stupid in the days and age of multi-core multi-gigahertz CPUs, and more of then than not, you're likely to fry something if you don't know what you are doing.

 

 

Okay that was super freaking easy. Thank you for those links they are super handy.

[Spotty]

14 minutes ago, PC Newbie79 said:

The Beta will be open this Friday again to play. I have downloaded the MSI software and will do as you instructed me.

You can still test performance and temperatures in other games. What other PC games do you have?
You can also run benchmarks as well like 3DMark TimeSpy, which can be downloaded for free here (Click Download Demo) https://store.steampowered.com/app/223850/3DMark/

 

 

3 minutes ago, PC Newbie79 said:

Also the CPU fan( corsair) it has two tubes running from them to some mount on the side of my two fan unit on the top of my pc.

Sounds like you have a Corsair All-In-One liquid cooler. Something that looks like this...


The tubing carries water away from the CPU to a radiator mounted to the case which will have fans attached to it which move air through the fins on the radiator to cool the liquid. You will also need to remove the fans from the radiator to clean the dust built up on the radiator. The easiest way to do this would be to remove the entire AIO cooler from the computer.

You will need to remove the 4 mounting screws on the CPU mount (the bit that attached to the motherboard) as well as the screws that are attaching the radiator to the case. You may have to remove the top panel of your case to access the screws that hold it in place.  Since you're removing the CPU cooler from the CPU, you'll also need to clean off the old thermal paste and apply new thermal paste when remounting it.

Example of dust built up on a radiator blocking airflow:

Spoiler

Is your father around to help you with this? He might be able to assist you and show you what to do if he assembled the system himself and knows a bit more about computers.

[PC Newbie79]

18 hours ago, Spotty said:

You can still test performance and temperatures in other games. What other PC games do you have?
You can also run benchmarks as well like 3DMark TimeSpy, which can be downloaded for free here (Click Download Demo) https://store.steampowered.com/app/223850/3DMark/

 

 

Sounds like you have a Corsair All-In-One liquid cooler. Something that looks like this...


The tubing carries water away from the CPU to a radiator mounted to the case which will have fans attached to it which move air through the fins on the radiator to cool the liquid. You will also need to remove the fans from the radiator to clean the dust built up on the radiator. The easiest way to do this would be to remove the entire AIO cooler from the computer.

You will need to remove the 4 mounting screws on the CPU mount (the bit that attached to the motherboard) as well as the screws that are attaching the radiator to the case. You may have to remove the top panel of your case to access the screws that hold it in place.  Since you're removing the CPU cooler from the CPU, you'll also need to clean off the old thermal paste and apply new thermal paste when remounting it.

Example of dust built up on a radiator blocking airflow:

  Hide contents

Is your father around to help you with this? He might be able to assist you and show you what to do if he assembled the system himself and knows a bit more about computers.

I have the MSI software installed and set up my keybindings so in game it will show the stats or anything. But no matter what the key binding i set the MSI will not show up over the game to show me the stats. No my father isnt here to help me with this, I will watch a variety of videos and learn how to do it myself. Id  prefer not to take of the CPU fan and have to remove the thermal paste and have to re apply it. im still working on cleaning out all the fans and such. The most demanding game i have is currently Rainbow Six Siege, But at this point il just wait until tomorrow for the Anthem betta.