2015 i5 PC Upgrade

[MatthewBowker]

Hey everyone,

 

I'm a freelance photographer/graphic designer who's exploring other media forms such as video editing and UI/UX design for apps and websites. I currently have a Surface Laptop (Intel i5 and 256GB SSD) which works for me as my portable PC but I also have a desktop PC which I built in 2015 that's starting to feel a bit dated. I would like to boost my PC's performance for my creative needs as I'm starting to take on more and bigger projects but I'm not sure what I should upgrade or whether I should just save to build a new PC. Here's my list of PC components:

• Intel i5 4570 Haswell CPU
• Asus H97-PLUS 1150 Motherboard
• Crucial Ballistix DDR3 8GB (4GB x 2) Memory
• Crucial 256GB MX100 SSD
• EVGA GTX 660Ti 3GB GPU
• XFX 450W 80+ Bronze PSU

I guess my budget at the moment is £200 but if it's worth upgrading my current PC, a list of items to get in order when I have the money would be great.

 

Please let me know your thoughts, I was thinking maybe an i7 1150 socket CPU and another 8GB of memory would be a good upgrade but I don't really know enough to spend £200 on my own understanding.

 

Thanks, I really appreciate your help in advance.

Edited March 9, 2019 by MatthewBowker
I forgot to mention my GPU

[Streetguru]

14 minutes ago, MatthewBowker said:

 

Not worth upgrading to an i7 for that PC unless it's close to free.

 

You can upgrade to a Ryzen 7 8 core for a bit more, maybe go for 16GBs of RAM, whatever is close to 3000mhz and cheap is fine.
 

PCPartPicker part list: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/sQFrsJ
Price breakdown by merchant: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/sQFrsJ/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3 GHz 8-Core Processor  (£143.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£64.53 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-2800 Memory  (£52.79 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £261.31
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-03-09 10:58 GMT+0000

[MatthewBowker]

1 hour ago, Streetguru said:

Not worth upgrading to an i7 for that PC unless it's close to free.

 

You can upgrade to a Ryzen 7 8 core for a bit more, maybe go for 16GBs of RAM, whatever is close to 3000mhz and cheap is fine.
 

PCPartPicker part list: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/sQFrsJ
Price breakdown by merchant: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/sQFrsJ/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3 GHz 8-Core Processor  (£143.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£64.53 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-2800 Memory  (£52.79 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £261.31
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-03-09 10:58 GMT+0000

So you would recommend saving to buy a whole new build instead of upgrading what I have? 

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, MatthewBowker said:

So you would recommend saving to buy a whole new build instead of upgrading what I have? 

Unless the i7 is like $50-75 GBP I'd jump to a modern platform of some kind most likely.

 

You're basically paying money just to unlock hyperthreading, so you aren't gaining much, especially if your software doesn't make use of more threads/cores anyways.

 

If you need more cores/threads then it makes sense to just buy the Ryzen 6 or 8 core CPU.

You'd only need to replace the CPU/Motherboard/RAM and could very likely find some good deals on the used market. Wouldn't go below an ASrock Pro 4 though for the motherboard.