Looking for upgrading advice

Replicah · June 13, 2019

Hi there,

My name is Leon, and I am looking for advice to upgrade my system.
The only heavy tasks I use my PC for is gaming on ultra. No other heavy work.

I am not an overclocker, don't really like it. Love turboboost when I need it.
I have build this system 5 years ago and the only thing I upgraded was the GPU.

Here are the specs:

i5-4670k @ stock 3.4GHz / 3.8 GHz TurboBoost

Hyper 212 EVO cooler
Asus Vii Impact (mini itx, but I am going to switch to ATX when I have the chance)
8 GB DDR3 @ 1600 mhz
Asus Strix GTX 1070
Corsair CS650M
Sharkoon ATX case
I game on a monitor with a resolution of 1440p and 165 hz

My wishes:
I would like to have advice on what I should upgrade for better performance in the latest games.
I love to crank every possible setting to ultra but I notice that games get so demanding that I can't do that to every game anymore.
Also what I really like is to play on those high refresh rates. It's really smooth, but it's basically a waste when I am capped to 70 fps due to CPU or GPU limitations.

I'm sorry if this sounds like a first world problem, but I really like to get a lot of performance in my games while complimenting my monitor's resolution and refresh rate.

What would I most benefit from?
An upgrade in Motherboard, CPU and 16 GB of DDR4 RAM? / And then I was thinking about a i5-9600k or Ryzen 7 2700x. Would this suffice?
An upgrade in GPU? / For example selling my current GTX 1070 and upgrading to a GTX 1080 ti or RTX 2070? for example. Or using 2x GTX 1070's in SLI?
Or upgrade everything?

My budget is around € 600,- and I live in the Netherlands.

Upgrade kits here for an i5-9600k, 16GB corsair vengeance and a gamer MSI motherboard is on sale now for € 471
Also some graphics cards are on sale too, but I can't figure out what a better upgrade would be.

I have financial limitations to do both.

Thank you so much for reading, and I am looking forward for your reactions.

Have a great day,
Leon.

Dedayog · June 13, 2019

Turboboost isn't a bonus, it's what a CPU SHOULD run at. They're brainwashing marketing to make it sound like it's this cool thing. No.

That said, I would wait for Ryzen 2 to come out, should lower prices on the previous gens a touch but also may be a better fit for you than the 9600K or 2700X.

No SLI, not worth it consistently.

What's a used 1080 going for?

For 1440p 165Hz, you need BOTH a solid CPU and a solid GPU. If you really don't want to OC that 4670K... you'll need to pony up for both.

With an OC and another 8GB RAM for dual channel... a GPU upgrade makes more sense IMO.

Mr.Humble · June 13, 2019

25 minutes ago, Replicah said:

I'm sorry if this sounds like a first world problem

I mean you are in the first world...

26 minutes ago, Replicah said:

8 GB DDR3 @ 1600 mhz

Is that a single stick? Or a 2x4GB kit?

If it's a single dimm, get a second one that's the same, if it's a kit, get a 2x8GB new one and flip this one.

OC the CPU to ~4GHz all cores - the cooler should manage it - flip the 1070 and get a 2070 or 2080 if you can stretch it or find it second hand.

At that budget your best course of action is a new GPU and squeezing as much as possible from the processor.

Mr.Humble · June 13, 2019

32 minutes ago, Replicah said:

I love to crank every possible setting to ultra but I notice that games get so demanding that I can't do that to every game anymore.

Note that some of those (anti-aliasing) might come with a terrible performance hit for only a slight improvement...

Replicah · June 13, 2019

Best jstudrawa,

Thank you so much for your honest reply.

A used GTX 1080 in my country is going from between: € 375 - € 475,- (or $422 - $535 U.S)

I can pick up a GTX 1080 ti for approx: € 500,- ($563 U.S)

So basically what you are saying is that it would be best for my situation to overclock the i5-4670k to a stable point, buy new RAM 2x8 GB DDR3 for a total of 16 GB of RAM and upgrade my GPU to a GTX 1080, GTX 1080 ti (used) or a new RTX 2070 (which is kind of the same price as a used 1080 ti)?

Thank you so much in advance.

Replicah · June 13, 2019

4 minutes ago, vojta.pokorny said:

I mean you are in the first world...

Is that a single stick? Or a 2x4GB kit?

If it's a single dimm, get a second one that's the same, if it's a kit, get a 2x8GB new one and flip this one.

OC the CPU to ~4GHz all cores - the cooler should manage it - flip the 1070 and get a 2070 or 2080 if you can stretch it or find it second hand.

At that budget your best course of action is a new GPU and squeezing as much as possible from the processor.

Hello vojta.pokorny,

Thanks for your reaction. I am sorry that I did not specify this in my specification. Apologies.

It is a 2x4GB kit.

Thank you for your reaction. I will take this in consideration.

Leon.

Lefteh · June 13, 2019

Getting more ram wont help you in games(unless your playing star citizen), overclocking your i7 for now is your best bet easy 1.3 volts for 4.5 GHz, If you dont want too fiddle any more leave it at that. Also you should get msi afterburner software (its for your GPU) and crank the power limit up to max and give a 80+ core and 300+ on memory for a basic overclock. Dont forget to set it to overclock on start up. You should see 5-10% performance bump if your cpu is not the bottleneck. When ryzen 3000 launches all the prices of used and last gen should drop but i think your current bottleneck is your cpu because you only have 4 threads.

on 7/7 ryzen will launch along side some navi gpus (rx 5700 , rx 5700 xt) but if you were looking a good cpu i would recommend waiting for 7/7 to see how the 3600 199$ or 3600x 249$ (the x is out of the box clocked higher) perform against i5-9600k in gaming benchmarks but regardless of benchmarks pcie gen 4 will be very nice for newer high speeds ssds and future gpus. The big issues is I dont know the prices of decent motherboards coming out yet and I dont know if there will be price hikes or delays in Netherlands.

Also you want too potentially have a higher budget you could consider selling some of your parts, i don't know if Craigslist exists in the Netherlands but selling your parts on the used market could help (you would probably only want to sell your CPU motherboard and ram as those are the things you would need to sell at the moment).

Hopefully some of this has help answer any questions you had.