Help me tune / update this 2012 i7 3770 cpu !

[cj_gonzalez]

Hello! total beginner and novice pc enthusiast here so excuse my ignorance on a couple of topics!

 

so i´ve had this pre-built pc for a while that i bought for my dad and i've been using for some light photo editing for a few years as a hobby, but recently some small photography jobs are starting to appear and i was thinking of also doing some 1080p video editing. (no big projects or youtube content at all, mostly just resolutions that work for social networks)

 

i was wondering if there are any parts on a 7 year old pc that are worth replacing instead of trying to build a "budget" pc, and i'm in venezuela and if you know anything about what's going on down here, my "budget" is incredibly limited already, but my brother live in the US and could send me some parts and i wanna know what could make the most sense!

 

obviously it's no master-race gaming behemoth but i recently beat the witcher 2 (yes, 2) on 800x600 so i don't mind turning most bells and whistles down  

 

i understand something like a 1050ti could run straight from the motherboard since it doesn't need an additional power supply (good, since the one included is a generic, chinese one), and i think some of the newers 1650 can also run straight from the mother board?

 

i don't know how a core i7 from 2012 compares to i3 or i5 from newer generations but this thing currently handles anything but games pretty comfortably. 

 

how much would you say makes sense to spend for a novice photographer like me? i do all of my gaming on ps4, but have always liked to try pc games too!

 

anyway, would really appreciate your options about what storage, gpu, or ram would make sense? THANKS

 

 

[Firewrath9]

This CPU is actually quite decent, it compares with an i3-8100. The best GPU I'd reccommend for a CPU of that caliber would be a GTX 1660/GTX 980/RX 590, a RX 570 is a great pick for 10-20$ less than a 1050 ti/1650 and performs better.

Check CPU tempertures, and you might want to upgrade your PSU/Hard drive (unless you have a ssd)

[cj_gonzalez]

2 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

This CPU is actually quite decent, it compares with an i3-8100. The best GPU I'd reccommend for a CPU of that caliber would be a GTX 1660/GTX 980/RX 590, a RX 570 is a great pick for 10-20$ less than a 1050 ti/1650 and performs better.

Check CPU tempertures, and you might want to upgrade your PSU/Hard drive (unless you have a ssd)

thanks for the reply! yeah i have an old 1TB hard drive  and wirte speed are nothing special so  i guess a ssd would make sense

 

edit: and yeah , power supply i guess should definitely be an upgrade

[Bitter]

You can get an 8GB RX 580 Red Devil on eBay nearly new for around $120 which is a really good deal except they can consume a bit of power, but a mild undervolt helps tame that greatly. The card is good for games and good for work as well, runs fairly quiet and cool if you undervolt some, if you're adding power and OC'ing it then it can suck an enormous amount of power and become a room heater. Don't do that. But do get a faster video card, pretty much anything is better than that GT 610. A GTX 750 or a GTX 950 would be a HUGE leap over it and still be fairly cheap and not terribly power hungry if you can't afford a power supply upgrade. I didn't notice you weren't in the USA so that $120 RX580 may not be a thing available to you.  Even something lowly like a R7 250 is better than the GT 610 and is slot powered, but I'm not sure how useful something like that would be in a photo editing work flow.

 

Better PSU is a MUST if you're getting a stronger graphics card that needs external non slot power.

 

More RAM is always good if you can fit it, 16GB would let you cache more of your editing projects in RAM and speed up work flow in some instances with larger resolution images. You can also use the extra RAM to cache other things into memory like browser cache and disk cache of frequently accessed things.

 

Being an H series not a Z series board means you can't overclock anything and you're locked to 1600mhz max memory speed but you can play with RAM timings to tune out a tiny bit more system performance in some applications. Gains here aren't very big and not every use case justifies the time taken to get the max out of the memory timings. Generally running the RAM at faster frequency is better but since you can't you can make 'faster' with lower timings.

 

For sure 100% get a SSD, that will make a massive difference in the perceived speed of the system.

[cj_gonzalez]

8 minutes ago, Bitter said:

You can get an 8GB RX 580 Red Devil on eBay nearly new for around $120 which is a really good deal except they can consume a bit of power, but a mild undervolt helps tame that greatly. The card is good for games and good for work as well, runs fairly quiet and cool if you undervolt some, if you're adding power and OC'ing it then it can suck an enormous amount of power and become a room heater. Don't do that. But do get a faster video card, pretty much anything is better than that GT 610. A GTX 750 or a GTX 950 would be a HUGE leap over it and still be fairly cheap and not terribly power hungry if you can't afford a power supply upgrade. I didn't notice you weren't in the USA so that $120 RX580 may not be a thing available to you.  Even something lowly like a R7 250 is better than the GT 610 and is slot powered, but I'm not sure how useful something like that would be in a photo editing work flow.

 

Better PSU is a MUST if you're getting a stronger graphics card that needs external non slot power.

 

More RAM is always good if you can fit it, 16GB would let you cache more of your editing projects in RAM and speed up work flow in some instances with larger resolution images. You can also use the extra RAM to cache other things into memory like browser cache and disk cache of frequently accessed things.

 

Being an H series not a Z series board means you can't overclock anything and you're locked to 1600mhz max memory speed but you can play with RAM timings to tune out a tiny bit more system performance in some applications. Gains here aren't very big and not every use case justifies the time taken to get the max out of the memory timings. Generally running the RAM at faster frequency is better but since you can't you can make 'faster' with lower timings.

 

For sure 100% get a SSD, that will make a massive difference in the perceived speed of the system.

massive thanks for this info! , thankfully a $120 graphics card is not 100% out of the question for me so will definitely consider it, i guess a PSU is a must since i'm mostly interested in a graphics card i can get the most out of for at least 2 years. 

[Firewrath9]

10 minutes ago, cj_gonzalez said:

massive thanks for this info! , thankfully a $120 graphics card is not 100% out of the question for me so will definitely consider it, i guess a PSU is a must since i'm mostly interested in a graphics card i can get the most out of for at least 2 years. 

oh, if you're willing to deal used, on r/hardwareswap you can probably snag a 290 for 80$

perhaps negotiate a bit down to 75-ish?

a 290 is around ther performance of a 580.

However it is hot, and I'd definately get a new PSU

[cj_gonzalez]

1 hour ago, Firewrath9 said:

oh, if you're willing to deal used, on r/hardwareswap you can probably snag a 290 for 80$

perhaps negotiate a bit down to 75-ish?

a 290 is around ther performance of a 580.

However it is hot, and I'd definately get a new PSU

yeah very interesting but since i'm not gonna be the one actually making the purchase or pickup, my brother prefers the convenience of just ordering from amazon (or ebay, but mostly amazon) , and shipping it to me.