Is it worth upgrading my PSU?

[Acerazus]

Hello all,

 

I currently have a Corsair CX430 PSU that has been working well all this time with my Intel i5-3470 and my GTX 650Ti as well as 16GB of DDR3 RAM.

 

I wish to upgrade my graphics card with a GTX 1660 6gb however, the recommened wattage is 450, but the GTX 1060 6gb only requires 400W. 

 

Is it best to upgrade my PSU to support the 1660, or keep with what I have and opt for a 1060 instead? The reason for the graphics upgrade is becuase I wish to run my flight simulator (Prepar3D) with more than 30fps. I currently stuck with medium/low end settings and I'm getting between 20-30fps (I have set a frame rate limiter). 

 

Thank you for reading this,

 

Acer

[GoldenLag]

pick up a cx550 and you dont need to worry about the PSU for a long time. 

 

there is more to PSUs than wattage. 

[ckinfos]

Your simulator says that it requires for edition v4 8gb or for edition v3 4gb. which one you use. if you use v4....you may never get above it with your pc configuration so the psu is the least that will matter there.

[LukeSavenije]

i would upgrade the psu with it, cx430 is getting quite outdated by today's standards

[GoldenLag]

6 minutes ago, ckinfos said:

Your simulator says that it requires for edition v4 8gb or for edition v3 4gb. which one you use. if you use v4....you may never get above it with your pc configuration so the psu is the least that will matter there.

thats recommended system requirements, and the requirements vary based on settings, minimum requirements are much lower. 

 

and tweaking settings will yield the performance OP is looking for. the 1660 is much, much faster than the 650ti. 

[juandeag2k]

I would get a nice 550w unit.

[Exaco]

The 650Ti power draw is very smiliar to 1660.
I would get new PSU just because the Green label CX isn't very good.

1660 = Max 150W ( PCIe16 - 75W, 6pin - 75W ).
i5-3470 = ~96W Max ( w/o OC )
= 246W so there's 184W headroom for HDD/SSD/fans/rgb/usb etc with your CX430

I would go w/ 550W to be safe and to have better efficiency.

 

[Oalei]

Well change it because its not a very good PSU anyway.

[ckinfos]

1 hour ago, GoldenLag said:

thats recommended system requirements, and the requirements vary based on settings, minimum requirements are much lower. 

 

and tweaking settings will yield the performance OP is looking for. the 1660 is much, much faster than the 650ti. 

he has a i5 3470. Gtx 1660ti will be a bottleneck for the cpu cause it is too weak. he may end up buying a mid range card and have to use low to med settings in game again! That is not what he wants i think. He wants to play above 30 frames and obviously with more detail. i a may be wrong but that is what i understand from what it asks.

[GoldenLag]

Just now, ckinfos said:

he has a i5 3470. Gtx 1660ti will be a bottleneck for the cpu cause it is too weak. he may end up buying a mid range card and have to use low to med settings in game again! That is not what he wants i think. He wants to play above 30 frames and obviously with more detail. i a may be wrong but that is what i understand from what it asks.

He is getting a 1660.

 

Also, the CPU ks clearly not the issue here. The 650ti is really slow and the 1660 is going tl be a great upgrade.

 

He will get more than 30fps in terms of CPU performance from his CPU. 

 

Also thats unrelated to your earlier comment which was about Vram for some reason.

[ckinfos]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

He is getting a 1660.

 

Also, the CPU ks clearly not the issue here. The 650ti is really slow and the 1660 is going tl be a great upgrade.

 

He will get more than 30fps in terms of CPU performance from his CPU. 

 

Also thats unrelated to your earlier comment which was about Vram for some reason.

i said edition of the game! not vram of the card. I said v4.0 or v3.0 that require 8gb and 4gb respectively. And yes gtx 1660tiit will bottleneck...the cpu when using high settings in games. The reason....it is faster than his old gpu.

[GoldenLag]

49 minutes ago, ckinfos said:

said edition of the game! not vram of the card. I said v4.0 or v3.0 that require 8gb and 4gb respectively

*Recommend

Two very different things

49 minutes ago, ckinfos said:

And yes gtx 1660tiit will bottleneck...the cpu when using high settings in games. The reason....it is faster than his old gpu.

Wait, you are actually using a bottlenecking calculator?

Like those arent inaccurate. 

 

There will allways be a limiting component in the system. So what? Its not like he isnt going to achieve his performance target. 

 

And the GPU will be a massive upgrade over the 650ti. And grant him above 30fps no problem. 

 

Also increasing details do not really increase the load on the CPU much, if at all. 

 

So idk what you are warning against. 

[LukeSavenije]

2 hours ago, Exaco said:

I would go w/ 550W to be safe and to have better efficiency.

funny thing, the efficiency is almost linear on modern PSUs

[Princess Luna]

To keep things short, new 450W~550W decent PSU + GTX 1660 is your best bet.

 

Your CPU may hold it back here and there but even then your experience will be just *so much* better than it currently is with the GTX 650 Ti.

 

One thing worth noting is that flight simulator (Prepar3D) is CPU intensive though.

[Acerazus]

Hi all,

 

Thanks very much for all of your feedback! I really do appreciate the help! 

7 hours ago, ckinfos said:

he has a i5 3470. Gtx 1660ti will be a bottleneck for the cpu cause it is too weak. he may end up buying a mid range card and have to use low to med settings in game again! That is not what he wants i think. He wants to play above 30 frames and obviously with more detail. i a may be wrong but that is what i understand from what it asks.

That's correct in what I require. My end goal is not to have everything on 'high' with the settings. What I'm more specifally aiming for texture resolution (how detailed the sim is), dynamic refelctions and the abitily to cast and recive shadows on clouds, vegetation and such. 

 

Btw, I'm not soley fouced on getting this 1660. I also asked if I should:

Quote

opt for a 1060 instead

I'm just wondering what you guys think if I were to get a 1060 instead. If I recall performance is similar compared to the 1660 and it looks like I won't need to upgrade my PSU, in terms of requirements. Do you think that It'll be worth getting a 1060 in the long run? I hope to use my PC for as long as I can. (I built it back in early 2013).

 

Once again, thank you guys for your input!

[GoldenLag]

1 hour ago, Acerazus said:

it looks like I won't need to upgrade my PSU, in terms of requirements

the power requirements manufacturers list is kinda pointless. we want you to upgrade to get away from cx green, which isnt a that good of PSU line iirc. 

1 hour ago, Acerazus said:

I'm just wondering what you guys think if I were to get a 1060 instead

would aim for a 1660, architecturally its better suited for modern titles and upcomming gamengines. 

 

would also swap the PSU regardless of what you upgrade to. 

[Acerazus]

Hey, @GoldenLag

 

Thanks again for your response. I guess I better upgrade my PSU then.

Many thanks for all of your help, guys!