Upgrading Help

[jfox60]

Hey everyone, I am trying to upgrade my PC- I use it for school and gaming mostly. It was a gift from a character artist so I 'm not sure what I need and what I don't. I'm thinking motherboard and CPU would be next...but you tell me. Do I even need to upgrade? I guess I just want some thoughts. It runs fine now that I switched up the HDD with a 2TB SSD. Thanks.

Jared

 

PC specs:

 

Intel Core i7 4770 3.4 Ghz

Haswell

 

Motherboard: MSI Z87-G43 (MS 78-16)

 

16 gb DDR3 RAM- Patriot Memory 1866 MHZ

 

POWER- TX 650

 

GPU- Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 6GB

 

Case- THOR- V2 ATX Full Tower Gaming Computer

 

SSD-

WD Blue 3D NAND 2TB PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm - WDS200T2B0A

 

[minibois]

1 minute ago, jfox60 said:

Do I even need to upgrade? [...] It runs fine now that I switched up the HDD with a 2TB SSD.

Haven't you answered your own question right here? Personally I only recommend people to upgrade if they feel like they are missing out on something.

E.g. if you want a certain software or game to run better, you upgrade the component that is holding you back. Which you seem to have done with the SSD already; which makes it so boot times will improve.

Other than that, in certain game at higher resolutions you could consider upgrading your GPU, or in certain programs you could have use for a better CPU..

 

But I just don't like proposing upgrades that won't immediately improve something.

[PopsicleHustler]

Do you need an upgrade? Is it running slow or doesn't meet your requirements?

[GeoHandle]

No one can really say if you NEED to upgrade but yourself. If your satisfied with its current performance then not really, but if you want it to perform better yes i guess? That said, if you do decide to upgrade, you've got to keep in mind compatibility. Your using DDR3 RAM, so if you upgrade that to DDR4 you need to upgrade your motherboard to be compatible, and if you upgrade your motherboard your CPU might not be compatible anymore. And even if it is compatible, since you'll be taking it out and putting it in another board you'll probably need to reapply the thermal paste. You'll also need to be sure your PSU is powerful enough to power whatever you upgrade. Your current Graphics Card and any you buy should be compatible either way, and that's probably what you would want to upgrade since that has the largest impact on gaming. It's probably not worth it for you right now, but a small M.2 NVME SSD might be a good upgrade just to use as a boot drive and maybe to store a single game you play a lot. It didn't look like you mentioned a CPU cooler so I presume it's some kind of stock cooler? That might be something you could upgrade, though unless your thermal throttling its not going to affect your performance at all. If you upgrade the CPU (which will likely mean a motherboard and RAM upgrade as well) then upgrading from whatever stock cooler you get might be worth it.

Also if you want any kind of recommendation for upgrades then we'd need to know what your budget is.

[jfox60]

1 hour ago, minibois said:

Haven't you answered your own question right here? Personally I only recommend people to upgrade if they feel like they are missing out on something.

E.g. if you want a certain software or game to run better, you upgrade the component that is holding you back. Which you seem to have done with the SSD already; which makes it so boot times will improve.

Other than that, in certain game at higher resolutions you could consider upgrading your GPU, or in certain programs you could have use for a better CPU..

 

But I just don't like proposing upgrades that won't immediately improve something.

I worry about things going out, like my hdd blue screen. I'm going to have a bit of money and want to get ahead if I can on things. I really like AMD from what I've seen. I think cpu is next...which also means RAM. 

[jfox60]

1 hour ago, PopsicleHustler said:

Do you need an upgrade? Is it running slow or doesn't meet your requirements?

There's some latency with gaming. Maybe a monitor would be more helpful with that. I worry my CPU is getting old. 

[jfox60]

1 hour ago, GeoHandle said:

No one can really say if you NEED to upgrade but yourself. If your satisfied with its current performance then not really, but if you want it to perform better yes i guess? That said, if you do decide to upgrade, you've got to keep in mind compatibility. Your using DDR3 RAM, so if you upgrade that to DDR4 you need to upgrade your motherboard to be compatible, and if you upgrade your motherboard your CPU might not be compatible anymore. And even if it is compatible, since you'll be taking it out and putting it in another board you'll probably need to reapply the thermal paste. You'll also need to be sure your PSU is powerful enough to power whatever you upgrade. Your current Graphics Card and any you buy should be compatible either way, and that's probably what you would want to upgrade since that has the largest impact on gaming. It's probably not worth it for you right now, but a small M.2 NVME SSD might be a good upgrade just to use as a boot drive and maybe to store a single game you play a lot. It didn't look like you mentioned a CPU cooler so I presume it's some kind of stock cooler? That might be something you could upgrade, though unless your thermal throttling its not going to affect your performance at all. If you upgrade the CPU (which will likely mean a motherboard and RAM upgrade as well) then upgrading from whatever stock cooler you get might be worth it.

Also if you want any kind of recommendation for upgrades then we'd need to know what your budget is.

Thank you, that is very helpful. So more or less like a car, if I upgrade parts, others will need to be upgraded or compatible. I budgeted 500-600 dollars to upgrade this year and I'll have a bit more than I thought. I'm not too computer savvy but these forums and videos help a lot. 

[minibois]

22 minutes ago, jfox60 said:

I worry about things going out, like my hdd blue screen. I'm going to have a bit of money and want to get ahead if I can on things. I really like AMD from what I've seen. I think cpu is next...which also means RAM. 

Ryzen 3600 + MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX/Gaming Plus MAX + 16GB 3600Mhz memory is quite a good choice at the moment, although the 3700X can be interesting too, if you need the extra cores.

I would recommend though running MSI Afterburner while gaming, just to see what you fps in games is like and what devices get utilized the most, so you can see what needs to be upgraded in your system (to see if the GPU is also adequate for what you're doing).

[jfox60]

Thank you! That makes a lot of sense. I'll do some browsing.