Amateur Needs Help Upgrading PC

[Mandez]

Hey guys, first time poster here.

 

So I have a PC, but it's super outdated. Now that I'm making some decent bucks, I want to upgrade it some.

Note that I bought it pre-built, and have made some upgrades since then, but I haven't changed anything for a few years.

Here are the specs:

• CPU - Intel i5 4430
• GPU - GTX 1050Ti
• RAM - 8GB DDR3 1600mhz 
• MOBO - idk some generic motherboard by Lenovo
• Storage - 2TB HDD 7200rpm

Before you say anything, yeah. I know. It's pretty wonky, but it was getting the job done. The uses of this pc include basic computing/office work, playing League of Legends and the occasional Dark Souls III or Forza Horizon 3, and photo and video editing.

Any suggestions for what I can do to sort of bring it up to date? I was thinking upgrading my CPU, MOBO, and RAM, but IDK.  Thoughts?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Tree_tt]

Adding a CPU, MBO and RAM is a great idea. But i would highly recommend adding a SATA SSD. it raises your system overall speed and makes it feel much nicer.

[Jet_ski]

Cheap upgrades:

1. Add a solid state hard drive for the OS and that’ll help.
2. You could potentially upgrade your RAM to a higher clocked 16gb.

I think beyond those two, you’ll need a new CPU/motherboard which means a new system.

 

[Samfisher]

All depends on how much you want to spend here.  Recommendations are pretty hard when there's no $ limit.

[Sir0Tek]

Yes, upgrading the mainboard is mandatory. I suggest to do a complete upgrade, selling the old  rig out.

Going with SSD is a very good decision even if it's just for the system, so it doesn't need to be expensive. Maybe you can make use of ssd-cache as well where you use some gigs off the ssd to cache harddisk access - loading times of regularly used programs/data will improve significantly.

The 1050ti pales in comparision to 1060, 1660 and 1650Super which aren't that expensive either.

[johnny5c]

First off what's your budget?  Being that it's a Lenovo pre-built you'll probably need a new PSU and possibly a different case if you're doing a full upgrade.  The cheaper path would be upgrading to a i7 4770, SSD, and possibly a different GPU.

[Biomecanoid]

Without the specs on the motherboard we can't know what CPUs it support what memory etc. Find the model number of the motherboard 1st.

 

Upgrades:

Max out your CPU

Max out Memory

1660 for GPU

SSD

[Mandez]

8 hours ago, Samfisher said:

All depends on how much you want to spend here.  Recommendations are pretty hard when there's no $ limit.

My budget is around $400.

I'd be willing to wait until I have more, though.

[Mandez]

8 hours ago, Sir0Tek said:

Yes, upgrading the mainboard is mandatory. I suggest to do a complete upgrade, selling the old  rig out.

Going with SSD is a very good decision even if it's just for the system, so it doesn't need to be expensive. Maybe you can make use of ssd-cache as well where you use some gigs off the ssd to cache harddisk access - loading times of regularly used programs/data will improve significantly.

The 1050ti pales in comparision to 1060, 1660 and 1650Super which aren't that expensive either.

This was definitely another path I was willing to take, but my hesitation for that comes from the fact that since a lot of these parts are relatively old and very used, I'm not sure what to charge for it all.

[Mandez]

8 hours ago, johnny5c said:

First off what's your budget?  Being that it's a Lenovo pre-built you'll probably need a new PSU and possibly a different case if you're doing a full upgrade.  The cheaper path would be upgrading to a i7 4770, SSD, and possibly a different GPU.

That sounds doable. My budget is ~$400.

What GPU and SSD did you have in mind, if any?

[Mandez]

7 hours ago, Biomecanoid said:

Without the specs on the motherboard we can't know what CPUs it support what memory etc. Find the model number of the motherboard 1st.

 

Upgrades:

Max out your CPU

Max out Memory

1660 for GPU

SSD

This is my motherboard.

I know it's LGA1150, but the cpu placeholder says 115X. What does that mean? Does it support 1151 as well?

[Biomecanoid]

is it this PC ? 

 

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/ideacentre/k-series/k450/

[johnny5c]

5 hours ago, Mandez said:

That sounds doable. My budget is ~$400.

What GPU and SSD did you have in mind, if any?

A 4770 along with something like a RX 480/580 or GTX 1060 would be a decent 1080p/60 machine for at least a couple years .  I have a couple of those IdeaCenters at work and they have only a 280w PSU so you'll probably want to upgrade that too, it's a standard ATX model so it's not hard to do.  

 

But if you're fine with saving for something better I would definitely go for it because a new $800-$1k build will totally outperform what you currently have no matter what you upgrade.

[Sir0Tek]

13 hours ago, Mandez said:

This is my motherboard.

I know it's LGA1150, but the cpu placeholder says 115X. What does that mean? Does it support 1151 as well?

At least it's the gaming variant, B85m. You arre allowed to set/change dram-timings, and maybe you can increase the busclock a few percent, but you can't put a cpu different from socket 1150 into it. The placeholder may work on 1155 as well.