PC Upgrade: Help needed on setting priorities

[Charlus]

Hello,

I need an advice.

I have a old intel i5 2700K with 16G of RAM and a GTX 780Ti.

I'm looking to upgrade my PC.

I mostly play AAA solo games, and would like to have a smooth experience at 1440p.

I can't afford to upgrade all the components at once.

Should I buy a new graphic card first (like a RTX 2770 Super) and save for a new CPU/Motherboard/Ram later ?

Or is my setup too old and I should first refresh the CPU and then upgrade the GPU ?

 

Thank you for your advice.

 

 

 

[Metallus97]

7 minutes ago, Charlus said:

Or is my setup too old and I should first refresh the CPU and then upgrade the GPU ?

Yes! ‚Tis is a pretty old CPU and platform. Idd recommend going

MSI B450 A Pro Max

AMD R5 3600

some 3200Mhz Cl16 2x8GB Ram

 

Wich PSU do you have and do you have an SSD?

 

The 780ti isn’t the fadstes anymore but should be ok for the time being untill you can get a new GPU. Medium 1080p should be possible 

[gorfgorf23]

at the moment I am running a I5 3350 P from 7 years ago and gaming is limited,I would recommend going for CPU first then to the rest of your system.

[Metallus97]

3 minutes ago, gorfgorf23 said:

at the moment I am running a I5 3350 P from 7 years ago and gaming is limited,I would recommend going for CPU first then to the rest of your system.

Yes, same here with a 4670k even at 4,5Ghz under water. My 3900x was SUCH a relive for my gaming experience. Ok and i do compute as well 

[Charlus]

9 minutes ago, Metallus97 said:

Wich PSU do you have and do you have an SSD?

Thank you.

PSU: Corsair VX550W

and yes I have a SSD.

[Metallus97]

3 minutes ago, Charlus said:

Thank you.

PSU: Corsair VX550W

and yes I have a SSD.

VX? Thats old as... idd recommend upgrading that first to have something that can manage newer hardware. The demands on a PSU have changed verry much with modern hardware.

See our PSU list and chose something 500W form tier B or up

 

SSD: nice! Transfer that over to the new system!

[Volvo240]

I would say go for the cpu. I had a laptop some years ago, (back when you could actually upgrade them) and the first thing I targeted was the cpu. It has ran faster ever since. Also your cpu might wind up bottlenecking a powerful new graphics card. 

[mariushm]

The PSU is old and kinda crappy, but it should still work with more modern video cards.

If it didn't cause you problems so far, no reason to rush upgrading it.

 

I would look into a RX 5600 XT or something equivalent, maybe a RX 2060 Super or RX 2070... the RX 5600 XT should have the best value. Also, it has pci-e 4.0 though it's not really a big plus... may matter if you go with a x570 motherboard later, prices go down and by the time you upgrade cpu+mb+ram, you may want to go with x570.

 

The video cards don't consume so much power that they would cause concerns... in fact they probably consume LESS power.

780ti consumes up to 270 watts.

The 5600 XT consumes up to 160 watts, the 5700 up to 200w and the 5700xt up to 220-250w

The GTX 2060 Super consumes 180-200 watts, the 2070 super 215-230w..

 

 

[Metallus97]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

The PSU is old and kinda crappy, but it should still work with more modern video cards.

If it didn't cause you problems so far, no reason to rush upgrading it.

 

I would look into a RX 5600 XT or something equivalent, maybe a RX 2060 Super or RX 2070... the RX 5600 XT should have the best value. Also, it has pci-e 4.0 though it's not really a big plus... may matter if you go with a x570 motherboard later, prices go down and by the time you upgrade cpu+mb+ram, you may want to go with x570.

 

The video cards don't consume so much power that they would cause concerns... in fact they probably consume LESS power.

780ti consumes up to 270 watts.

The 5600 XT consumes up to 160 watts, the 5700 up to 200w and the 5700xt up to 220-250w

The GTX 2060 Super consumes 180-200 watts, the 2070 super 215-230w..

 

 

From what i have headed its not so much about general power draw but load switching and stuf that older PSUs cant handle well 

[Rhythm8503]

Id say the CPU, GPU and PSU as those look like they need an upgrade, but with 16GB of RAM a slow ram speed shouldnt hurt too much, but with a PC like that Id say to build a new PC so it can be your daily driver meanwhile setting your old PC to be like a secondary. 

[mariushm]

2 minutes ago, BlendedCG said:

I would say go for the cpu. I had a laptop some years ago, (back when you could actually upgrade them) and the first thing I targeted was the cpu. It has ran faster ever since. Also your cpu might wind up bottlenecking a powerful new graphics card. 

You had a laptop, of course you went for cpu upgrade because besides ram and storage, that's pretty much the only thing you could upgrade in it. I doubt you had a mxm video card in it.

He has a desktop computer, a video card would make more sense. The old cpu can be a small choke point, but even so he still gets a significant boost until the mb+cpu+ram change can be made.

There's little performance increase to upgrade to a cpu that's supported by the same motherboard, and such processors (the most powerful for a particular socket/chipset combo) can be quite expensive so you'd spend lots of money for little performance increase.

 

[Rhythm8503]

Just now, mariushm said:

You had a laptop, of course you went for cpu upgrade because besides ram and storage, that's pretty much the only thing you could upgrade in it. I doubt you had a mxm video card in it.

He has a desktop computer, a video card would make more sense. The old cpu can be a small choke point, but even so he still gets a significant boost until the mb+cpu+ram change can be made.

There's little performance increase to upgrade to a cpu that's supported by the same motherboard, and such processors (the most powerful for a particular socket/chipset combo) can be quite expensive so you'd spend lots of money for little performance increase.

 

Yes but there is a chance he could go for a 4th or 5th gen CPU although its not high its possible and would give a stretch of performance, a faster CPU means less bottlenecking for a new GPU.

[Metallus97]

Just now, Rhythm8503 said:

Yes but there is a chance he could go for a 4th or 5th gen CPU although its not high its possible and would give a stretch of performance, a faster CPU means less bottlenecking for a new GPU.

Nah the platform is old! Bad to spend more money on it. It’s a dead end. OP needs to move on to a newer platform. At the moment the only sensible choice is B450 and a 6 core Ryzen

[mariushm]

16 minutes ago, Metallus97 said:

From what i have headed its not so much about general power draw but load switching and stuff that older PSUs cant handle well 

I suppose it's possible, but worst case scenario the PC would just reboot randomly while gaming if that's the case.

It's not like the power supply would explode or anything like that.

You can just try it out and if you notice lots of reboots while gaming that's a strong indication the power supply may not keep up with the modern hardware, and no other harm done.

Older power supplies may also not handle very low standby power states, but those can be disabled from BIOS (basically if you use hybernate/sleep you just configure the pc through bios to consume 1-2 watts instead of 0.1w or so)

 

The VX series from Corsair is not so ancient to make me think it would cause problems, so if the budget is super tight, I'd start with the video card.

Next, I'd list the mb+cpu+ram as a bundle on eBay or local stores and start preparing the cash to put on top of the money for the bundle, to buy the other components in one shot.

Last, I'd probably look into buying a 250 GB (or higher) nvme SSD, if you have only mechanical drives at the moment.

 

[trevb0t]

7 hours ago, Metallus97 said:

From what i have headed its not so much about general power draw but load switching and stuf that older PSUs cant handle well 

Also just why roll the dice on new gear?

If you're looking at an old single railed unit lacking things like OCP (and I'm not positive that it is)... You could look at pretty negative effects from malfunction. 

It's well worth an upgrade.

[Charlus]

Thanks a lot. This is a lot of interesting recommendations, but no definitive answer :).

As the platform is almost 10 years old, I think I'm going to follow Metallus97's recommendation and upgrade the cpu/mb/ram first.

Thanks again.

 

[Rhythm8503]

On 2/2/2020 at 12:38 PM, Metallus97 said:

Nah the platform is old! Bad to spend more money on it. It’s a dead end. OP needs to move on to a newer platform. At the moment the only sensible choice is B450 and a 6 core Ryzen

Ayyy thats what I have!