Upgrading my free PC to the best of its ability

[Jamham]

Budget (including currency): £50-£150 Monthly

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: looking to get a consistent 60hz on high/ultra 1440/4k on modern games

 

Built the rig from my dad's old PC and spare parts from his new pre-built. Looking to buy parts on a monthly basis for around £50-150 to bump up my experience without having to upgrade to a newer system entirely.

 

CPU - i5 2500k overclocked to 4ghz

Motherboard - unsure 

RAM - Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz(4x4gb)

GPU - Gigabyte GTX 1650

PSU - Corsair 3 50w

Cooling - unsure

Storage - 60gb SSD boot, 120gb SSD & 500gb HDD

 

Currently getting a pretty smooth & consistent 60 FPS on high/ultra settings on newer games at 1440 and older games at 4k but hoping to be able to bump that up to ultra 4k for all but the most challenging titles.

 

Just bought(not yet installed) an extra 2 4gb sticks of ram to go from 8gb to 16gb

 

Planning on upgrading my cpu for my next purchase, have been looking along the lines of 4690k/4770k/4820k as 2500k doesn't support the full 1600mhz of the RAM, open to other suggestions but has to be LGA1151 & DDR3 compatible

 

Looking to get a few tb worth of storage, considering a 2tb/4tb seagate barracuda HDD as they're only £43/81 respectively

 

Open to suggestions as to what wattage to upgrade my PSU to for the future are & the best cooler for overclocking within the budget

 

Also considering getting another 1650 and running them SLI(if possible, seen some posts saying 1650 doesn't support it) 

 

Currently running a value K+M so any suggestions on the most responsive & best bang for buck buys.

 

 

[Skiiwee29]

Well the 4690k/4770 etc.. doesn't work in your current motherboard, so you would have to buy a new board as well for the 3 chips you suggested. You can only go up to a 3770k on your current platform. Also, there are zero SLI fingers on 1650s so it is not possible to SLI them. 

[steelo]

5 hours ago, Jamham said:

Budget (including currency): £50-£150 Monthly

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: looking to get a consistent 60hz on high/ultra 1440/4k on modern games

 

Built the rig from my dad's old PC and spare parts from his new pre-built. Looking to buy parts on a monthly basis for around £50-150 to bump up my experience without having to upgrade to a newer system entirely.

 

CPU - i5 2500k overclocked to 4ghz

Motherboard - unsure 

RAM - Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz(4x4gb)

GPU - Gigabyte GTX 1650

PSU - Corsair 3 50w

Cooling - unsure

 

Currently getting a pretty smooth & consistent 60 FPS on high/ultra settings on newer games at 1440 and older games at 4k but hoping to be able to bump that up to ultra 4k for all but the most challenging titles.

 

Just bought(not yet installed) an extra 2 4gb sticks of ram to go from 8gb to 16gb

 

Planning on upgrading my cpu for my next purchase, have been looking along the lines of 4690k/4770k/4820k as 2500k doesn't support the full 1600mhz of the RAM, open to other suggestions but has to be LGA1151 & DDR3 compatible

 

Looking to get a few tb worth of storage, considering a 2tb/4tb seagate barracuda HDD as they're only £43/81 respectively

 

Open to suggestions as to what wattage to upgrade my PSU to for the future are & the best cooler for overclocking within the budget

 

Also considering getting another 1650 and running them SLI(if possible, seen some posts saying 1650 doesn't support it) 

 

Currently running a value K+M so any suggestions on the most responsive & best bang for buck buys.

 

 

SLI is not worth it and there are few games that would actually take advantage of it. I'd just upgrade your GPU when it no longer meets your needs. You probably don't have much ceiling remaining with that CPU before a more powerful GPU is bottlenecked by it. 

 

Honestly, I wouldn't spend any more money on that system unless it will provide tangible benefits. Save your money for a new PC.

[jaslion]

Instead of spending month by month just save up. You are wanting A LOT from a low midrange system.

 

Couple things:

Your board only works with second and 3rd gen cpu's so no 4th gen. Also DO NOT GET A i5. It's beyond pointless as there is barely a performance increase and all new games need more than 4threads nowadays (except for some indies and such).

Those old intels could not care at all if their ram ran at 1066 or 2133mhz in dual or single at worst you lost 3-4% performance if at all.

Sli is dead dead. Do not do it not that you can as your gpu doesn't support it.

 

 

My recommendation is simple really keep it as it is (if you don't have a ssd get that and if you need more storage get a 7200rpm drive) but otherwise keep it as is as upgrading this part by part will result in a worse system for more money spent than you just saving up for 10 or so months and then getting a proper upgrade.

 

What do I mean with proper upgrade? Get of that old lga 1155 socket and move to something modern that will last your this console generation since you only want 60fps anyways. I know you don't want a full new system but besides storage, gpu, the new psu and MAYBE the case (you did not specify this) it will be a full new system if you wish to achieve what you want.

[steelo]

I agree with jaslion...it's pretty pointless to spend a lot of money on 'upgrades', which will result in it still being a low-end system. Enjoy what you have - you stated that you're getting 60 fps with 1080 and 1440. Your current PC is far from the worst I've seen - I have a brother in law with Pentium D and Core 2 duo machines.  He insisted on upgrading the GPU in his core 2 duo to a rx 550 and still only gets maybe 25 fps playing world of warships on low. 

 

In the meantime, start saving for a new PC you can build and be proud of. Honestly, this may be a blessing in disguise. It is a REALLY bad time to buy PC components anyways.

[Jamham]

On 26/02/2021 at 12:06 PM, Skiiwee29 said:

Well the 4690k/4770 etc.. doesn't work in your current motherboard, so you would have to buy a new board as well for the 3 chips you suggested. You can only go up to a 3770k on your current platform. Also, there are zero SLI fingers on 1650s so it is not possible to SLI them. 

 

On 26/02/2021 at 12:16 PM, jaslion said:

Instead of spending month by month just save up. You are wanting A LOT from a low midrange system.

 

Couple things:

Your board only works with second and 3rd gen cpu's so no 4th gen. Also DO NOT GET A i5. It's beyond pointless as there is barely a performance increase and all new games need more than 4threads nowadays (except for some indies and such).

Those old intels could not care at all if their ram ran at 1066 or 2133mhz in dual or single at worst you lost 3-4% performance if at all.

Sli is dead dead. Do not do it not that you can as your gpu doesn't support it.

 

 

My recommendation is simple really keep it as it is (if you don't have a ssd get that and if you need more storage get a 7200rpm drive) but otherwise keep it as is as upgrading this part by part will result in a worse system for more money spent than you just saving up for 10 or so months and then getting a proper upgrade.

 

What do I mean with proper upgrade? Get of that old lga 1155 socket and move to something modern that will last your this console generation since you only want 60fps anyways. I know you don't want a full new system but besides storage, gpu, the new psu and MAYBE the case (you did not specify this) it will be a full new system if you wish to achieve what you want.

 

On 26/02/2021 at 5:02 PM, steelo said:

I agree with jaslion...it's pretty pointless to spend a lot of money on 'upgrades', which will result in it still being a low-end system. Enjoy what you have - you stated that you're getting 60 fps with 1080 and 1440. Your current PC is far from the worst I've seen - I have a brother in law with Pentium D and Core 2 duo machines.  He insisted on upgrading the GPU in his core 2 duo to a rx 550 and still only gets maybe 25 fps playing world of warships on low. 

 

In the meantime, start saving for a new PC you can build and be proud of. Honestly, this may be a blessing in disguise. It is a REALLY bad time to buy PC components anyways.

Thanks for the input guys! Probably will save up just thought upgrading my cpu/motherboard to the best DDR3 compatible, thought it might have been an improvement in the meantime if I could get something with 4 cores 8 threads as opposed to being stuck at 4 cores. 

 

Installed my the extra RAM yesterday and managing to get high settings on BFV at 1440 so it will probably do for now until I can save up for a new rig! 

 

My first PC since about 2007, just been on 360/X1 since so I'm a bit rusty on my knowledge!