Upgrading a 2018 system

[Zayzo]

Budget (including currency): ~$600 for GPU and no real budget on the cpu set up.

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Every genre including esports titles and SP player games like God of War/Elden Ring. Casual streaming. That's it.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): My current setup is an 8700k with 16gb of ram and a gtx 1070. Using a 600w bronze psu and playing on a 1440p 144hz display. Just looking for the system to last another 2-3 years with this next upgrade. Current setup shows that the 1070 is lacking when facing newer gpu bound titles at 1440p and the 8700k not being the smoothest in esports titles like valorant. I am unable to overclock the 8700k to 5ghz and the ram I am using seems unstable now at the marketed 3k speed after a couple years so I've downclocked it. Planning on buying the gpu in june/july. With newer gen cpus coming out later this year I have been debating waiting for them but I doubt I'd notice more performance than a 12600k with me only gaming. I've also looked at the 12400/5600x, more than likely leaning to intel here. Another thing with the newer gen cpus is the requirement and expense of ddr5. From what I've seen ddr5 hasn't made a significant difference in performance for the price it currently is. My only goal is a smooth experience in single player games at native res, doesn't need to be at my refresh rate in those games but at the same time I don't mind dropping settings to get closer to my refresh rate. I've also been debating 16 vs 32 gigs of ram. As I'm only looking for this upgrade to last for the next 2-3 years I'm not sure I would need more than 16gb of ram quite yet. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Queen Chrysalis]

Elden Ring will not run any better on new parts.

Everything else you described should still be pretty good on what you have, maybe a GPU upgrade, that 1070 should fetch a pretty penny on eBay.  I wouldn't get rid of your whole system, though. 

 

At 1440p that 8700k is fast enough for any new GPU you could want, so TBH I'd spend your whole upgrade budget on the best GPU you can get with the 8700k.  A 3070ti or 3080 seems to be the go to for this.  $600 isn't gonna get you either of those, but keeping the rest of your computer and just getting a GPU at a higher price point would get you a WAY better end experience than a needless CPU and motherboard upgrade.

 

Yeah, I just checked and ~$800 can get you a few of the triple fan 3070tis, and those'll fly in games for a while, and be a pretty ideal match for an 8700k at 1440p.  An RX 6800 is about the same, slower in some games, faster in others is gonna be about the same price.  A 6800xt is a just a little more and is a little faster.  Those will have a more VRAM if you think that's something that'll matter eventually (I wouldn't read too deep into it, but it's a thought).

 

[Zayzo]

5 minutes ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

Elden Ring will not run any better on new parts.

Everything else you described should still be pretty good on what you have, maybe a GPU upgrade, that 1070 should fetch a pretty penny on eBay.  I wouldn't get rid of your whole system, though. 

 

At 1440p that 8700k is fast enough for any new GPU you could want, so TBH I'd spend your whole upgrade budget on the best GPU you can get with the 8700k.  A 3070ti or 3080 seems to be the go to for this.  $600 isn't gonna get you either of those, but keeping the rest of your computer and just getting a GPU at a higher price point would get you a WAY better end experience than a needless CPU and motherboard upgrade.

 

Yeah, I just checked and ~$800 can get you a few of the triple fan 3070tis, and those'll fly in games for a while, and be a pretty ideal match for an 8700k at 1440p.

 

Yeah, I was thinking I'd have to go higher. I'm just wondering if I should at least upgrade my ram since it has degraded quite a bit and gives a lot of errors on memtest. I think I'd also have to get a bigger psu for those beefier cards.

[Jonathan Lee]

Yea, honestly I wouldn't mess with it unless you are in a particular upgrade mood and want something significantly better. Going to a 12700K & 3070/6700XT would be a noticeable upgrade, but that cost quite a bit of money. More ram would depend how much you multitask. If you have some stuff running on the background while gaming, 32GB would make everything run much smoother

[Zayzo]

1 minute ago, Jonathan Lee said:

Yea, honestly I wouldn't mess with it unless you are in a particular upgrade mood and want something significantly better. Going to a 12700K & 3070/6700XT would be a noticeable upgrade, but that cost quite a bit of money. More ram would depend how much you multitask. If you have some stuff running on the background while gaming, 32GB would make everything run much smoother

I do tend to have a ton of tabs open on my second monitor while gaming + discord + spotify.

[Queen Chrysalis]

1 minute ago, Zayzo said:

Yeah, I was thinking I'd have to go higher. I'm just wondering if I should at least upgrade my ram since it has degraded quite a bit and gives a lot of errors on memtest. I think I'd also have to get a bigger psu for those beefier cards.

It's not a bad idea.  A corsair RM 850 should be more than enough if you can find one at a decent price.  Check corsair's site for good refurb deals, they are them best refurb people in the business IMO.  I've bought a ton of stuff from them and it's always indistinguishable from new.

 

For RAM, yeah why not.  If it's causing problems get rid of it.  16 or 32, up to you based on what you wanna spend.  16 is still totally fine, but 32 is cheap enough that if it's something you're concerned with its worth getting.  3200MHz vengeance LPX is like $100 or so for 32GB.

[Queen Chrysalis]

11 minutes ago, Jonathan Lee said:

Yea, honestly I wouldn't mess with it unless you are in a particular upgrade mood and want something significantly better. Going to a 12700K & 3070/6700XT would be a noticeable upgrade, but that cost quite a bit of money. More ram would depend how much you multitask. If you have some stuff running on the background while gaming, 32GB would make everything run much smoother

An 8700k with a 3070ti or 6800XT would be WAY faster than a 12XXX with a 3060ti for a lot less money.  And the 1070 can still be sold easily.

9 minutes ago, Zayzo said:

I do tend to have a ton of tabs open on my second monitor while gaming + discord + spotify.

That shit doesn't use as much RAM as you think it does, as windows will sprawl it out when you aren't gaming and use available RAM just caching shit, but when your in game it'll page that stuff, which doesn't effect usability of those kinda programs at all.  It's really good at not letting spoofy and discord fuck with your fps.  

 

But if you're getting memory errors you should replace it anyway.  you could potentially buy a new 16GB kit of the exact same RAM, replace the dead RAM, and send it back to corsair (don;t commit fraud, tell them it's the old kit) and see if they'll replace it (they're pretty nice people) and then if they do you now have 32GB for the price of 16GB, if they don't you could just buy 16GB more. or if they no longer sell that kit, just buy 32GB (2x16) and return the old RAM to see if they give you site credit or something.

[Jonathan Lee]

5 minutes ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

An 8700k with a 3070ti or 6800XT would be WAY faster than a 12XXX with a 3060ti for a lot less money.

Yea, but someone who can afford a 6800XT/3070TI can afford upgrading the CPU. I'm more talking about general usability and in game experience (frame timing and pacing) rather than average FPS as well

[Queen Chrysalis]

6 minutes ago, Jonathan Lee said:

Yea, but someone who can afford a 6800XT/3070TI can afford upgrading the CPU. I'm more talking about general usability and in game experience (frame timing and pacing) rather than average FPS as well

An 8700k is not gonna be an issue for that yet, nor will it be for quite some time.  You need software to even measure the theoretical changes in those things and they don't really exist in comparison to waiting for the monitor to get the frame from your system.  And at this point we're talking INSANE minutia that would in no way be even in the same conversation as being worth a full CPU/mobo upgrade when were talking about a coffee lake 6 core.  That's some serious tybe b obsessive shit.

[4PcBuilder]

I agree with everyone here about not really  needing to upgrade but if you really want to, this would be a good pc for $1500:https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Pcbuild12123/saved/#view=NLYQdC since it has a 12th gen 12500 and a 3070 ti along with 32gb or ddr4 3200mhz