Upgrade or New Build?

[Spartan927]

1. Budget & Location

~$600 (flexible) if I upgrade, ~$1200 for full rebuild -- U.S.

2. Aim

Gaming -- BF4, Minecraft, CoD BO3, etc.

3. Monitors

At one monitor now, would like two in the future, both at 1920 x 1080.

4. Peripherals

I have everything I need here.

5. Why are you upgrading?

My PC's age is showing, in particular the CPU. Question is, should I upgrade my CPU (and if so, what about the motherboard? RAM?), or should I save up for a new build entirely. Is it worth it to upgrade?

 

My current build:

• CPU: FX-6300
• RAM: 16 Gb. DDR3
• Motherboard: 990FXA-UD3
• GPU: Radeon HD 7800
• Storage: Two 1 Tb. HDDs

 

Planned upgrades:

• CPU: i5 6600K
• Motherboard: Do I even need to upgrade this?
• RAM: DDR4 ??? (for new Mobo)
• Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500 Gb.
• PSU: EVGA Nova 750

 

[Josephdalepi]

12 hours ago, Spartan927 said:

-snip-

 

 

 

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hzhncf

 

basically, youre doing a full rebuild

this will bring you up to spec

[Najuno]

Well if you have a tighter budget and you want ot upgrade now, you can also have a look into Haswell, since a Haswell i5 will still be a very valid thing or gaming the next few years. Even older CPU like Ivy and Sandy bridge i7 and i5 are still relevant up to this day.

To answer your question about the mainboard. YES you need definitely a new mainboard, not that you intend to use a completely different kind of CPU it isn´t even the same chip manufacturer. Intel´s and AMD´s sockets have nowadays only one thing in common... you assemble the CPU in there. Other than that Intel is superior in every way and there´s no chip on the market from AMD that can keep up with an i5 of newer gens in gaming or in general single core performance. The matching motherboard chipset to an i5 6600K is the Z170 chipset.

 

I wouldn´t bother to upgrade anything on your current PC and maybe consider of making it a home server or such and aim for something entirely new if you have the budget for it.

[HKZeroFive]

You need a new motherboard if you're going Intel.

 

However, grab a i5 4690K and Z97 motherboard instead. Reuse the DDR3 RAM and save some cash there. Also, the PSU is pretty overkill unless you're talking about EVGA's B2 series.

 

 

[Spartan927]

3 hours ago, HKZeroFive said:

You need a new motherboard if you're going Intel.

 

However, grab a i5 4690K and Z97 motherboard instead. Reuse the DDR3 RAM and save some cash there. Also, the PSU is pretty overkill unless you're talking about EVGA's B2 series.

 

 

What's the difference in the CPUs? Also, the PSU would be the P2 650W or 750W.

[Spartan927]

3 hours ago, Najuno said:

I wouldn´t bother to upgrade anything on your current PC and maybe consider of making it a home server or such and aim for something entirely new if you have the budget for it.

So, save up for a while until I can buy a much better rig? I'll likely just sell the old parts, I don't have any use for a home server.

[HKZeroFive]

3 minutes ago, Spartan927 said:

What's the difference in the CPUs? Also, the PSU would be the P2 650W or 750W.

Skylake has a slightly higher IPC than and supports DDR4. However, gaming performance in comparison to Haswell is pretty minimal. If you're upgrading your rig, just reuse DDR3 and go Haswell.

 

You'd be fine with a 500-550W PSU so just go with something like the EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G2.

[BurblingBarbacoa]

11 minutes ago, Spartan927 said:

1. Budget & Location

~$600 (flexible) if I upgrade, ~$1200 for full rebuild -- U.S.

2. Aim

Gaming -- BF4, Minecraft, CoD BO3, etc.

3. Monitors

At one monitor now, would like two in the future, both at 1920 x 1080.

4. Peripherals

I have everything I need here.

5. Why are you upgrading?

My PC's age is showing, in particular the CPU. Question is, should I upgrade my CPU (and if so, what about the motherboard? RAM?), or should I save up for a new build entirely. Is it worth it to upgrade?

 

My current build:

• CPU: FX-6300
• RAM: 16 Gb. DDR3
• Motherboard: 990FXA-UD3
• GPU: Radeon HD 7800
• Storage: Two 1 Tb. HDDs

 

Planned upgrades:

• CPU: i5 6600K
• Motherboard: Do I even need to upgrade this?
• RAM: DDR4 ??? (for new Mobo)
• Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500 Gb.
• PSU: EVGA Nova 750

 

Ok. It doesn't really seem to me like you need to upgrade that much CPU wise. Depends I guess. What kind of things are you doing? Below I have listed what you should upgrade, in order: 

1. Upgrade your GPU to somthing a bit newer. That seems like the weakest link in your system. Maybe a r9380x so you have to option to upgrade to 1440p in the future. This is really the only thing that I think you need to upgrade. What PSU do you currently have? If it isn't at least 500w constant output and 80plus certified of some kind maybe upgrade. 750w looks a tad much. Maybe look for 500 or 600w. 
2. Maybe grab an SSD. That 500g 850 evo could make a big difference if you move your os, programs and maybe some games onto it. 
3. Ok. The 6300 is still a super solid CPU. What do you see it showing its age in? I reckon that if you do want to upgrade look at one of two options. Keep your motherboard and ram, seeing as they are really solid, and get an 8350. Great CPU and pretty cheap nowadays. Option two and three is to wait for the new Kabilake and Zen chips to come out and then either get one of them or get a Skylake for a discounted price. Either of those last ones will require a new motherboard. You can get ddr3 motherboards for skylake but I reccomend up you don't do it. It stresses the memory controller on the cou as they are only made for ddr4 and kinda ddr3L. 

A few closing points. You don't need to worry about upgrading to a second monitor. Unless you are using both for gaming, which is almost impossible due to the bezel, it will not really tax the GPU. I also really reccomed that you stick with the 6300 and upgrade your GPU.

 

hope I helped  

[Spartan927]

3 hours ago, BurblingBarbacoa said:

Ok. It doesn't really seem to me like you need to upgrade that much CPU wise. Depends I guess. What kind of things are you doing? Below I have listed what you should upgrade, in order: 

1. Upgrade your GPU to somthing a bit newer. That seems like the weakest link in your system. Maybe a r9380x so you have to option to upgrade to 1440p in the future. This is really the only thing that I think you need to upgrade. What PSU do you currently have? If it isn't at least 500w constant output and 80plus certified of some kind maybe upgrade. 750w looks a tad much. Maybe look for 500 or 600w. 
2. Maybe grab an SSD. That 500g 850 evo could make a big difference if you move your os, programs and maybe some games onto it. 
3. Ok. The 6300 is still a super solid CPU. What do you see it showing its age in? I reckon that if you do want to upgrade look at one of two options. Keep your motherboard and ram, seeing as they are really solid, and get an 8350. Great CPU and pretty cheap nowadays. Option two and three is to wait for the new Kabilake and Zen chips to come out and then either get one of them or get a Skylake for a discounted price. Either of those last ones will require a new motherboard. You can get ddr3 motherboards for skylake but I reccomend up you don't do it. It stresses the memory controller on the cou as they are only made for ddr4 and kinda ddr3L. 

A few closing points. You don't need to worry about upgrading to a second monitor. Unless you are using both for gaming, which is almost impossible due to the bezel, it will not really tax the GPU. I also really reccomed that you stick with the 6300 and upgrade your GPU.

 

hope I helped  

I'm looking to upgrade my CPU because according to HWMonitor, the utilization when I run BF4 maxes out, while the GPU is only at 50%. I took this as "Hey your CPU is struggling, but the GPU has power to spare." The PSU is 600W (I think) but it's only bronze certified (again, I don't know how much that actually matters but it sounds pretty bad).

 

The SSD would get just about everything on my PC. I don't have much memory-wise aside from the OS and games, which I only have a few downloaded at a time.

 

The second monitor would just be for casual use.

 

 

[Silyy097]

30 minutes ago, Spartan927 said:

 

• CPU: FX-6300
• RAM: 16 Gb. DDR3
• Motherboard: 990FXA-UD3
• GPU: Radeon HD 7800

• Storage: Two 1 Tb. HDDs

 

Planned upgrades:

• CPU: i5 6600K
• Motherboard: Do I even need to upgrade this?
• RAM: DDR4 ??? (for new Mobo)
• Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500 Gb.
• PSU: EVGA Nova 750

I would advise you to upgrade your GPU and your CPU, but keep the RAM. 16GB DDR3 is still considered a lot in today's standards.

 

For the CPU, switch over to the Intel platform, however use Haswell instead of skylake as skylake uses DDR4 memory. Between the haswell chips, You can get an i5 4460, or a 4690(K) if you plan to overclock. Reuse the RAM from your old build.

 

Motherboard wise, Z97 for the 4690k, If not you can get a non overclocking board such as the H97 or H81 Chipsets.

 

GPU Wise, You can get anything ranging from a R9 380 onwards.

 

For the PSU, 750W is way overkill for any single graphics card. You can drop that down to 550-650 to save more money

 

Storage, you can wipe the 2 1TB HDDs and reuse them either seperately, or put them into RAID 0 for speed, or Raid 1 for redundancy. I doubt you would need a 500GB SSD, a 240GB would be way more than enough for the OS and essential programs.

[HKZeroFive]

4 minutes ago, Spartan927 said:

I'm looking to upgrade my CPU because according to HWMonitor, the utilization when I run BF4 maxes out, while the GPU is only at 50%. I took this as "Hey your CPU is struggling, but the GPU has power to spare." The PSU is 600W (I think) but it's only bronze certified (again, I don't know how much that actually matters but it sounds pretty bad).

What PSU is it? Efficiency doesn't determine quality. Many bronze-rated PSUs can beat out gold-rated PSUs in quality.

[BurblingBarbacoa]

1 minute ago, Spartan927 said:

I'm looking to upgrade my CPU because according to HWMonitor, the utilization when I run BF4 maxes out, while the GPU is only at 50%. I took this as "Hey your CPU is struggling, but the GPU has power to spare." The PSU is 600W (I think) but it's only bronze certified (again, I don't know how much that actually matters but it sounds pretty bad).

 

The SSD would get just about everything on my PC. I don't have much memory-wise aside from the OS and games, which I only have a few downloaded at a time.

 

The second monitor would just be for casual use.

 

 

• That... Is surprising. Ok then. Maybe time for an upgrade. I would have thought that that wouldn't happen. If you are not actually seeing dips in preformance due to the CPU then I wouldn't worry. Just wait for zen and kabilake and reconsider an upgrade then. I would still give the GPU upgrade a look. What settings are you playing at and at what kind of frame rates? 

 

• Ok. You do that. SSDs are great. After going all solid state you can't go back. Until you reAlize how easy it is to fill stuff up if you are a content creator. 

 

• 80plus bronze is fine. I only would stay away from a PSU if it is only 80plus (the level below bronze), has no 80plus rating of any kind (unless it is a server PSU) or if it only lists max wattage. The best sweet pot is 80plus gold but bronze is good too. I have used many a bronze supply. All have been fine. 

 

• And you are good for the second display. Just make sure you have the outputs. 

[Spartan927]

3 hours ago, HKZeroFive said:

What PSU is it? Efficiency doesn't determine quality. Many bronze-rated PSUs can beat out gold-rated PSUs in quality.

Without taking it apart all I can tell is that it's a Seasonic.

[HKZeroFive]

Just now, Spartan927 said:

Without taking it apart all I can tell is that it's a Seasonic.

It's a good PSU then. No need to upgrade.

 

SeaSonic is nicknamed SafeSonic for a reason.

[Spartan927]

3 hours ago, BurblingBarbacoa said:

• That... Is surprising. Ok then. Maybe time for an upgrade. I would have thought that that wouldn't happen. If you are not actually seeing dips in preformance due to the CPU then I wouldn't worry. Just wait for zen and kabilake and reconsider an upgrade then. I would still give the GPU upgrade a look. What settings are you playing at and at what kind of frame rates? 

 

• Ok. You do that. SSDs are great. After going all solid state you can't go back. Until you reAlize how easy it is to fill stuff up if you are a content creator. 

 

• 80plus bronze is fine. I only would stay away from a PSU if it is only 80plus (the level below bronze), has no 80plus rating of any kind (unless it is a server PSU) or if it only lists max wattage. The best sweet pot is 80plus gold but bronze is good too. I have used many a bronze supply. All have been fine. 

 

• And you are good for the second display. Just make sure you have the outputs. 

Running BF4 on high settings I get about 20-30 FPS. Minecraft on mostly high settings 30-40 FPS. Even if I lower the settings the FPS barely changes, which tells me it's the CPU.

[Spartan927]

3 hours ago, HKZeroFive said:

It's a good PSU then. No need to upgrade.

 

SeaSonic is nicknamed SafeSonic for a reason.

The reason for wanting to upgrade in the first place is really just for a better efficiency rating (which apparently isn't as important as I thought) and for modular cables, because my current build is a mess.

[BurblingBarbacoa]

2 minutes ago, Spartan927 said:

Running BF4 on high settings I get about 20-30 FPS. Minecraft on mostly high settings 30-40 FPS. Even if I lower the settings the FPS barely changes, which tells me it's the CPU.

Yep. You are probably right, however I reckon even of the CPU was upgraded there might not be an incredible preformance jump. Maybe 60fps on high. So what do you think. Wait for new CPUs or 8350. 

[Spartan927]

3 hours ago, BurblingBarbacoa said:

Yep. You are probably right, however I reckon even of the CPU was upgraded there might not be an incredible preformance jump. Maybe 60fps on high. So what do you think. Wait for new CPUs or 8350. 

It's starting to sound like I should wait for a new CPU. I'd like frame rates that flat out don't drop below 60, and that doesn't sound likely with a slight upgrade.

 

I'll probably wait until I can get some hard numbers on the new CPUs before deciding what to buy.

[BurblingBarbacoa]

15 minutes ago, Spartan927 said:

It's starting to sound like I should wait for a new CPU. I'd like frame rates that flat out don't drop below 60, and that doesn't sound likely with a slight upgrade.

 

I'll probably wait until I can get some hard numbers on the new CPUs before deciding what to buy.

You can probably expect Kabilake to be a pretty slight improvement on Skylake. Zen is less predictable. You can probably expect it to be on par with Skylake and Kabilake though. 

[Spartan927]

3 hours ago, BurblingBarbacoa said:

You can probably expect Kabilake to be a pretty slight improvement on Skylake. Zen is less predictable. You can probably expect it to be on par with Skylake and Kabilake though. 

Where would one go if one had virtually zero knowledge of the modern CPU market? Just about my only benchmark is price, (which is terrible I know), but things like Haswell vs Skylake, and the various model numbers for processors mean almost nothing to me.

[BurblingBarbacoa]

30 minutes ago, Spartan927 said:

Where would one go if one had virtually zero knowledge of the modern CPU market? Just about my only benchmark is price, (which is terrible I know), but things like Haswell vs Skylake, and the various model numbers for processors mean almost nothing to me.

I feel your pain there. I was in the same position once. My solution was immersion. Just watch and read all the content that is on the Internet or in magazines that you can find. Look at benchmarks for things like gaming (make sure that they are using the same GPU), rendering and synthetic benchmarks for a comparison. If you want a direct CPU to CPU comparison CPU boss is a good site. Same for GPU boss. A good place is the manufacture websites. Intel and AMD list almost all the specs of their professors. So long as you know what things mean just going through the specs is a good idea if you know your stuff. Sometimes the differences are kind of cryptic, for example: the 5820k and the 5930k have the same specs pretty much. Except for pcie lanes. Little things like that. 

 

Feel absolutley free free to message me and ask any questions. I like answering things. It's most of the reason why I'm here. Read my signature at the bottom of my post... 

[Spartan927]

3 hours ago, BurblingBarbacoa said:

I feel your pain there. I was in the same position once. My solution was immersion. Just watch and read all the content that is on the Internet or in magazines that you can find. Look at benchmarks for things like gaming (make sure that they are using the same GPU), rendering and synthetic benchmarks for a comparison. If you want a direct CPU to CPU comparison CPU boss is a good site. Same for GPU boss. A good place is the manufacture websites. Intel and AMD list almost all the specs of their professors. So long as you know what things mean just going through the specs is a good idea if you know your stuff. Sometimes the differences are kind of cryptic, for example: the 5820k and the 5930k have the same specs pretty much. Except for pcie lanes. Little things like that. 

 

Feel absolutley free free to message me and ask any questions. I like answering things. It's most of the reason why I'm here. Read my signature at the bottom of my post... 

Alright, cool. Thanks for all the help!

[BurblingBarbacoa]

14 minutes ago, Spartan927 said:

Alright, cool. Thanks for all the help!

My pleasure  

Glad to be of service