Upgrade Plans For Gaming Computer

[Vorcen]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£180.00 @ Aria PC) 
Motherboard: Asus B150M-A/M.2 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£76.21 @ More Computers) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  (£113.39 @ Aria PC) 
Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£74.80 @ Alza) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£88.98 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£43.49 @ Eclipse Computers) 
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Dual Series Video Card  (£380.24 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Thermaltake Versa H25 ATX Mid Tower Case  (£37.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£79.93 @ CCL Computers) 
Total: £1075.03
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-03-20 00:11 GMT+0000

 

So a few months back, I built this... though geez some of the parts were cheaper then... what the heck is that RAM price? But never mind. It's serving me pretty well for 1080p gaming at 144hz. Witcher 3 Ultra at 60-80fps, Skyrim Ultra 144fps stable. The small bugbear has been relatively poor WoW fps. I mean, it's still ultra at around 60fps... but it's disappointing. I'm aware that's mostly a combination of the CPU and a terrible engine though.

 

I've been considering where I should go with regards to an upgrade path. Perhaps not immediately but in the future. I like to tinker, and I'm a bit of a hobbyist with building things. At the time, I think I definitely cheaped out on the CPU and that strikes me as an area to improve upon. And currently everything is being cooled by a stock CPU cooler and 2x standard case fans. 

 

I was thinking of maybe snapping up a 6700k as they disappear off the shelves? Save me having to update the Bios to be able to use a Kabylake on it? And maybe some better cooling. Anyone got any suggestions? I'm debating using it for some light streaming.

[LienusLateTips]

6 minutes ago, Vorcen said:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£180.00 @ Aria PC) 
Motherboard: Asus B150M-A/M.2 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£76.21 @ More Computers) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  (£113.39 @ Aria PC) 
Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£74.80 @ Alza) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£88.98 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£43.49 @ Eclipse Computers) 
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Dual Series Video Card  (£380.24 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Thermaltake Versa H25 ATX Mid Tower Case  (£37.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£79.93 @ CCL Computers) 
Total: £1075.03
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-03-20 00:11 GMT+0000

 

So a few months back, I built this... though geez some of the parts were cheaper then... what the heck is that RAM price? But never mind. It's serving me pretty well for 1080p gaming at 144hz. Witcher 3 Ultra at 60-80fps, Skyrim Ultra 144fps stable. The small bugbear has been relatively poor WoW fps. I mean, it's still ultra at around 60fps... but it's disappointing. I'm aware that's mostly a combination of the CPU and a terrible engine though.

 

I've been considering where I should go with regards to an upgrade path. Perhaps not immediately but in the future. I like to tinker, and I'm a bit of a hobbyist with building things. At the time, I think I definitely cheaped out on the CPU and that strikes me as an area to improve upon. And currently everything is being cooled by a stock CPU cooler and 2x standard case fans. 

 

I was thinking of maybe snapping up a 6700k as they disappear off the shelves? Save me having to update the Bios to be able to use a Kabylake on it? And maybe some better cooling. Anyone got any suggestions?

If you like to tinker, I would much rather get a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge chip and OC to the max. But then there isn't a upgrade path.

[Vorcen]

10 hours ago, JDE said:

If you like to tinker, I would much rather get a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge chip and OC to the max. But then there isn't a upgrade path.

Yeah. I'd like to keep my upgrade path. I'm feeling like upgrading to a 7th gen I7 isn't really worth the bang for the buck with the new mobo that'd be needed. The generational performance boost over the 6700k was embarrassingly small anyway?

 

I'm thinking of stripping out the case fans and replacing them with Corsair SP series fans instead.

[genexis_x]

If you like you can get an i7.

[Pittman90]

Just know if you want to OC on a 6700k you need a new motherboard, might be better to get a 6700 

[Vorcen]

25 minutes ago, Pittman90 said:

Just know if you want to OC on a 6700k you need a new motherboard, might be better to get a 6700 

Isn't the 6700k better as a standard processor than the 6700 anyway? I mean the clock speeds are just straight up better even before accounting for OCing.

[Quaker]

WoW (like SWTOR and many other MMOs) likes fast single threaded performance the best. Any Skylake CPU, such as a 6600K or 6700K would only be a marginal gain - roughly equivalent to the percentage gain in base clock speed.

I'd think that your best bet at this time would be to get an i7-7700K and either update your current BIOS or get a new 200 series motherboard. Even then, you are not going to see a huge fps improvement in WoW - maybe 20% or so, but that might be enough to smooth things out a bit.

 

Btw, just because it's a "K" chip, doesn't mean you have to overclock it. The K chips have the best stock base clocks anyway. But, if you get a K chip, a moderate OC is easy, if you get a cooler such as a CM Hyper 212 or even just a Hyper T4

 

An i5-7600K would be just as good for WoW, but some newer games can actually use more threads, so the i7-7700K is more future friendly. (Nothing is "future proof" )

 

[Vorcen]

3 hours ago, Quaker said:

WoW (like SWTOR and many other MMOs) likes fast single threaded performance the best. Any Skylake CPU, such as a 6600K or 6700K would only be a marginal gain - roughly equivalent to the percentage gain in base clock speed.

I'd think that your best bet at this time would be to get an i7-7700K and either update your current BIOS or get a new 200 series motherboard. Even then, you are not going to see a huge fps improvement in WoW - maybe 20% or so, but that might be enough to smooth things out a bit.

 

Btw, just because it's a "K" chip, doesn't mean you have to overclock it. The K chips have the best stock base clocks anyway. But, if you get a K chip, a moderate OC is easy, if you get a cooler such as a CM Hyper 212 or even just a Hyper T4

 

An i5-7600K would be just as good for WoW, but some newer games can actually use more threads, so the i7-7700K is more future friendly. (Nothing is "future proof" )

 

Are there any compelling Ryzen alternatives? 

[Quaker]

On 3/20/2017 at 4:08 PM, Vorcen said:

Are there any compelling Ryzen alternatives? 

Ryzen CPUs seem to be 10-20% slower than Sky/Kabylake in single threaded performance, so going with Ryzen would be about the same as what you have now.

However, I haven't seen any Ryzen tests using WoW or SWTOR, so I don't know how well they work compared to Sky-Kaby.

For general gaming though, one of the 6 core R5 might be the way to go for newer games.