I am wanting to do an end of the year upgrade before the year 2017.
Black friday and Cyber Monday is coming up, which is a great advantage to get excellent deals for PC components (This is here so we can predict what the prices will be when it reaches either of those market deals).
However, I need your help to upgrade my system. I will take any recommendations.
My budget is around $700-$800.
My current system:
OS: Windows 10
CPU: i5-4460
GPU: GTX 960 PNY
RAM: 16GB 1600MHz DDR3
HDD: WD BLUE 1TB
PSU: 500w EVGA 80 plus Non Bronze - However, this one has been in use nearly 3 years and has been in 2 different PCs, my old and my current.
MOBO: H81M-E34
CPU Cooler: Hyper 212 Evo
2 Monitors: 1920x1080 and 1400x900
What I want to upgrade/change:
CPU (Considering Overclocking)
GPU (Considering a GTX 1070, as well as overclocking)
PSU
PC CASE
MOBO
CPU COOLER
Thank you all so much. I will be looking forward for solutions.
IMO your CPU/mobo/ram combo is still good enough and is not worth upgrading.
I would get a SSD, GPU upgrade(assuming you game), and probably a new power supply to go with that GPU. Not sure what case you have right now, but most will fit in the budget with ease.
Don't touch your CPU it's still fine. Even a Kaby lake won't give you a boost in performance. For comparison i have still the i5-760 overclocked to 4.0 GHz i do 3d modeling, texturing, working in Unreal Engine, and playing games ofc. Combined with my KFA2 GTX 980ti HOF it's still going like crazy. I know it's bottle nacking but i can wait for an upgrade. What you can do in the CPU, MOBO, RAM department is sell your current ram kit and buy for the same money faster 2133Mhz. With that you will get into DDR4 territory of speeds.
The GPU i suggest you wait for a new release IF you can.
PSU i think it will be still working with the GTX 1070 if you buy it and i had PSUs working for 6 years and going.
CPU Cooler. I picked just my favorites. Consider others to. - Phanteks PH-TC14PE - Noctua NH-D15, NH-D14 (i have the NOCTUA NH-U9DX i4 in a server, the build quality is over the top) - DEEPCOOL Lucifer V2 (a gigantic block of heat pipes and metal. It's meant for passive cooling)
For the pc case buy what ever you want full tower, mid tower, mini, rack case.
I agree with @Some_Tech_Noob and @alphazero1990, your mobo and cpu are good to go switch to an ssd, upgrade the gpu and cpu and you are off to the races
If you realy want to get close to maxing out a GTX1070 on certain new AAA games like BF1. Then i would recommend to go with an i7 if possible. Because the GTX1070 in certain games will get an i5 on its knees easaly. Of course you would still get decent performance out of it with your current i5, but still.
But honnestly for 1080p gaming a GTX1060 or RX480 would allready be more then enough, for most games really.
@Some_Tech_Noob Well switching to an SSD would make me install the OS again. The problem is, it is a Windows 8.1 installation; Windows 10 was free until July of this year. Or if you meant, having the HDD and combo it with an SSD, then it wouldn't be much of a problem.
Although, this does give me an idea to buy these parts first, and considering to upgrade my CPU in the future.. Just not now.
If you can slim down your hard drive storage a bit, you can just clone it to the SSD and wipe the HDD. Then just use the HDD as a storage drive.
If you are running the anniversary update, you can just try installing a new copy of Windows 10 on your SSD. Windows generally knows if it's been activated on that computer before and you shouldn't need a new key.
That sounds interesting. I did plan on refreshing my system (then going through all of the account creation and etc.) for the HDD in case I get the new hardware and new case. I am pretty sure the anniversary update is version 1607, so I probably could install a new copy into the SSD. Although, I am not sure if it is just a simple .exe to install a copy of Windows 10 into the SSD.
For the RAM, I would need to upgrade my motherboard since it only supports up to 1600MHz. This motherboard that I have (H81M-E34) was released in 2014 and grabbed it around March 2015.
um, you could just get like a rx470 or whatever especially if your expecting to upgrade to say navi or volta or somethin in like 2 years. but would also just say then, maybe look into a higher res/refresh rate monitor and a 1060/480 as even those will drive 1440 for most all games
so maybe.. upgrade to a evga g2 or something 650-850w if you want room for growth monitor(s) 1060(6g)/480 maybe another drive some redundancy if you have anything you wanna backup if youre willing to reinstall could do an ssd, example: adata sp550 120gb and a wd blue 1tb ~90-100$ total(amazon everyday pricing)
but since its near the sales, might just be to write down a list like you have, and just see what goes on sale/grab what you can
edit: wouldnt upgrade ram or the ram speed though, anything you upgrade to after this wont be using the ddr3 anyways probably, and 16gb is already more than double what you could easily get by with for gaming
A GTX 1070 and an i7 4790k was a suggestion with some fellows in Tom's Hardware (if I can mention another community). Although, I do plan on grabbing a new motherboard (maybe) but it would cost me a little over $800. My target is 1440p gaming, but I'll be sticking with a 1080 res until early 2017.
That's what I was thinking since the sales are near. That is why I planned things ahead and asking communities for a little help to see what ideas I can get. So far, I've been getting some nice ideas. For the RAM, if I were to upgrade it, that means I would need to change the motherboard and blah blah blah.
Hopefully this year's sales are going to be good, like last year.
well the ram upgrade is such that even if you went to oc speeds to get really high ram speed like ddr3 2133-2400 probably wouldn't even get 2 frames in a game or you might lose a frame. and the quantity is already overkill
I don't think it would bottleneck it at all. Only on some of the super intense CPU load games like GTA V, maybe. The i5-4460 is still a very solid chip and imo it's not worth the extra money to upgrade right now.
If I do plan to upgrade my CPU to an i7 4790k, let's say.. late 2017 and I would want to overclock it. Would the motherboard be able to handle it or would there be a need of a stronger motherboard?
You won't be able to overclock on the current board you have. You'd need a Z97 motherboard for the overclocking features to be unlocked. At that point, you might as well grab the 6700k + Z170 or whatever new CPU/mobo is out.