If you could buy one thing - help required

[smilodon]

Someone has offered to buy me something computer related. I did some free photography for them and they have unused Amazon vouchers they are going to spend on me.


I'm considering buying something for the gaming PC which is getting a bit long in the tooth. I'm not ready to do a big upgrade yet but it would be nice to get something that might give it a bit of a boost. I know I'm limited by the mobo which is 4th generation.

So I'm hoping the forum brainiacs might have suggestions. I'm guessing I'll have £250- £300 to play with.

The set up is

Asus z97 Mark 2 H3 LGA 1150 mobo
Intel i5 4670K
32 gb DDR3 ram
Nvida GTX 1060 6GB

Crucial 25) gb SSD OS and apps
Two 1 TB HDD's - Steam games

I'm keeping the mobo so anything that would give the PC a boost would be very appreciated. As it's effectively a free upgrade for me I don't mind getting something that I'll be chucking out in about a year when I get a new PC.

Thanks in advance

[sulky_uk]

ive had a look at what you have and my suggestion would be, if they are willing to transfer you the vouchers rather than buy something, then i would hold off.

reasons, your Mobo only goes up to 5th gen, so unless you go 2nd hand for a 5th gen i7...

if you try for a newer cpu in a cheap motherboard, you would also need DDR4 ram and that then goes above the £300 price

maybe get some ssd's for the next build?

[albert]

I would bank the money and wait for Black Friday, to me the obvious upgrade is to an AMD Radeon RX5700. It should give you future proofing for your new rig and put a serious bit of life into the old framerate.

[albert]

Upgrade value from 1060 to 5700:

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-RX-5700-XT-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1060-6GB/4045vs3639

5700 vs 1080Ti

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-RX-5700-XT-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1080-Ti/4045vs3918

Lots of similarities vs 1080Ti at a fraction of the cost.

[Chaosphere]

What monitor are you using? A GPU upgrade isn't really 'worth it' if you're still on a 1080p 60Hz monitor...

[smilodon]

Yep it's a 1080p 60 hz screen, sorry I forgot to mention that.

Come the big upgrade it will get replaced. It may be a complete waste of time upgrading anything in which case I'll not waste their vouchers

[Chaosphere]

Ya, I'm not sure I'd bother upgrading until you change the monitor.

New monitor will mean new GPU.
New GPU ideally means new CPU.
New CPU mandates new motherboard and RAM.

Storage really just comes down to your personal need. If you're getting along fine with your current set-up then it is never going to be 'cost-efficient' to upgrade.

You could easily buy the GPU now as it will slot into the upgraded system down the road of course, but then why not just wait until you're ready and potentially end up paying the same but getting a better GPU at that time. Depends if these vouchers have an expiry, I suppose!

[albert]

Good points Ben, on a 1080p 60 system your bottleneck isn't currently going to be the GPU as even a 1060 should drive that monitor at a solid 60Hz with the majority of games.