Ideas for PC // Problem(s)

[ImInABox]

Okay, well first off I'm currently running a 2014 PC running some decent specs on everything but the gpu. Currently running

Motherboard: MSI Z1-7641
CPU: AMD FX-6300 Series Clocked at 4.1gHz with AIO Cooler H100i
GPU: AMD Radeon r7 200 Series
Ram: 8gb Ram DDR3
PSU: 350W Psu (couldn't tell you much else about it)

I was curious if it was worth it to just upgrade the gpu and psu to have in this case or honestly to buy a whole new rig. I honestly don't know whats worth it out of doing either. My price range is 500$ - 1350$ for what I want to do.

[XxSwiftyxX]

Any new parts you do end up buying may be bottlenecked by your cpu. If it was me personally I would upgrade my entire rig as those parts aren't doing fair in the percentile anymore.

[ImInABox]

Any new parts you do end up buying may be bottlenecked by your cpu. If it was me personally I would upgrade my entire rig as those parts aren't doing fair in the percentile anymore.

Do you really think it'll bottle neck? I've been able to overclock then cpu even higher then I have it to 4.4gHz and I just decided it wasnt worth it to bottleneck more on the gpu than already is.

[Penguin]

Honestly what I did is start researching parts specific to what I needed out of my rig. I'm not a high end gamer so my needs were pretty basic. My motherboard is an ASRock Fatal1ty B250M. Not a Z-rated board, no overclocking, but it was $86. It also as an M2 slot so if my SSD goes out, I can grab a decent regular HD and plug in an Intel Optane stick for much cheaper than buying a large SSD. I googled good budget ram and bought 2 sticks of 4gb ram for now. I will probably upgrade to 16 in the future. I read up on RAM requirments and unless you're really trying to squeeze every last FPS you can, anything more than 16 or 32 is really just overkill. The only things I spent extra money on were the case (NZXT Phantom 410) because it has cable management, USB 3.0, and, well, it looks awesome and the processor. I bought the i5-7500 because I wasn't planning on overclocking so I didn't need the 7600k plus, from what I've read, most games are still utilizing the i5 over the i7. That will obviously change but, for now, it works. I reused my old power supply, my two 60 gig ssds (I have windows 10 and my games on those), my old 1 TB HD, and graphics card because they still worked and give me the functionality I'm looking for. All in all I spent about $600 on building this computer and it runs beautifully.

[Penguin]

Also, here is a good comparison list if you're in the market for a new graphics card.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rchy,4388.html

[A_goat]

You would see a drastic upgrade in performance by just upgrading the GPU. But as others have mentioned, your CPU will definitely hold your new GPU back in modern games, even older ones like GTA V.
Once you feel up to the task, your new GPU and PSU would easily transfer to whatever new system you get. But just upgrading the PSU and GPU now would be totally acceptable, and well worth the investment if you plan to game. Buying a new GPU wouldn't affect your future build at all, so i'd recommend getting just the GPU/PSU first, like you've suggested. It will let you decide on if your current performance is worth upgrading or not.

[Cadellu]

The state of the market right now is choppy and you honestly have a decent build. The GPU will hold you back soon, games keep getting more and more complex making it necessary to have a pascal or Vega architecture card to really get higher end gaming if that is what you want. I am building my rig right now going AMD. here's a look https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3G78LD. Whatever you do i still recommended upgrading soon.

[ZED]

The state of the market right now is choppy and you honestly have a decent build. The GPU will hold you back soon, games keep getting more and more complex making it necessary to have a pascal or Vega architecture card to really get higher end gaming if that is what you want. I am building my rig right now going AMD. here's a look https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3G78LD. Whatever you do i still recommended upgrading soon.

I'd recommend to throw in 16 GB of RAM because 8 GB is not enough to run modern AAA titles anymore. Most of them use between 6 GB - 10 GB of RAM + Windows alone is using between 2 GB - 3 GB of RAM, so in total you have 8 GB - 13 GB usage if you run a modern AAA title.

To give you an idea, Battlefield 1 is using 8.1 GB of RAM and that's just a game, so add another 3 GB on top of that for the OS and you get 11 GB.

[KaosC57]

So, for raw Gaming performance. Your current system is not really doing well. The FX series AMD chips have not aged well, even with the multi-threading craze happening in gaming. If you were to upgrade, you would need to upgrade the entire system. And currently there's 2 routes that make the most sense when you want to upgrade.

If you plan on doing anything outside of Gaming such as CAD, Photoshop, Video Editing, Streaming, etc. Then Ryzen is your best bet. It outperforms Intel's offerings for less money, and their cheaper B350 motherboards are even capable of Overclocking ANY Ryzen chip, even the low tier Ryzen 3 1200. However, the best bang for the buck on Ryzen is between the Ryzen 5 1600X, or the Ryzen 7 1700. The Ryzen 5 offering is a 6c/12t chip that can do light-weight streaming (720p/60fps on a lower quality preset in OBS) while gaming at a fairly cheap price. The Ryzen 7 on the other hand can do 1080p/60fps streaming, or even the previously mentioned 720p/60fps at really good quality.

On the other side, you have the behemoths in Gaming the Intel Core i5-8600k and Intel Core i7-8700k. Both of these chips are absolute gaming juggernauts. And have Core and Thread counts plus Speeds that make Ryzen want to run and cry in a corner. The i5 is a 6 Core non-Hyperthreaded chip that makes it the first mainstream Intel Core series chip to have more than 4 cores. This makes it a relatively capable Streaming chip, and can even make it compete in the Photoshop and Video Editing scene. The same can be said for the i7, except it has another 6 threads making it an absolute beast for multithreaded workloads with it's incredible speeds. Plus, both of these chips are capable of 5ghz with a few modifications (delidding, high-end Liquid Metal Thermal paste, a good Liquid Cooler) which make them the absolute best chips for raw gaming.

So, what about Graphics Cards? Well, AMD's Vega chips were pretty much a flop from the start. The only one that makes remote sense to buy is the Vega 56, and it's only marginally better than the GTX 1070 in most games. And the 1070Ti is just a step ahead of the V56. So, I wouldn't look into any Vega cards until AMD can refine them next year. The only place i'd look for a good GPU is with Nvidia. And depending on the resolution, you can get away with a few different cards. If you are looking for good Medium/High 1080p Gaming, the 1060 6GB is a great choice. The 1070 crushes Ultra and 144 FPS in most if not all AAA titles in 1080p resolution, and even performs well at 1440p High at 60 FPS. The 1080 and 1080ti are really only there for those who want 1440p at Ultra with framerates above 60, and the 1080Ti even begins to start treading the 4K 60fps waters.

RAM capacity? General Gamers will want 16 GB, but if you do Streaming or other productivity tasks while Gaming, you'll want 32 GB.

Storage? At least 1 SSD to put your OS and any games you play super often on. The rest of it can be on a larger HDD. There's a 5TB Toshiba drive that i've been eyeing for Christmas that is about 150 USD.

So, what would this cost you? Well, i'll tally up 2 builds and give you rough prices for both a Ryzen build and an Intel build that would do 1080p gaming at Ultra 144fps, and then if you want something different I can tweak it up or down.

Build 1: Ryzen

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600X 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($28.90 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($144.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($89.99 @ B&H)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.09 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB AMP Edition Video Card ($468.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1166.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-24 13:53 EST-0500

The reason for the 1070Ti is because Black Friday Sales are going on right now, and they are at a great price compared to their 1070 bretheren. Also, the 1070Ti is about 3 - 6 FPS higher in most titles compared to the 1070.

Build 2: Intel Core i5

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8600K 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor ($295.99 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI - Z370-A PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($101.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($89.99 @ B&H)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.09 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB AMP Edition Video Card ($468.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1326.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-24 13:57 EST-0500

I threw in a Liquid Cooler onto this build because the latest Intel CPU's have some questionable thermals on Air sometimes. And, that cooler is on a really good sale right now at the time of this post.

My personal recommendation? I'd get the Ryzen build if you want flexibility to Stream later on, but if you just care about raw gaming performance, the i5 build is really powerful with a decent overclock.

[ImInABox]

So, for raw Gaming performance. Your current system is not really doing well. The FX series AMD chips have not aged well, even with the multi-threading craze happening in gaming. If you were to upgrade, you would need to upgrade the entire system. And currently there's 2 routes that make the most sense when you want to upgrade.

If you plan on doing anything outside of Gaming such as CAD, Photoshop, Video Editing, Streaming, etc. Then Ryzen is your best bet. It outperforms Intel's offerings for less money, and their cheaper B350 motherboards are even capable of Overclocking ANY Ryzen chip, even the low tier Ryzen 3 1200. However, the best bang for the buck on Ryzen is between the Ryzen 5 1600X, or the Ryzen 7 1700. The Ryzen 5 offering is a 6c/12t chip that can do light-weight streaming (720p/60fps on a lower quality preset in OBS) while gaming at a fairly cheap price. The Ryzen 7 on the other hand can do 1080p/60fps streaming, or even the previously mentioned 720p/60fps at really good quality.

On the other side, you have the behemoths in Gaming the Intel Core i5-8600k and Intel Core i7-8700k. Both of these chips are absolute gaming juggernauts. And have Core and Thread counts plus Speeds that make Ryzen want to run and cry in a corner. The i5 is a 6 Core non-Hyperthreaded chip that makes it the first mainstream Intel Core series chip to have more than 4 cores. This makes it a relatively capable Streaming chip, and can even make it compete in the Photoshop and Video Editing scene. The same can be said for the i7, except it has another 6 threads making it an absolute beast for multithreaded workloads with it's incredible speeds. Plus, both of these chips are capable of 5ghz with a few modifications (delidding, high-end Liquid Metal Thermal paste, a good Liquid Cooler) which make them the absolute best chips for raw gaming.

So, what about Graphics Cards? Well, AMD's Vega chips were pretty much a flop from the start. The only one that makes remote sense to buy is the Vega 56, and it's only marginally better than the GTX 1070 in most games. And the 1070Ti is just a step ahead of the V56. So, I wouldn't look into any Vega cards until AMD can refine them next year. The only place i'd look for a good GPU is with Nvidia. And depending on the resolution, you can get away with a few different cards. If you are looking for good Medium/High 1080p Gaming, the 1060 6GB is a great choice. The 1070 crushes Ultra and 144 FPS in most if not all AAA titles in 1080p resolution, and even performs well at 1440p High at 60 FPS. The 1080 and 1080ti are really only there for those who want 1440p at Ultra with framerates above 60, and the 1080Ti even begins to start treading the 4K 60fps waters.

RAM capacity? General Gamers will want 16 GB, but if you do Streaming or other productivity tasks while Gaming, you'll want 32 GB.

Storage? At least 1 SSD to put your OS and any games you play super often on. The rest of it can be on a larger HDD. There's a 5TB Toshiba drive that i've been eyeing for Christmas that is about 150 USD.

So, what would this cost you? Well, i'll tally up 2 builds and give you rough prices for both a Ryzen build and an Intel build that would do 1080p gaming at Ultra 144fps, and then if you want something different I can tweak it up or down.

Build 1: Ryzen

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600X 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($28.90 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($144.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($89.99 @ B&H)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.09 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB AMP Edition Video Card ($468.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1166.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-24 13:53 EST-0500

The reason for the 1070Ti is because Black Friday Sales are going on right now, and they are at a great price compared to their 1070 bretheren. Also, the 1070Ti is about 3 - 6 FPS higher in most titles compared to the 1070.

Build 2: Intel Core i5

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8600K 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor ($295.99 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI - Z370-A PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($101.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($89.99 @ B&H)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.09 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB AMP Edition Video Card ($468.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1326.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-24 13:57 EST-0500

I threw in a Liquid Cooler onto this build because the latest Intel CPU's have some questionable thermals on Air sometimes. And, that cooler is on a really good sale right now at the time of this post.

My personal recommendation? I'd get the Ryzen build if you want flexibility to Stream later on, but if you just care about raw gaming performance, the i5 build is really powerful with a decent overclock.

So If I didnt have the exact money to do this all in one go would it be best for me to do gpu right now and work off that? The motherboard on this only has two slots for ram so I would have to find two sticks of 8gb ram DDR3. I just can't afford right now to do a whole system like that. So what do you think I should do first in terms of starting on what to change.

[KaosC57]

So If I didnt have the exact money to do this all in one go would it be best for me to do gpu right now and work off that? The motherboard on this only has two slots for ram so I would have to find two sticks of 8gb ram DDR3. I just can't afford right now to do a whole system like that. So what do you think I should do first in terms of starting on what to change.

If you don't have the money for the whole system, I'd wait till you get the money. Pricing for parts is pretty stable right now, so you would just need to play a waiting game and save up.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[A_goat]

So If I didnt have the exact money to do this all in one go would it be best for me to do gpu right now and work off that? The motherboard on this only has two slots for ram so I would have to find two sticks of 8gb ram DDR3. I just can't afford right now to do a whole system like that. So what do you think I should do first in terms of starting on what to change.

Yes, you can upgrade just GPU/PSU right now without issues for a sizable increase in performance. Once you acquire the other hardware, you can easily transfer your new GPU/PSU to the new system for an even greater increase in performance. If you get a GPU better than the 1050ti, you'll also need a new PSU with the new GPU.
Don't upgrade RAM until you get the new system, because that won't be compatible.

[KaosC57]

Yes, you can upgrade just GPU/PSU right now without issues for a sizable increase in performance. Once you acquire the other hardware, you can easily transfer your new GPU/PSU to the new system for an even greater increase in performance.
Don't upgrade RAM until you get the new system, because that won't be compatible.

It actually won't be a really good increase. The FX series of CPU's don't take well to having an overpowered GPU when combined with them. My roommate's old system had an FX-6300 with a 1070 and it chugged on a lot of GPU intensive games because the CPU couldn't feed instructions to the GPU fast enough. That's why I suggest waiting on the entire system upgrade.

[A_goat]

It actually won't be a really good increase. The FX series of CPU's don't take well to having an overpowered GPU when combined with them. My roommate's old system had an FX-6300 with a 1070 and it chugged on a lot of GPU intensive games because the CPU couldn't feed instructions to the GPU fast enough. That's why I suggest waiting on the entire system upgrade.

Yes, the CPU will chug with the new GPU that is for sure.
But assuming he has the best r7 200 series out there, it still performs worse than a GTX 660. Right now his limiting factor is the GPU, if you upgrade the GPU, he will absolutely see an increase of FPS in demanding games and increase in graphical detail.
Further, no harm piecing a build together in increments. Doing it in pieces allows you to hunt the sales, he'd be able to utilize the holiday deals right now for GPUs... 1060s are less than $200 atm for example.

[KaosC57]

Yes, the CPU will chug with the new GPU that is for sure.
But assuming he has the best r7 200 series out there, it still performs worse than a GTX 660. Right now his limiting factor is the GPU, if you upgrade the GPU, he will absolutely see an increase of FPS in demanding games and increase in graphical detail.
Further, no harm piecing a build together in increments. Doing it in pieces allows you to hunt the sales, he'd be able to utilize the holiday deals right now for GPUs... 1060s are less than $200 atm for example.

That's actually false on the GPU performance. AMD GPUs are outperforming Nvidia GPUs of the same generation. The 660 is a really bad card in today's time. But a R9 290 or 290x will still kick ass and punch with the 980 and 980ti.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[A_goat]

That's actually false on the GPU performance. AMD GPUs are outperforming Nvidia GPUs of the same generation. The 660 is a really bad card in today's time. But a R9 290 or 290x will still kick ass and punch with the 980 and 980ti.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

R7 200 series is much much worse than the R9 200 series.
In his original post he said r7 series, not r9. No worries :P

[KaosC57]

R7 200 series is much much worse than the R9 200 series.
In his original post he said r7 series, not r9. No worries :P

Oh, damn I feel stupid now. But, still I think that the R7 260 would do better than a 660... Can't back that up though.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[A_goat]

Oh, damn I feel stupid now. But, still I think that the R7 260 would do better than a 660... Can't back that up though.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Its alright, honest mistake.
The r7 265 which is the best r7 200 series, performs about evenly with the 660, only 4% difference in performance they're practically the same card. But again this is assuming he has the absolute best r7 200 series out there, if god forbid he has an r7 250... the 660 would be nearly 150% stronger. Regardless of what he actually has though, coming from any r7 200 series to a gtx 1050 ti and above would be a night and day difference for sure even with that CPU bottleneck.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare...265/2162vs3296

[AOD_Valigar]

This is what my brother got

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bRbr3F