Minor updates to current rig, suggestions welcome

d00mk1n

Hi everyone,

I have been running my current set up for just over 4 years & it has served me well! Maybe Call of Duty: Warzone crashes every now & then... but no big deal.
Mostly game at 1080p, with some games at 144Hz.

I know there is some really knowledgeable posters in here. I would love to get expert advice on what minor upgrades you make to get the most benefit.

I know a cheap Ryzen with more cores would be better than my 6600K but then we are looking at a new board too. I am open to that, but intersted what other ideas are out there!

My current setup:
Intel Core i5-6600K 3.9GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler

Asus Z170 Pro Gaming Intel Z170 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard

Crucial 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C16 2133MHz Quad Channel Kit

Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU II OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

NZXT Source 340 Midi-Tower Case

Super Flower Golden Green HX 350W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply

WD Blue 1TB 7200rpm SATA
256GB Kingston SSD
500GB M2 Crucial

Thanks

Overheal

A 3070 would more than double your GPU performance, so would a Radeon RX 6800, then, you could shop around to see what you can get for the socket you have - that's probably the Coffee Lake i7-8700

newegg.com/core-i7-8th-gen-intel-core-i7-8700/p/N82E16819117839

However that is not really that much of a performance gain: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8700-vs-Intel-Core-i5-6600K/3940vs3503 so I'd stick all your beans into a GPU upgrade, it's the most transferrable component anyway if you then decide its time to retire the mobo+CPU. Very not worth your while to do a drop-in upgrade for the socket.

You can get DDR4 RAM double those speeds for the cost of a night out but your real world performance improvement probably won't amount to tons, would only upgrade that along with a new CPU, something that is specced right for that CPU+Chipset on the QVL of the new Mobo.

minitrue

Pretty sure they can only go to an i7-7700K and that alone is still likely to cost nearly as much second hand (unless lucky) as a 2600, cheap board and 2*8GB.

The power supply is only 350W so it would need changing also for anything like an RTX 3070 or RX 6800.

BloodBath

Short term upgrade something like an RX 5700 or GTX 2060. Both are about the same power consumption as the 970 and won't be too heavily bottlenecked by the CPU.

If you want a better GPU than that you're gonna have to change most of the rest of the parts.

Homelander

Unfortunately you need a new board, it's unavoidable unless you are happy to spend €200 on an i7-7700 2nd hand when effectively an almost identical CPU is £95 new - Ryzen 3100.

I would not recommend just a GPU upgrade, for two reasons - a) You've mentioned Warzone and b) 144hz. In both these cases the 6600K is very limited, combine them and it's definitely time to move on.

People tend to fixate on average frames and use them as a reason why a CPU is still fine, while forgetting to look at minimum frames. Not only is 3600 capable of pushing much higher average frames, it also has radically improved minimum frames, which is crucial and bizarrely overlooked a lot. No-one enjoys stutters and drops in their games, especially not multi-player shooters!

Overheal's post above is a perfect example of why using user-benchmark sites to prove the viability of something are essentially useless. Firstly the 8700K doesn't work in your motherboard, but also, it's light years faster in games like Warzone and other new titles.

Many of those benchmark sits use radically out-dated metrics like gaming benchmarks based on titles from 2013 era, therefore the differences presented have zero basis in real-world applications.

So, even dropping in the i7-7700 would be a big upgrade in terms of performance, but again that's kinda wasted money, though it would be convenient.... but it's really only kicking the can down the road, in a year or two that will too start to show its age.

Your upgrade doesn't have to be expensive, people are forever spending high money on motherboards they don't need. A320M w/nvme (€50) + Ryzen 3600 (€180) + 16GB 3200Mhz (€70) would be a huge upgrade.

You would get back half that for a 6600K + Z170 + 16GB 2133mhz so it's a small outlay.

Graphics wise I would probably wait if buying mid-range, new cards due out over the next while that make buying something like a RTX2060 right now a bit rash. In two months there will be new cards probably 50% faster for the same price.

But if I had to, I agree something like a cheap Radeon 5700 is probably the way to go.

BloodBath

There's no 5700's available anyway and I agree the value is poor. You would want to be looking at the second hand market.

Just throwing it out there as an option for an incremental update. Performance will still be a lot better than the 970 but yes the CPU will bottleneck it especially in big open world games like warzone.

Hyzepher

Might be an option short term and would give a significant increase?

https://www.adverts.ie/22106689