Prioritization for upgrades on 5 year old gaming PC

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dogfog

dogfog

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I'm looking to upgrade my gaming computer, mostly because it's 5 years old and Fallout 4 loads very slowly and sometimes lags or hangs. Ideally I'd reuse as much as I can, but I'm willing to spend to upgrade more parts if that's the best course of action. I'm hoping basics like the case, power supply, and memory can be reused without much sacrifice. I think the motherboard would need to be upgraded in order to upgrade the CPU. I'm open to a new graphics card or to SLI if that's a viable option. Also, if an SSD would make a big difference (as load times are one of my issues) I'm definitely open to that.

Approximate Purchase Date: this week or soon thereafter
System Usage from Most to Least Important: gaming, serving media over LAN/Plex, surfing the internet
Buying a Monitor: no

Parts to Upgrade: Graphics card, possibly CPU/motherboard
Preferred Websites for Parts: Newegg
Location: SF Bay Area, California
Parts preferences: preference for Intel and Nvidia, although not a dealbreaker
Overclocking: maybe
SLI or Corssfire: maybe
Monitor Resolution: 1920x1200
Reason for upgrade: starting to see slow performance in gaming, especially Fallout 4 (load times, occasional hangs)

Current Build:
Case: COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower
Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU: Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield Quad-Core 2.8 GHz
Graphic Card: GIGABYTE GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) DirectX 11 GV-N450-1GI 1GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Power Supply: CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL
Hard Drive: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 ST1000DM005/HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
 
Solution
CRITICALThinker
an SSD and graphics upgrade would probably give you the most notable perf increase, and a newer platform for the cpu would be a secondary thought, but from what I know they can still hold their own in current titles. if it fits in your budget an i5-6600k on a z170 board, of an i5-4670k on a z97 board would be a significant upgrade. Otherwise a 240+GB(as preference for size) and a GTX 960 or 970 will greatly increase your performance
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CRITICALThinker

CRITICALThinker

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an SSD and graphics upgrade would probably give you the most notable perf increase, and a newer platform for the cpu would be a secondary thought, but from what I know they can still hold their own in current titles. if it fits in your budget an i5-6600k on a z170 board, of an i5-4670k on a z97 board would be a significant upgrade. Otherwise a 240+GB(as preference for size) and a GTX 960 or 970 will greatly increase your performance
 
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dogfog

dogfog

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If I can see a decent improvement without upgrading the motherboard and CPU, that would definitely be good news! For an SSD, do you think it's worth having a larger one (e.g., 1 TB) and just putting everything on it, or is it enough to have a smaller one (e.g., 256 GB) and just have the OS and whatever game(s) I'm playing most installed there, with everything else still on the old hard drive?
 
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Barty1884

Barty1884

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Apr 16, 2015
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Your CPU is marginally about the minimum requirements, so an upgrade there would be beneficial.
Either the i5-6600k/Z170 or i5-4690k/Z97 suggestions would show huge, huge improvements for you.
As much as your existing CPU can 'hold on' in some titles, it's simply too far behind the technology to give anything above mediocre in CPU intensive games - such as Fallout 4.

I agree with the comments regarding an SSD & GPU upgrade.
A suggestion, incase you do want to go the CPU/Mobo/GPU/SSD route - a GTX 750ti 2GB would be more 'budget friendly' whilst still giving you massive improvements - and at $120 is one of the cheaper upgrades: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500327&cm_re=gtx_750ti-_-14-500-327-_-Product
This would let you use some money towards a CPU/Motherboard.....and you could SLI it in future.

As far as SSD - Samsung is pretty much king there. A 250GB is $78 right now.
Smaller is fine. OS primarily, and some frequently used programs. Everything else on an HDD.
 
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dogfog

dogfog

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I don't have a firm budget, but if I can keep it under $500 or so that would be nice. Maybe that's a stretch. I guess right now I'm thinking something like:
Motherboard: ASUS Z170-P D3 LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 6M Skylake Quad-Core 3.3 GHz LGA 1151 65W BX80662I56600 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 530
Graphics:
MSI GeForce GTX 950 DirectX 12 GTX 950 2GD5T OC 2GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support ATX ARMOR 2X
SSD: SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 250GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-75E250B/AM

That comes to $583 before tax or anything.

That should all still work with my existing case, power supply, and memory, right? I guess I'd need a new Windows key as well if I'm upgrading the motherboard and CPU...

Or, I might just go for the GPU and SSD for now and see how that goes, then if it's not enough I can do the CPU and motherboard.
 
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xShadow6208

xShadow6208

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Sep 19, 2015
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The i5 6600 is not overclockable keep that in mind. Processors ending with a "K" will be overclockable.
 
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L

lodders

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IMHO, for a proper gaming machine, you want at GTX960 minimum.
Hardcore gamers would go for a 970, or even a 980.

The samsung evo will allow all programs to open the instant you click the mouse, so that's well worth having.

You need ddr4 memory for a skylake cpu

If you are limited on budget, get a haswell motherboard and CPU like mine - a bit cheaper than Skylake with slightly less performance, and you can re use your old memory
 
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CRITICALThinker

CRITICALThinker

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I spent some time looking at the board listed, it can run on DDR3, and by some trickery it seems to be fine with even high voltage (1.65V) DDR3. the OP's memory is not on the QVL(http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/Z170-P-D3/Z170-P_D3_DRAM_QVL.pdf) but looking at other sticks, it should work. Correct me if I am wrong.

 
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dogfog

dogfog

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Thank you all for your thoughts and advice! I do think I'm leaning toward the best graphics card I can do (970) and an SSD. Then when I feel like going in on a new motherboard/CPU/memory I can, and keep the GPU and SSD.
 
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frapport

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The other thing is that in the next year you can watch the newer i-5's and motherboards get cost reduced
and a whole ecosystem come into being like there is for the 1150's or you can get discounted 4690K's
and 4790K's and their boards.
 
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