Upgrade or New Rig?

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Twiglet

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May 10, 2017
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Apologies in advance for what might be a long post!

Current system - bought about 3/4 years ago:
1080p monitor
(Chillblast Fusion - please don't kill me for previously buying a pre-built system)
i5-3570k 3.4ghz (oc to 4.3ghz)
ASUS P8Z77-V LX Motherboard
8gb 1600mhz DDR3 (2x4)
Palit GTX 660 2gb
1tb Seagate mechanical hard drive

I use this for occasional gaming playing titles like:
Total War: Warhammer (my current main addiction)
Payday 2
Civ 5
Cities Skylines
DoW 2 (and maybe 3, haven't decided yet)

I don't think any of the above are too taxing except TW:W which I'm having to run on low/medium settings otherwise it crashes.

I'd like to improve the visuals and performance I'm getting with Warhammer and also just improve general performance across all other games (not after Max Ultra settings on everything, would just like a bump up to some good quality visuals with large unit sizes etc.)

So, given the age of my current system, do I...

Upgrade? (Am thinking a Samsung 250gb Evo SSD & upgraded GPU)

or New System? (Would probably be looking around the £1000 mark in terms of budget so am guessing I'd be looking at i5-7600k & GTX 1060?)

I'd obviously prefer to keep costs down but given my out of date hardware, is it worth upgrading?

All help greatly appreciated! (Also, I'm in the UK so please post links to UK sites for parts / systems etc.)

Thanks
 
Solution
spdragoo
The CPU still has some good mileage in it. It's still ranked as a 1st-tier CPU, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of visible improvement by replacing the CPU/motherboard/RAM.

You would definitely benefit from a GPU upgrade, though. A nice GTX 1060 or RX 580 would provide plenty of improvement & give your system some better longevity. Installing an SSD like the Samsung 850 EVO would also help speed up your system boot & load times. You might also consider adding some additional RAM, although that's more of a "nice option to have" vs. "actual necessity" at this point.
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spdragoo

spdragoo

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The CPU still has some good mileage in it. It's still ranked as a 1st-tier CPU, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of visible improvement by replacing the CPU/motherboard/RAM.

You would definitely benefit from a GPU upgrade, though. A nice GTX 1060 or RX 580 would provide plenty of improvement & give your system some better longevity. Installing an SSD like the Samsung 850 EVO would also help speed up your system boot & load times. You might also consider adding some additional RAM, although that's more of a "nice option to have" vs. "actual necessity" at this point.
 
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Twiglet

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Thanks for this.
I've always had NVidia cards before but don't have a preference either way - of the two you've mentioned, what are my best options? Is there anything I'd need to be aware of with AMD cards?
 
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Zerk2012

Zerk2012

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Your processor should still be very good for those games (might overclock it up to the 4.6 area) but 100% for sure BUY THE VIDEO CARD FIRST BEFORE REBUILDING AND SEE IF YOU LIKE THE SINGLE CHANGE.
I would also consider upping the memory to 16GB.
This site is not 100% accurate but fairly close a GTX 1060 6GB card would be a very big upgrade.
http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-660-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1060-6GB/2162vs3639
 
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Twiglet

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Thanks for the advice so far.

Found the following cards - are they any good?

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/TrGj4D/msi-geforce-gtx-1060-6gb-6gb-gt-ocv1-video-card-geforce-gtx-1060-6gt-ocv1

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/7RKhP6/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-1060-6gb-windforce-oc-6g-video-card-gv-n1060wf2oc-6gd

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/sF648d/sapphire-radeon-rx-580-8gb-nitro-video-card-11265-01 (Bit confused by the power connections with this - it lists both 6 & 8 pin power connectors - does that mean I need both or have the choice?)

On the subject of RAM, I keep reading that 8gb is normally still enough for most gaming. Is that not the case as I've got DDR3 and it's slower?
 
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spdragoo

spdragoo

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They'd probably all be good choices. Since they're all fairly close in price, I would lean more towards the Sapphire RX 580, with the MSI GTX 1060 a close 2nd.

On the Sapphire, "6-pin & 8-pin" means that it has one 6-pin connector & one 8-pin connector (http://www.sapphiretech.com/productdetial.asp?pid=B66182B7-1EA6-42A9-8762-FCCE003B491A&lang=eng, 8GB model; http://www.sapphiretech.com/productdetial.asp?pid=B7276187-9E56-4181-B2F9-1DD4DBE9BB26&lang=eng, 4GB model).
 
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Twiglet

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Thanks all.

Think I'm leaning towards the GTX (just through familiarity as much as anything else).

Never actually upgraded anything in a PC before so once I've got my components I may be starting another thread with some idiot questions!
 
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Zerk2012

Zerk2012

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The GTX 1060 uses less power and has better performance.
 
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