Advice on Upgrades to Old Gaming Tower (€1000-1500 Budget)

[Nick0788]

Hi Guys! It has been a while since I last upgraded my gaming tower and was wanting some advice. Had a good experience with your help last time I was looking to upgrade so I am back . I have copied and pasted the suggested template

Approximate Purchase Date: Within the next month

Budget Range: €1000-1500 total Budget (I live in Vienna)

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, Office applications (word, excel etc), Photoshop ability, Browsing the internet, movies

Are you buying a monitor: Not unless it is highly recommended currently have a 21inch 1080p monitor which suits me fine

Parts to Upgrade: Potentially all of them my current system build is as follows:

1) EVGA 1000W Gold Power Supply - 5 years old http://

2) P8P67 Pro Asus MotherBoard - 7 years old http://

3) Gigabyte GTX 780 - 5 years old http://

4) ThermalTake Armour MX Case - 10 years old http://

5) WD SATA 1TB HD - 5 years old http://

6) Samsung 128 GB SSD - 5 years old (Broken) http://

7) 2x Kingston Hyperx DDR3 4GB RAM - 7 years old http://

Do you need to buy OS: Yes

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: The one making up the majority of links above (geizhals.at) is an Austrian price comparison website for parts. I am happy for other recommendations however

Location: City, State/Region, Country - Vienna, Austria, Europe

Parts Preferences: I am not too fussed but I have always had intel CPUs and Nvidia graphics cards and have always been happy with them

Overclocking: Probably not as I have no experience in doing this

SLI or Crossfire: Probably not, unless recommended

Your Monitor Resolution: as mentioned above 1080p 21inch - not really thinking of upgrading but would think about moving to 4K monitor in the future if this build could support it.

Additional Comments: Nothing specific the quiter it runs the better as the PC will sit in my bedroom so will stop my partner complaining during any late night gaming sessions, but to be honest there are a rarity nowadays. Overall if possible I would like something that will play the latest graphic intensive games at high settings for the next few years.

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: I recently moved from London to Vienna for work. While dedusting my PC I accidentally snapped the port for the SATA cable on my SSD.... Additionally I had noticed my PC was slowing down and most new games I had to shift to Medium or Low settings.

Include a list of any parts you have already selected with descriptively labeled links for parts. Please do not post only links. - I haven't really looked to be honest but I liked the overall specs of the Cougar i7-7700K-1080 built by Need4speeds on this website http://, I'd also like to know if any of my current hardware is reusable (I have been thinking I can at least keep the PSU to keep costs down).

Thanks again guys for reading this and for any of your suggestions. I really Appreciate it.

BW
Nick

 

[spdragoo]

OK, if I'm understanding you right, it's the SATA port on the SSD itself that broke, not the one on your motherboard. If that's, then you might be able to get by with just some parts upgrades. A nice replacement SSD would fit the bill, & you can take the time to also upgrade to 8GB of DDR3 (assuming you install a 64-bit version of Windows) & get a compatible Ivy Bridge CPU (i.e. the i3-3770 works with your motherboard, provided you update the BIOS to version 3207). That will give you a good replacement SSD, an improved CPU, & more RAM, which should help with your slowdowns. That gives you the following:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-3770 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (€267.29 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Kingston - HyperX FURY 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (€77.59 @ Alza)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (€81.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €426.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-19 18:56 CET+0100

If you truly want to upgrade to something newer, I would recommend against the Kaby Lake CPU, mainly because you'd then be starting off with a "dead-end" system. A better option would be to go with a Coffee Lake system; since they bumped up the cores on all of the CPUs, you could save a bit & get the i5-8400 (6C/6T). You're still going to spend about 125-130 more euros, however, than with simply upgrading your current system:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor (€167.90 @ Caseking)
Motherboard: MSI - Z370 GAMING PLUS ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€123.03 @ Mindfactory)
Memory: Kingston - HyperX Fury 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (€185.89 @ Alternate)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (€81.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €558.81
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-19 19:00 CET+0100

Finally, on your GPU...because of the current price issues ("gouging") with GPUs, & that your GTX 780 is going to perform about on par with the newer GTX 1060 or AMD'x RX 580 line (basically the sweet spot for 1080p gaming), & I don't see anything about your current 1080p monitor having a high refresh rate, I don't think there's much in you spending another 300 euros just for a "new" GPU that won't really improve your performance (maybe a 10% gain, tops). While I realize that still puts you well within your budget, the point is that unless you're going to also replace your monitor, it's going to be a waste of your cash (lots of money spent for little to no gain). You'd almost certainly get more mileage from your money if you wanted to adjust either of the build suggestions -- increased RAM, larger SSD, additional HDDs for storage, etc.

 

[Nick0788]

Awesome!

Thank you very much for your recommendations. Yes your right the SATA port on the SSD broke not the one on the MB

If I were to replace my monitor and get a 4K screen would you have a recommended GPU? It sounds quite tempting considering the two builds you gave me are well within my budget.

Thanks again for your detailed response.

Edit: Also my apologies I completely forgot to say my current CPU is a Intel i7 2600K at 3.4 Ghz that is 7 years old

 

[spdragoo]

For a 4K display, you'll want at least a GTX 1080, but more likely a GTX 1080TI. They're hideously expensive, though -- 800 euros for the 1080, more like 900+ for the 1080TI (https://de.pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#c=367,390&sort=price&page=1).

As for your current one...going to the i7-3770/3770K probably won't be much of a bump, but if you get 64-bit Windows I would bump your RAM up to 16GB (your board can handle 32GB), get the replacement SSD, & then you could easily afford the 1080/1080TI for your build. The nice thing about that? You can use nVidia's DSR mode to render your games at 1440p or even 4K, then the GPU downscales it to the 1080p resolution. It makes games look smoother (without having to enable some of the performance-eating AA features), but you'll be getting the onscreen FPS that a 1440p or 4K monitor will give you if you upgrade. And you might have the cash to go ahead & get the monitor now, too.

If you still want to go for the complete upgrade, you might still be able to afford the 1080 or 1080TI, but probably not a monitor right now. Again, though, you'd be in the perfect spot to use DSR with your current monitor.

 

[Nick0788]

Awesome.

Based on what you said I think Ill go for the:

1) GPU 1080ti upgrade
2) CPU upgrade with windows 64 bit
3) SSD
4) RAM upgrade

Which takes me to €1,459 and I guess I'll look into getting a 4k monitor in the next few months.

Thank you so much for your advice.

 

[spdragoo]

You're very welcome.