Curious what my first/next upgrade should be?

[nmch55]

Hi All,

I'm (very) new here, and to PC Gaming. I grew up playing console (from the NES to the XBox One). I wanted to get into PC Gaming though so have a (what I believe is a) 'budget' build made to quickly get up and running and used to PC Gaming.

My PC was built by a 'friend of a friend of a friend' type of situation, and I can't really go to him for help. I actually found all my parts, and hope they are accurate, through 'system configuration', 'system information', etc...

My thought was that I'd get my original build, and then upgrade pieces here and there. (P.S. is this a flawed strategy?)

I built this to simply play games on - Overwatch, H1Z1, Rainbow Six, etc...

I'm about 3 weeks in (it's not a long time, I know), and have around $200-300 set aside for a possible upgrade. Please note, nothing is wrong and I don't feel the need to upgrade.

As I search the web, to try and educate myself (as I am VERY uneducated about this stuff), I keep seeing this site and the community seems very helpful so I figured I'd throw out my question in case anyone is kind enough to take the time.

My questions are:
1) Based on my build (http://imgur.com/2l5CSTw http://imgur.com/9oTpBw8), is there anything that you see NEEDS to be upgraded?

2) If nothing NEEDS, I assume monitor or graphics card should be first? Is it worth upgrading the GTX 770 to GTX 1060 or should I just wait and get the 1070 when/if I find a good deal?
- P.S., I know my monitor is only 60Hz. It was the last thing I needed, only had about $200 more and was impatient - mistake made, I know.

 

[Makentox]

Is that list of hardware that u already own? Or that u want to buy?
Please make it clear for me, cuz its a mess...

 

[nmch55]

Is that list of hardware that u already own? Or that u want to buy?
Please make it clear for me, cuz its a mess...

It's the hardware I already own, sorry if it's confusing.

 

[Makentox]

When did u build your current pc? Where are u from?
Well i would go for GPU in your case. Because it 1. will give you more performance boost for money! 2. if u go for CPU first u will have to buy a new motherboard unless u buy old generation CPU..

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137077&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=
Great deal, its cheaper than any gtx 1060 atm. Performance is around the same. Armor is very good budget model.

 

[clarkjd]

Most of that build is circa 2011, so almost 7 year old technology. Most people are looking to get a new system after 7 years, the old tech is just too expensive to justify updating when newer tech is so cheap, and performs better.

As Makentox said, in your case a video card would give you the most bang for the buck.

 

[Fulano5321]

I think it's best to watch your hardware load and upgrade whatever is maxing out. You'll save yourself a lot of money that way.

Watch your RAM usage in Task Manager (Extra RAM doesn't make things much faster)

I use GPU-Z to watch my GPU load. If your GPU is maxing out then you'd get more performance out of a GPU upgrade.

If your GPU isn't maxing out then the game is probably waiting on the CPU.

Checking your CPU's load is a bit trickier because programs use different numbers of cores. For example, a single thread program will max out a quad core at 25%. But if your GPU and RAM aren't maxing out, then in most cases the CPU is what needs upgraded.

For example, I like to play CPU heavy games, my budget GPU still doesn't get more than 50% usage in the games I play, so I upgraded to a newer i5 and it improved performance greatly.