EXTREME Budget Build Motherboard/CPU Upgrade Question

[popo6484]

So, I built a gaming pc with an old Dell Optiplex 990 MiniTower. It's rockin' an i5-2400 CPU with a new 400W PSU, 8GB RAM, 500 GB SSD, and Rx560 graphics card.

The thing runs great most of the time. It plays many simpler games (Ex. Rocket League) at 50-60 FPS. Only one issue, any game with plenty of shaders the CPU struggles limiting my frame rate. On top of that, my CPU gets really hot (80 Celsius) during those gaming sessions (Ex. No man's sky and The Forest).

SO, clearly I have an issue with those temperatures. I plan on replacing my CPU cooler with a higher RPM fan since the standard cooler probably wasn't meant to support it's current load.

IF I bought an i7-3rd generation processor (same socket type as I5-2400 CPU) would my motherboard limit the performance of the processor? Can anything else limit my performance of the CPU?

Would my performance increase significantly? Online benchmarks say that my processor would have about a 50% increase in performance.

Would upgrading the CPU help the temperature problem since it won't be as stressed?

That's all! Thank you so much for reading and/or helping out!

 

[derekullo]

The i5-2400 is a 95 watt tdp chip.
https://ark.intel.com/products/52207/Intel-Core-i5-2400-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3-40-GHz-

The i7-3770k is a 77 watt tdp chip.
https://ark.intel.com/products/65523/Intel-Core-i7-3770K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3-90-GHz-

The i7-3770 is a more powerful chip that uses less power.

The biggest limiter of a processor's performance is heat.

The cooler you can get the cpu the longer it will run at its highest clock speed, 3.9Ghz for the i7-3770k.

Upgrading to the i7-3770k would help with the temperature problem because it uses less power than the i5 at stock frequencies.

Of course if you overclocked the i7-3770k you could exceed the 95 watt tdp of the i5-2400.

The i7-3770k is 30% to 50% faster than the i5-2400 according to

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-3770K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2400/1317vs803


You mentioned you were on a budget, but do make sure you are willing to spend money on 6+ year old setup.

The newer cpus are able to run cooler and faster.

AMD Ryzen would be a good alternative if you could save up for it.

You could still use your PSU, SSD and graphics card.