[SOLVED] Help with a PC upgrade

[Lazari]

Hello everyone,

I'm totally a newbie when it comes to build a gaming PC, so I'd like to get some help with that.
Today I have this:
CPU: Core i3-6100 3.7GHz 3MB LGA 1151 INTEL
GPU: GTX950 2GB DDR5 128BIT
MOTHERBOARD: LGA1151 GA-B150M-GAMING 3 DDR3 32Gb GIGABYTE
RAM: DDR3 8GB 1866MHZ HYPERX
P. SUPPLY: 500W 100-W1-0500-KR 80Plus EVGA

It was a REALLY budget PC 3 years ago, and now it's becoming hard to run modern games.
Since I don't have much money to spend, my intention is to spend as little as I can again.
I'm planning to buy a GTX 1660 6GB. I don't want to run games at 4k 60 fps, I just want a PC that can give me a solid 120 fps at a resolution between 720p-1080p in competitive shooter games (which I also do not want run at high visual quality). Then, in order to implement this new GPU, the questions are:
Is there anything that I can save from this setup? (I was thinking that maybe the motherboard, RAM and the power supply)
What components need a change?
and what is the cheapest I can get to achieve the objective listed above?

I'd love to get some help in this, I'm really lost.
Thank you very much for your time!

 

[4745454b]

Budget? Location?

You can keep your CPU and what not. They aren't great for gaming but it should still get the job done. Just don't try streaming at the same time. The first thing I'd change is the PSU. If you are putting more power demanding parts in the PC you need a PSU that can handle that. A 550W Focus gold or any other similar PSU will do this. Next thing you need is the bigger GPU. The 1660TI, 1060, etc should all be considered. I don't know which is the best deal right now. Lastly I'd look for another 8GB stick of ram. DDR3 is probably getting harder to find so you might not be able to find that exact stick. You might need to get a 2x8GB stick if you can't find the stick to match to it.

 

[cryoburner]

The existing PSU would probably be alright for a GTX 1660. The 120-130 watts drawn by a 1660, 1660 SUPER or 1660 Ti under load isn't all that much higher than the 90 watt TDP of a GTX 950 after all. Nvidia recommends at least a 450 watt PSU for these cards, and they aren't counting on it being a high-quality unit when making that recommendation. And the rest of the system isn't likely to be drawing much power with only a dual-core i3. All the components in this system including a 1660 probably wouldn't ever draw more than around 250 watts from the PSU under load.

While you mentioned the 1660, you might also want to consider the recently released 1660 SUPER, which uses faster GDDR6 memory that makes it around 10-15% faster than the standard version at a similar price. The 1660 Ti is a little faster still, but generally priced higher.

Depending on how much you are willing to spend, it might also be worth doing more substantial upgrades, like to a higher core-count processor, but an i3-6100 would likely still get along okay in many "competitive shooter games". That, of course, can vary from one game to the next though. Some titles, like Battlefield V, will be too much for stable performance on a 2-core, 4-thread processor. You would probably be looking at close to a few hundred dollars more to update the CPU, motherboard and RAM to something significantly better though. If you don't want to spend much, it might be worth trying the graphics upgrade with your existing hardware first, and seeing whether that provides adequate performance for the games you currently play, which might allow you to hold off on other upgrades until a later time.

It's also probably worth asking what monitor you have. You mention wanting 120 fps in certain games, but if your current monitor only runs at 60Hz, it will only be able to update the image 60 times per second. Higher frame rates can still provide a reduction to input latency, but a high refresh rate screen (like 144Hz) will actually be able to display those additional frames, which can help make aiming smoother. There are a number of 144Hz 1080p adaptive sync displays priced below $200 now, so that might be another upgrade worth considering, if you don't have one already.

 

[4745454b]

If you need more CPU speed you could just buy a new CPU. An i5 or i7 from the 6xxx or 7xxx gen should work in your board. If moving to the 7 series make sure you update your bios first. But given your system I'm not sure spending money on the board and CPU is worth it.

 

[Lazari]

Thanks for the help guys, it solved a lot of my questions.
I didn't specify the budget beacuse I'm from Brazil and the prices here are very different, but what is cheaper there is cheaper here too (probably). I asked in a foreigner forum just to get a different view (I posted this in a few forums).
But thank you very much for the help!