[SOLVED] Is it time to upgrade? What should I do? Need help

Mar 20, 2018
6
0
10
So some time ago (3 years) I posted here when I built my first rig, that thread, along with a part list, can be found here. Mostly everything is the same on it, so I wouldn't be surprised if it needed to be upgraded. My question is what should be upgraded first?

For a bit more detail, this pc has slowed down drastically in the past year or so. To the point where i cant stream anymore or play even lighter gfx games like Fortnite without skipping and freezing. I plan on getting back into streaming and need this to be able to run at least a majority games out right now smoothly while utilizing an HD60 Pro I plan on installing soon swell to stream again. Any ideas/solutions as to how I can go about upgrading/speeding up the system?

My first thought was that its the graphics card, but its slow even opening up browsers and i cant imagine the gpu would have issues running simple games like even fortnite. My next thought is that it might be the ram but i'm not sure replacing them would do the trick. You all know alot more about this than me so please, let me know what you think.

Parts list for those of you who don't want to click the link:
CPU- Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core
Motherboard- ASRock Z97 Extreme3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory- G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage- Western Di​gital 3TB ​HDD
GPU- XFX Radeon R9 270X 2GB Double Dissipation Video Card
 
Solution
To clarify, you'd be upgrading from an i5 4460 to an i7 4790k with an overclock. The i7 is necessary to assist with the encoding for streaming. Not only will you be going from an i5 to an i7, the overclock will make the processor upgrade count to allow for more processing overhead. It's really not hard to do with an adequate air cooler. Overclocking will give you a significant performance increase when making the jump/upgrade, and that's what your motherboard was designed for.
Mar 20, 2018
6
0
10


Only pc games i'd be streaming would be something along the line of fort, rust, RL and CS:GO. The rest would be played on console and streamed through pc. Any other title played would be off stream. Is an overclock absolutely necessary for this? or would i be able to get by with just a ram upgrade?
 
To clarify, you'd be upgrading from an i5 4460 to an i7 4790k with an overclock. The i7 is necessary to assist with the encoding for streaming. Not only will you be going from an i5 to an i7, the overclock will make the processor upgrade count to allow for more processing overhead. It's really not hard to do with an adequate air cooler. Overclocking will give you a significant performance increase when making the jump/upgrade, and that's what your motherboard was designed for.
 
Solution
Mar 20, 2018
6
0
10


Prior to the computer slowing down I was able to stream all of these games fine with my current set up (other than fortnite, never tried that previously) , thats why i'm curious if the CPU upgrade truly is necessary. I plan on a whole new build next year anyway so as of now this is just an ends meet type deal. I'd rather spend as little as possible if i'm being honest, as frugal as it sounds.
 

No that totally makes sense. Disregard this post if you are planning to build then. You could try backing up your data and formatting an reloading the operating system to see if a clean slate improves performance. Windows 10 pushed out a lot of update rollups, one of which severely degraded gaming performance, so that could be the cause as well.