Most Worthwhile Upgrade Mid Range Gaming PC

[sglowats]

I built my gaming PC almost two years ago, and it seems to handle most things I throw at it at 1080p 60fps at very high to max settings. Since then, I've upgraded the GPU from an EVGA GTX 970 to my current EVGA GTX 1070 SC, plus the addition of two Samsung Curved 27" monitors. The CPU is an Intel Core i5-6600 Skylake on an ASUS H170 Pro Gaming motherboard with stock cooling. There are maybe a few games where I notice a minor dip in performance, and I'm led to believe it's the CPU creating a bottleneck on more CPU-intensive games.

On a side note, I ran into performance issues about 8 months ago where games normally running at 60fps were playing at about 10fps. I ended up replacing the GPU with a brand new one and a more powerful PSU, but it didn't fix it. I switched to integrated graphics momentarily, and one game actually ran better. I left it unplugged for about a week and it came back to life, and I haven't had issues since. I'm left to conclude the issue is related to the motherboard, but ASUS support was a nightmare to work with and didn't provide a solution. Either that or there are ghosts in the machine (just kidding).

What would my best option be to get better performance? I'm planning on staying at 1080p. And if someone recommends upgrading the CPU and motherboard, what are the best options from both AMD and Intel? I also might consider some YouTube content creation in the future.

Specs:

Intel Core i5-6600 Skylake CPU w/ stock cooling
Corsair SPEC-02 Mid Size Tower
ASUS H170 Pro Gaming motherboard
120GB Kingston HyperX SSD
3TB Seagate 7200RPM HDD
EVGA GTX 1070 SC
24GB DDR4 RAM (2133 speed?)
Windows 10 Professional OS

Thanks in advance!

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Go get a 7700k for a good deal. Just update the bios before you do.

 

[sglowats]

Go get a 7700k for a good deal. Just update the bios before you do.

Thanks for your feedback.
I considered upgrading to a Kaby Lake CPU, but I know Intel just released their line of 8th gen Coffee Lake CPUs. I also know the chipset on my motherboard doesn't support features including overclocking the CPU. There are other factors I have to consider as well, such as if I overclock the CPU, will I need to consider an different cooling option? I guess what I'm saying is I'm more likely to upgrade both my CPU and motherboard to gain access to those features. That being said, do you know if AMD offers a CPU and motherboard solution with similar gains in performance?

 

[FD2Raptor]

The AMD solution to if you want to move in that direction start from a Ryzen 5 1600 to a Ryzen 7 1700 for best value; and a B350 MB if you don't need a lot of drives (HDD/SSD/NVMe) or a X370 board if you do.

Both Ryzen CPUs come with a decent cooler on their own, but if you're looking to push it to the furthest possible, a Scythe Fuma/Mugen 5 (SCFM-1100 or SCMG-5100; both available on Amazon if you're in the US) will come supporting the AM4 socket out of the box, and you won't need to call or email anyone for them to send you the bracket to mount the cooler to the AM4 socket.


Although you're recommended to redo your Windows installation when switching from Intel to AMD platform to avoid potential bugs.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Go get a 7700k for a good deal. Just update the bios before you do.

Thanks for your feedback.
I considered upgrading to a Kaby Lake CPU, but I know Intel just released their line of 8th gen Coffee Lake CPUs. I also know the chipset on my motherboard doesn't support features including overclocking the CPU. There are other factors I have to consider as well, such as if I overclock the CPU, will I need to consider an different cooling option? I guess what I'm saying is I'm more likely to upgrade both my CPU and motherboard to gain access to those features. That being said, do you know if AMD offers a CPU and motherboard solution with similar gains in performance?

Sorry, I thought you had a "Z" board, I must have missed the "H".

Here is the deal, you have a really good CPU as it is. Upgrading to a new platform (AM4 or Z370) will not give you a boost in most games. You will only see a big performance increase in multithreaded applications. There are only a few games that scale past 8 threads.

Upgrading to a 6700/7700/8700 will only give you more fps in a few games. So since the upgrade wont help you in a bunch of games, I would go the cheapest route. There is not a big difference in gaming performance in a 6700 to a 8700, but there is a larger cost associated to it because a 6700/7700 is cheaper than a 8700 and you don't need another motherboard.

If you want to overclock and have room in your budget, then go for the Z370 and a 8600k/8700k. The are great CPUs. Just don't expect a huge jump in performance in most games.

 

[JoeMomma]

I built my gaming PC almost two years ago, and it seems to handle most things I throw at it at 1080p 60fps at very high to max settings. There are maybe a few games where I notice a minor dip in performance, and I'm led to believe it's the CPU creating a bottleneck on more CPU-intensive games.

On a side note, I ran into performance issues about 8 months ago where games normally running at 60fps were playing at about 10fps. Either that or there are ghosts in the machine (just kidding).

What would my best option be to get better performance?
Thanks in advance!

I agree with others that upgrading to an i7 would help content creation, but gaming... not so much.

My question is, How full is your SSD?
A full SSD may be bottle necking your swap file. 120GB is very minimal for a Windows SSD. I try to set my Swap File to be twice what my RAM is. You may not need that much. Under a test load my PC uses 8 (of 16)GB RAM and 14 (of 32)GB Swap File.

 

[sglowats]

I built my gaming PC almost two years ago, and it seems to handle most things I throw at it at 1080p 60fps at very high to max settings. There are maybe a few games where I notice a minor dip in performance, and I'm led to believe it's the CPU creating a bottleneck on more CPU-intensive games.

On a side note, I ran into performance issues about 8 months ago where games normally running at 60fps were playing at about 10fps. Either that or there are ghosts in the machine (just kidding).

What would my best option be to get better performance?
Thanks in advance!

I agree with others that upgrading to an i7 would help content creation, but gaming... not so much.

My question is, How full is your SSD?
A full SSD may be bottle necking your swap file. 120GB is very minimal for a Windows SSD. I try to set my Swap File to be twice what my RAM is. You may not need that much. Under a test load my PC uses 8 (of 16)GB RAM and 14 (of 32)GB Swap File.

The SSD is only about half full; I don't keep my games installed on there. I only really keep programs like Office, anti-virus, and game clients like Steam and Uplay installed. I'll look at the swap file and see what kind of impact adjusting the size has on my performance. Does the swap size affect games if they aren't installed on the SSD?

 

[JoeMomma]

Does the swap size affect games if they aren't installed on the SSD?

Yes.
When Windows no longer needs memory at the moment but will need it again soon it dumps to the swap file.
So when a game runs, the level you are on is in RAM, but the last level and other stuff is in the swap file.
When running a game my swap is using about twice as much as my RAM.
Windows will slow down if you run out of memory and it has to use the swap file.

The Swap File is using a Disk as slow RAM as opposed to using RAM as a fast Disk.
A reverse RAM Disk.