[SOLVED] Need crucial advice for a potential upgrade or new PC in general

[Ghost Ptodigy]

Hey, so I'm wanting to upgrade my CPU and GPU but with using the existing motherboard (I cba rewiring everything again, did it twice)

I have a $300 budget each for a new CPU and GPU so $600 in total

Existing PC:

CPU: I5-6500
GPU: GTX 970
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151
Ram: 16GB

Link to build


I need some genuine advice as I'm literally only going to proceed based on whatever responses I get. Another thought that I had was, would it simply be better to buy a completely prebuilt PC instead rather than upgrading?

Thank you

Country: USA
Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Star Citizen, MMO's in general

 

[Ralston18]

The starting point is simply the games and applications you wish to play and run.

Most software lists hardware requirements in the form of "minimal", "recommended", and "best".

You do not want minimal and you do want as much "best" as you can afford. I.e. within your budget.

Then you need to think about "future proofing". In all likelihood the software's hardware demands will go up.

So you may need to spend even more now to get ahead in order to save more later.

Only you can decide the necessary trade-offs that are available and which ones you can accept.

 

[kevinburrow]

For most MMO's such as WOW you're probably ok with what you have. I'm not familiar with Star Citizen but it appears your CPU is what will let you down using the 'can I run it' tool here - https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/star-citizen-system-requirements

You'll be able to get by with your Mobo, GPU and RAM but actually you'd be able to get yourself a half decent system by just upgrading those parts within your $600 budget:


PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor | $172.34 @ Amazon
Motherboard | MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard | $114.99 @ Best Buy
Memory | Team T-FORCE DARK Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory | $67.98 @ Amazon
Video Card | MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card | $239.99 @ Newegg
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | $595.30
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-27 01:38 EDT-0400 |

You could even keep your current RAM and use the extra to get a 5600XT, but at 1080p I'm not sure it's necessary and the 3600 loves high frequency RAM.