PC Upgrade for college bound son

[gwaed]

It's funny I actually asked about doing an upgrade on this system almost 3 years ago. Now I'm back asking again. Budget is say 400 bucks.

I am thinking about getting him a chromebook just for class and paper/note taking and letting him take the pc for his dorm room. He plays Arma 3 and Rust, those are probably the most demanding games he plays. The PC still chugs along but it is old.

Thinking it really needs a new case (current one is broken and has bad airflow) and a GPU upgrade and maybe something else I am not thinking of.

Current specs:

I7-950 on stoc cooler
8 GB memory
GTX 570 GPU
1000 watt PSU
MSI x58 Pro motherboard
1 TB harddrive
Win 10 home

Thanks for you help!

Thanks

 

[greens]

I would think that you could put something like a GTX 1060 6GB in there and be very happy.

I would think that a GTX 1070 would be a bit too much for the CPU.

an SSD would improve performance greatly.

The case might not be set up for airflow, but unless the temps are bad it is probably fine. If it is broken or whatever than for sure but, slapping a GPU into it and calling it a day is a lot easier than a mobo transplant.

 

[SniiKz]

You, are a bad-ass dad.

 

[gwaed]

You, are a bad-ass dad.

I bombed out of college twice, I want to make sure he doesn't miss anything from home that would jeopardize his staying there.

 

[gwaed]

I would think that you could put something like a GTX 1060 6GB in there and be very happy.

I would think that a GTX 1070 would be a bit too much for the CPU.

an SSD would improve performance greatly.

The case might not be set up for airflow, but unless the temps are bad it is probably fine. If it is broken or whatever than for sure but, slapping a GPU into it and calling it a day is a lot easier than a mobo transplant.

I will look into the 1060. There won't be any issues with the old cpu bottlenecking it?

 

[azaran]

Going with a SATA SSD will help general usability pretty well. That board only has SATA II on it, so you wont get the full speed of the SSD, but it'll still be heads and shoulders faster than any HDD.

A new GPU isn't a bad idea at all, but any game that's is CPU bound is going to start bottle necking. Anything higher than a 1060, is a bit of a waste unless your son is going to rebuild to a current gen system and 1440 monitor sometime soon.

The fact that you have 8GB of RAM on a tri channel system is a bit odd. I'm guessing you're only running 2 sticks in there? Bumping the ram up to take advantage of the tri channel system may give you a small performance increase. Plus some new games are coming out with 16GB as the recommended amount. That board will take up to DDR3 1600, so upgrading it should be fairly cheap.

As for the case, the board is standard ATX size, so really it comes down to how fancy a case you want to go with. There are a TON of models to choose from so, any specifics you might want would helop narrow down the choices. You can go as cheap as $30 but the case quality is going to be crap. If he doesn't need an optical drive, the Nzxt S340 is a good looking case, good construction, and good airflow and runs about $60
https://www.nzxt.com/product-overview/s340

 

[logainofhades]

I would consider waiting an seeing what the lower end Ryzen chips bring to the table performance wise.

 

[gwaed]

Going with a SATA SSD will help general usability pretty well. That board only has SATA II on it, so you wont get the full speed of the SSD, but it'll still be heads and shoulders faster than any HDD.

A new GPU isn't a bad idea at all, but any game that's is CPU bound is going to start bottle necking. Anything higher than a 1060, is a bit of a waste unless your son is going to rebuild to a current gen system and 1440 monitor sometime soon.

The fact that you have 8GB of RAM on a tri channel system is a bit odd. I'm guessing you're only running 2 sticks in there? Bumping the ram up to take advantage of the tri channel system may give you a small performance increase. Plus some new games are coming out with 16GB as the recommended amount. That board will take up to DDR3 1600, so upgrading it should be fairly cheap.

As for the case, the board is standard ATX size, so really it comes down to how fancy a case you want to go with. There are a TON of models to choose from so, any specifics you might want would helop narrow down the choices. You can go as cheap as $30 but the case quality is going to be crap. If he doesn't need an optical drive, the Nzxt S340 is a good looking case, good construction, and good airflow and runs about $60
https://www.nzxt.com/product-overview/s340

I never even gave a second thought to the triple channel memory. Another stick of memory sounds like a logical idea. I like it.

 

[azaran]

I would consider waiting an seeing what the lower end Ryzen chips bring to the table performance wise.

Have the prices for Ryzen been announced yet? With a $400 budget, I'd imagine he'd be hard pressed to do a CPU,MOBO, RAM, and case upgrade.

 

[gwaed]

I would consider waiting an seeing what the lower end Ryzen chips bring to the table performance wise.

Yeah, I am waiting on those benchmarks. I may build myself one. I would rather have him go off to school with something not so new and shiny, just in case something happens to it.

 

[azaran]

Going with a SATA SSD will help general usability pretty well. That board only has SATA II on it, so you wont get the full speed of the SSD, but it'll still be heads and shoulders faster than any HDD.

A new GPU isn't a bad idea at all, but any game that's is CPU bound is going to start bottle necking. Anything higher than a 1060, is a bit of a waste unless your son is going to rebuild to a current gen system and 1440 monitor sometime soon.

The fact that you have 8GB of RAM on a tri channel system is a bit odd. I'm guessing you're only running 2 sticks in there? Bumping the ram up to take advantage of the tri channel system may give you a small performance increase. Plus some new games are coming out with 16GB as the recommended amount. That board will take up to DDR3 1600, so upgrading it should be fairly cheap.

As for the case, the board is standard ATX size, so really it comes down to how fancy a case you want to go with. There are a TON of models to choose from so, any specifics you might want would helop narrow down the choices. You can go as cheap as $30 but the case quality is going to be crap. If he doesn't need an optical drive, the Nzxt S340 is a good looking case, good construction, and good airflow and runs about $60
https://www.nzxt.com/product-overview/s340

I never even gave a second thought to the triple channel memory. Another stick of memory sounds like a logical idea. I like it.

A full swapout to a triple memory kit would be best practice so you don't run in to compatibility issues with the RAM. However if you only go with one stick, make sure it matches up to the same manufacture, cas and frequency as the existing RAM. That board supports up to 24GB of RAM so you have plenty of headroom for upgrading.

 

[logainofhades]

I would consider waiting an seeing what the lower end Ryzen chips bring to the table performance wise.

Have the prices for Ryzen been announced yet? With a $400 budget, I'd imagine he'd be hard pressed to do a CPU,MOBO, RAM, and case upgrade.

https://www.techpowerup.com/230609/amd-ryzen-xfr-frequencies-revealed

 

[azaran]

I would consider waiting an seeing what the lower end Ryzen chips bring to the table performance wise.

Have the prices for Ryzen been announced yet? With a $400 budget, I'd imagine he'd be hard pressed to do a CPU,MOBO, RAM, and case upgrade.

https://www.techpowerup.com/230609/amd-ryzen-xfr-frequencies-revealed

Pricing looks pretty reasonable actually. I'm excited to see if this will finally change up the stagnation when they launch.