I was looking for a used PC for my niece since right now she has an old Core2Duo laptop and can't run much of anything current. Some decent used ones out there, 3rd gen i5's... maybe update the video card later on. She's not a gamer but does play games and getting tired of Unreal Tournament. That said, she's not after some $2k gaming rig either.
Started to think, instead of buying her a used PC, upgrade mine and donate the parts to her.
Parts I'd upgrade are the motherboard, 2x8GB ram and a Xenon E3-1231v3 which I think would be on par with a 3rd gen i7.
If I went that route, I'd probably go i7-9700k, 2x8gb ram and a decent Asus motherboard (Asus fanboy).
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/4sJpJ8
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Xeon-E3-1231-v3-vs-Intel-Core-i7-9700K/m11040vs4030
Now, I'm not a gamer either. I do have a nice ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 DUAL-GTX1060-O6G 6GB which plays my games more than just fine. My main drive is an SSD for program installs, files are on an HDD. Boot is 11sec to desktop and ready to go.
Until this week I never really thought of upgrading because my system works just fine. Borderlands 1&2 are fine, BioShock, Doom... running max I never had problems. I see on the benchmarks that my CPU is rank 164th vs the i7-9700k at 4th... but I have no idea how 'big' the gaps are between each rank.
I guess basically what I'm trying to wrap my head around is... would I see enough of a jump in performance to warrant $850 for an uprade? or for now, just grab a used i5-3xxx and a decent used vid card and wait a few more years.
I remember when I upgraded my GTX660 to a GTX960, I was very disappointed in the performance jump... then the GTX1060 came out and someone said it was a much bigger jump due to some sorta advancements, so I got it and it was an impressive upgrade. Instantly saw the difference.
Started to think, instead of buying her a used PC, upgrade mine and donate the parts to her.
Parts I'd upgrade are the motherboard, 2x8GB ram and a Xenon E3-1231v3 which I think would be on par with a 3rd gen i7.
If I went that route, I'd probably go i7-9700k, 2x8gb ram and a decent Asus motherboard (Asus fanboy).
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/4sJpJ8
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Xeon-E3-1231-v3-vs-Intel-Core-i7-9700K/m11040vs4030
Now, I'm not a gamer either. I do have a nice ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 DUAL-GTX1060-O6G 6GB which plays my games more than just fine. My main drive is an SSD for program installs, files are on an HDD. Boot is 11sec to desktop and ready to go.
Until this week I never really thought of upgrading because my system works just fine. Borderlands 1&2 are fine, BioShock, Doom... running max I never had problems. I see on the benchmarks that my CPU is rank 164th vs the i7-9700k at 4th... but I have no idea how 'big' the gaps are between each rank.
I guess basically what I'm trying to wrap my head around is... would I see enough of a jump in performance to warrant $850 for an uprade? or for now, just grab a used i5-3xxx and a decent used vid card and wait a few more years.
I remember when I upgraded my GTX660 to a GTX960, I was very disappointed in the performance jump... then the GTX1060 came out and someone said it was a much bigger jump due to some sorta advancements, so I got it and it was an impressive upgrade. Instantly saw the difference.