Question Upgrade advise / help

ChewieTheCapo

Reputable
Nov 9, 2020
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Hi everyone 👋

I’m thinking of upgrading my CPU (I think that’s what needs doing)

I’m a little clueless if I’m honest, I have a 1440p monitor, I’ve noticed a few of the newer games coming out tend to drop frames here and there.

I don’t know if this is due to the hardware in my PC or the way they’ve been optimised or anything so I’m ASSUMING my CPU may need upgrading? Anyway I’ve listed the below, I haven’t got the other specs on me I’ll have to update when I get home unfortunately (apologies), I run games off an NVME SSD also I run windows off an SSD.

My goal is to just get my PC up to a standard of playing up and coming titles releasing at a nice stable frame rate at 1440p at a good standard of visuals.

i5 10600K
GTX 3070ti
MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi

Thanks for any help and taking the time to read, apologies for the clueless nature of the post 🤦🏻‍♂️🤣
 
whats your budget ?

personally i would go a AM5 maybe a b650e board and a 7700 non x cpu some ddr5 cl30 6000 ram ..

Decent 280mm aio or a thermalright phantom siprit 120 evo dual tower cpu cooler ..

i would steer clear of anything Intel atm they have no real upgrade path !

at some point though the GPU will need a upgrade ,

just a CPU upgrade isnt going to do heaps and heaps on the flip side a new GPU with the 10600k isnt going to the be a real win win either !!
 
Thanks for replying dude, appreciate the feedback,

I’ll be honest I haven’t got a budget in mind at the moment, just looking to see what people thought and was going to go from there.

Would you be able to send over some specific parts that you mentioned above? I’ve tried googling but the sheer amount of stuff that came back 🤦🏻‍♂️
 
What kinds of games do you play?
Some games are graphics limited like fast action shooters.
Others are cpu core speed limited like strategy, sims, and mmo.
Multiplayer tends to like many threads.

Try this simple test:

Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
This makes the graphics card loaf a bit.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

Your simple cpu upgrade options on that motherboard will be limited to 11th gen, perhaps a 10% boost in capability.

With a good cooler, you might be able to overclock some, perhaps a 10% boost.

What are the rest of your parts?
What could be reused?

Most people currently are gamers, using amd x3d processors.
They will be happy to tell you how good they are.
 
As you are on 1440p, I would almost bet it is your 8gb of vram that is your problem, more so than the CPU. If you do want to upgrade CPU, easy option is a 12700k, and a ddr4 capable motherboard, and reuse your current ram. You might need a cooler too, unless you can get a bracket for LGA 1700.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K 3.6 GHz 12-Core Processor ($207.36 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z790 S WIFI DDR4 (rev. 1.0) ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($123.18 @ Amazon)
Total: $330.54
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-01-14 12:59 EST-0500


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh7kFgHe21k
 
Hi Guys,

Thanks for your responses.

To answer majority of your questions, I only really play single player games, rarely do i play online stuff anymore, if i do its the odd game of Apex normally. Mostly stuff like Red Dead 2, the yearly Sports titles that come out and like i mentioned some stuff up and coming im looking forward to Kingdom Come 2, the new AC etc.

I only got the GPU few years ago (2years ago maybe?) when the prices for things were sky high near me and my old GPU was pretty old (gtx 1070) hence getting the 3070ti I just needed to upgrade and that was reasonably priced near me so I went for it which is why im hesitant to upgrade that. Like i said im just wanting to run things as well as i can without having to completely gut my system and spend thousands in the meantime (if I can).