Upgrade i5-7400 to a higer end CPU (GTX 1070)

[furkan68k18]

Hi I am looking to buy this pc that comes with an i5-7400 and a gtx 1070 for a decent price. I have heard that the i5 could bottleneck the gtx 1070, to what extent is this true? Also would I be able to upgrade the i5 to a higher end CPU like an i7 or an unlocked i5? It comes with a 450watt psu and a ECS:b250h4-EM motherboard. Full specs are here: https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/10021504-Medion-Erazer-X5361-G_2136595.html

 

[Lutfij]

The weakest link in that build would have to be the PSU being a Medion Approved unit. A system with a GTX1070 would need at least 500W from a reliable and quality built PSU - bot of which are devoid in that listing.

You sure we can't suggest a build and you build the system by yourself?

 

[bjornl]

The CPU should be ok. But your PSU is an issue.

The motherboard does not allow for overclocking; If you want to buy an unlocked motherboard with that in mind, you'll need to swap the motherboard as well. If you just want a faster processor and don't want to overclock, then any i5-7xxx or i7-7xxx will work. The unlocked ones are faster even if you don't want to over clock. I suggest you run the system before you decide.

The power supply sounds like a pile of poo. They don't mention the brand. The wattage is the bare minimum to turn on that video card. Make this your first upgrade. Use this as a rough guide to quality PSUs. I would suggest a 550-650watt one.

 

[Traditore]

The CPU should be ok. But your PSU is an issue.

The motherboard does not allow for overclocking; If you want to buy an unlocked motherboard with that in mind, you'll need to swap the motherboard as well. If you just want a faster processor and don't want to overclock, then any i5-7xxx or i7-7xxx will work. The unlocked ones are faster even if you don't want to over clock. I suggest you run the system before you decide.

The power supply sounds like a pile of poo. They don't mention the brand. The wattage is the bare minimum to turn on that video card. Make this your first upgrade. Use this as a rough guide to quality PSUs. I would suggest a 550-650watt one.

1070 draws 200W in 4K gaming. How is 450 not enough?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-8gb-pascal-performance,4585-7.html

 

[bjornl]

The CPU should be ok. But your PSU is an issue.

The motherboard does not allow for overclocking; If you want to buy an unlocked motherboard with that in mind, you'll need to swap the motherboard as well. If you just want a faster processor and don't want to overclock, then any i5-7xxx or i7-7xxx will work. The unlocked ones are faster even if you don't want to over clock. I suggest you run the system before you decide.

The power supply sounds like a pile of poo. They don't mention the brand. The wattage is the bare minimum to turn on that video card. Make this your first upgrade. Use this as a rough guide to quality PSUs. I would suggest a 550-650watt one.

1070 draws 200W in 4K gaming. How is 450 not enough?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-8gb-pascal-performance,4585-7.html

It is a generic POS PSU. So not going to provide 450w. It will be at max efficiency at between 20-80% usage at which it will provide less than 80% of the rated power. You will not get more than 275-320w out of it in all likely hood. Right on the edge.

example: if it is running at 80% of capacity (or 360w) it is unlikely to even deliver 288w (max efficiency for these off-off brands is 80%). It is more likely to be producing 75-77% of power. As power usage climbs over 80% efficiency will drop ever lower. And the quality of this power won't be good.

 

[furkan68k18]

The weakest link in that build would have to be the PSU being a Medion Approved unit. A system with a GTX1070 would need at least 500W from a reliable and quality built PSU - bot of which are devoid in that listing.

You sure we can't suggest a build and you build the system by yourself?

Could you suggest a build? My max budget is £800, I will be playing a range of games from something as basic as csgo and rocket league to battlefield 1 and cod ww2. But Im a bit tedious of building my own pc.

 

[bjornl]

The weakest link in that build would have to be the PSU being a Medion Approved unit. A system with a GTX1070 would need at least 500W from a reliable and quality built PSU - bot of which are devoid in that listing.

You sure we can't suggest a build and you build the system by yourself?

Could you suggest a build? My max budget is £800, I will be playing a range of games from something as basic as csgo and rocket league to battlefield 1 and cod ww2. But Im a bit tedious of building my own pc.

Your linked to PC had no monitor. Is it safe to assume you don't need one?

 

[furkan68k18]

The power supply sounds like a pile of poo. They don't mention the brand. The wattage is the bare minimum to turn on that video card. Make this your first upgrade. Use this as a rough guide to quality PSUs. I would suggest a 550-650watt one.

I have an iCute AP-700AS 700W psu on my current build, I know this is a bit too much but could I possibly replace this 450watt psu with my iCute one?

 

[furkan68k18]

Your linked to PC had no monitor. Is it safe to assume you don't need one?

Yeah I'll buy one separately.

 

[bjornl]

Here is essentially the same PC with better parts for the case, PSU, etc.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel - Core i5-7400 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£142.00 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI - B250M PRO-VH Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£54.99 @ Box Limited)
Memory: G.Skill - NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£56.43 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Toshiba - 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£54.95 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Video Card (£313.54 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Deepcool - TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case (£27.48 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£65.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (£82.74 @ Aria PC)
Total: £797.60

Here is a very similar PC made with AMD parts. It won't be as fast at game play (by a very small amount) but it will multi-task better.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£131.94 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M-HDV Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£58.49 @ Box Limited)
Memory: G.Skill - NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£56.43 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Toshiba - 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£54.95 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Video Card (£313.54 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Deepcool - TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case (£27.48 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£65.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (£82.74 @ Aria PC)
Total: £791.04

 

[bjornl]

The power supply sounds like a pile of poo. They don't mention the brand. The wattage is the bare minimum to turn on that video card. Make this your first upgrade. Use this as a rough guide to quality PSUs. I would suggest a 550-650watt one.

I have an iCute AP-700AS 700W psu on my current build, I know this is a bit too much but could I possibly replace this 450watt psu with my iCute one?

From the photos, it will fit in any standard case. I don't know much about that PSU or how good it is. The comments I've read about that brand would have me guess it is a poor one.

Ok googled enough to be convinced that is a total crap PSU. 20a on thr 12v compare to a Seasonic with 54a.

 

[furkan68k18]

Even if I do build it my self I need to know if the i5-7400 will bottleneck the gtx 1070 or not? Also you said the motherboard will not support unlocked cpus, so will it support non k i5s for eg an i5-8400, and if I can upgrade it to an i5-8400, would it be worth it, would it be better with the gtx 1070?

 

[bjornl]

Even if I do build it my self I need to know if the i5-7400 will bottleneck the gtx 1070 or not? Also you said the motherboard will not support unlocked cpus, so will it support non k i5s for eg an i5-8400, and if I can upgrade it to an i5-8400, would it be worth it, would it be better with the gtx 1070?

The i5-7400 will not bottleneck any current video card. However there are a few games which might bottle neck on that CPU. There aren't many of these games, for example a heavily modded fallout series. But there is no faster gaming CPU which will keep you in budget.
The i5-7400 build's motherboard will support unlocked CPUs. It won't support over-clocking them. It won't support the 8400 as that requires a 300 series motherboard. I think the 8400 is one of the most phenomenal values in Intel based CPUs in a long long time. But it will put you over budget.

Here is the same build with an 8400 and a compatible motherboard:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor (£174.76 @ BT Shop)
Motherboard: MSI - Z370-A PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£99.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: G.Skill - NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£56.43 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Toshiba - 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£54.95 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Video Card (£313.54 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Deepcool - TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case (£27.48 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£65.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (£82.74 @ Aria PC)
Total: £875.35

This build is on the newest Intel processor family (called coffeelake). The motherboard is capable of overclocking if you later want to upgrade to a unlocked coffeelake CPU (such as the i5-8600k or i7-8700k)

 

[furkan68k18]

So will the i5-7400 bottleneck the gtx 1070 or not?

 

[bjornl]

So will the i5-7400 bottleneck the gtx 1070 or not?

The i5-7400 will not bottleneck any current video card. However there are a few games which might bottle neck on that CPU. There aren't many of these games, for example a heavily modded fallout series. But there is no faster gaming CPU which will keep you in budget.

 

[furkan68k18]

So will the i5-7400 bottleneck the gtx 1070 or not?

The i5-7400 will not bottleneck any current video card. However there are a few games which might bottle neck on that CPU. There aren't many of these games, for example a heavily modded fallout series. But there is no faster gaming CPU which will keep you in budget.

Ok thank you very much for all your help

 

[bjornl]

You're welcome. Have fun at it.

 

[Traditore]

The CPU should be ok. But your PSU is an issue.

The motherboard does not allow for overclocking; If you want to buy an unlocked motherboard with that in mind, you'll need to swap the motherboard as well. If you just want a faster processor and don't want to overclock, then any i5-7xxx or i7-7xxx will work. The unlocked ones are faster even if you don't want to over clock. I suggest you run the system before you decide.

The power supply sounds like a pile of poo. They don't mention the brand. The wattage is the bare minimum to turn on that video card. Make this your first upgrade. Use this as a rough guide to quality PSUs. I would suggest a 550-650watt one.

1070 draws 200W in 4K gaming. How is 450 not enough?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-8gb-pascal-performance,4585-7.html

It is a generic POS PSU. So not going to provide 450w. It will be at max efficiency at between 20-80% usage at which it will provide less than 80% of the rated power. You will not get more than 275-320w out of it in all likely hood. Right on the edge.

example: if it is running at 80% of capacity (or 360w) it is unlikely to even deliver 288w (max efficiency for these off-off brands is 80%). It is more likely to be producing 75-77% of power. As power usage climbs over 80% efficiency will drop ever lower. And the quality of this power won't be good.

to this I agree but you simply said "The wattage is the bare minimum to turn on that video card." And that freeked me out

 

[bistoboy79]

Hey I have bought this pc from argos at Christmas and wanted to know would you say it's safe to overclock the GPU with this config or PSU? As I've currently got it at 2Ghz