Upgrading from Celeron G530 to i5 2500k

[Murrayer]

Hello, this is my first post as a Tom's Hardware user! I hail from the Republic of Ireland!

I am currently running the following in my gaming system:

Celeron G530
4GB Ram
500 WD 7200rpm HDD
HD 6870
Corsair 430w

I find my PC sluggish at times, especially shutting down and booting up, as well with starting up programs such as games. I currently use my PC to play games (such as Team Fortress 2, Bioshock Infinite, Skyrim and I would like to get games such as GTA 5 and ARMA 3 in the future).

Would buying a i5 2500k for €100 be a waste of money and would I be better off buying more RAM (4GB to 8GB) and/or switching to a SSD for my boot drive?


Thanks,

Murrayer

 

[Benab3]

I would say that upgrading your cpu should be the first thing that you spend your money on, as this will stop your computer being as sluggish in boot times, starting programs etc. Although an SSD along with a new cpu will increase further (especially boot/shut down times) an SSD would be the last thing that I would upgrade to in your machine. There would be many things that I would upgrade first, like ram and your GPU.

 

[Murrayer]

I would say that upgrading your cpu should be the first thing that you spend your money on, as this will stop your computer being as sluggish in boot times, starting programs etc. Although an SSD along with a new cpu will increase further (especially boot/shut down times) an SSD would be the last thing that I would upgrade to in your machine. There would be many things that I would upgrade first, like ram and your GPU.

Cheers for the reply, Benab3.

Am I throwing good money (€100) at bad (i5-2500k) or should I wait for the next gen of Intel CPUs apparently coming out later this year?

What's wrong with my current GPU (6870). If anything, it is being bottlenecked by my current Celeron CPU. I'll probably grab an extra stick of 4gb RAM though (to get 8gb).

Don't know about SSDs; my father's 2012 MacBook Air is a lot faster than his 2011 iMac (despite the hardware differences), owing to the SSD drive in the Air.

 

[Benab3]

With upgrading to that i5 you will see a good performance increase, but for upgrading Cpu's you have a few options. You can either tailor one to your motherboard ( a cpu that uses the 1ga 1155 socket) or change both. For the lga 1155 socket that you use there are even some decent I7 that you can put in, but these cost more, although they come with hyperthreading that is finding use in some modern games and almost certainly more to come. As for the new chips coming out I would assume that they would have a big price tag.

For gaming 8 gb of Ram is a sweetspot, less is a scraping it a little and more in MOST cases is unnecessary ( although it can be used in some strenuous tasks) so if you can pick up another 4gb of DDR3 ( make sure it is similar to your current 4 gb ) then yeah grab it.

As for your graphics card it is decent, but as you mentioned above will be bottlenecked by your cpu. It does meet the Minimum system requirements for GTA 5 BUT not the recommended ones, it is somewhere inbetween.

If you dont know much about SSDs they are similar to HDDs but have no moving parts inside, making them much quicker at finding information. While the HDD has a moving arm the SSD does not making it much much faster. These do come as a price thought a decent 120 GB one ( this is all you really need as you put your Operating system on the SSD usually not the games and other junk) and will set you back maybe about 60 Euros