Upgrading my current rig, Motherboard, CPU and GPU £450 price limit

[Guest]

Right, so i just need some help guys.
My rig is a few years old, it has:

GTX 650 Ti Boost (GPU)
i3 2120 (CPU)
ASUStek p8h61-mx 2011 model which doesn't have USB 3.0 and I cant find anywhere on the web to get more details about it. (Motherboard)
My Ram is 8gb and I have a 900w PSU so these don't need looking at.
I have been looking at an i5 4690k as it's roughly £180 right now, I wanted to get a GTX 970 but it's a bit pricey so I might drop down to a GTX 960. But I have no knowledge on what motherboards to buy so any help would be very very welcome!
My case is a mATX Tower case FROM ZOOStorm.

Oh and this PC is used for gaming, mainly AAA games and can only run them on low with 30-40 FPS so I'm hoping to get this as high as possible!

 

[jsgrant31]

Without knowing the games you play it's hard to tell if the CPU or GPU is the limiting factor in your performance. I suggest you post your games and do some research about the min/rec requirements for the game as well as whether the game utilizes the CPU heavily or not. Just off of what you've given, I'd recommend buying a 970 now and buying a Skylake CPU with 1151 motherboard when they release in the coming months. This might not be the best option, however, if your games are CPU intensive and the i3 is the bottleneck in your system.

Please post your brand/model of your PSU. If you have a low quality PSU it is best to replace it first as a bad PSU is more likely to fail and can damage other components. There's no sense in spending money upgrading if you don't have a good PSU. The link in my sig shows a break down of several PSUs by brand and model, tier one being the highest quality.

Cheers

 

[Guest]

Without knowing the games you play it's hard to tell if the CPU or GPU is the limiting factor in your performance. I suggest you post your games and do some research about the min/rec requirements for the game as well as whether the game utilizes the CPU heavily or not. Just off of what you've given, I'd recommend buying a 970 now and buying a Skylake CPU with 1151 motherboard when they release in the coming months. This might not be the best option, however, if your games are CPU intensive and the i3 is the bottleneck in your system.

Please post your brand/model of your PSU. If you have a low quality PSU it is best to replace it first as a bad PSU is more likely to fail and can damage other components. There's no sense in spending money upgrading if you don't have a good PSU. The link in my sig shows a break down of several PSUs by brand and model, tier one being the highest quality.

Cheers

Hey man, first, thanks for answering!
I've just opened my case and the PSU has Nova Tech on the side (so I'm guessing that's the brand).
The game I've been playing recently is BF4 and my rig struggles to keep up all the time, also games such as 7 Days To Die and BIOSHOCK Infinite. Recently I've been playing older games but I want to at least have a fighting chance of running Fallout 4 and Battlefront well on my PC, although their requirements haven't been released yet.

Also the GPU is the newest thing alongside my PSU in my system, although the 650 Ti seems to be getting bullied by games out there. But then again my CPU is very old and an old model as well.

Thanks man!

 

[James Mason]

Without knowing the games you play it's hard to tell if the CPU or GPU is the limiting factor in your performance. I suggest you post your games and do some research about the min/rec requirements for the game as well as whether the game utilizes the CPU heavily or not. Just off of what you've given, I'd recommend buying a 970 now and buying a Skylake CPU with 1151 motherboard when they release in the coming months. This might not be the best option, however, if your games are CPU intensive and the i3 is the bottleneck in your system.

Please post your brand/model of your PSU. If you have a low quality PSU it is best to replace it first as a bad PSU is more likely to fail and can damage other components. There's no sense in spending money upgrading if you don't have a good PSU. The link in my sig shows a break down of several PSUs by brand and model, tier one being the highest quality.

Cheers

Hey man, first, thanks for answering!
I've just opened my case and the PSU has Nova Tech on the side (so I'm guessing that's the brand).
The game I've been playing recently is BF4 and my rig struggles to keep up all the time, also games such as 7 Days To Die and BIOSHOCK Infinite. Recently I've been playing older games but I want to at least have a fighting chance of running Fallout 4 and Battlefront well on my PC, although their requirements haven't been released yet.

Also the GPU is the newest thing alongside my PSU in my system, although the 650 Ti seems to be getting bullied by games out there. But then again my CPU is very old and an old model as well.

Thanks man!

Novatech isn't a good brand, or not a reliable one. They take other branded PSUs (Like Corsair, and OCZ, both you generally want to avoid, and both who also don't actually make the PSUs just put stickers on cheapo made ones) and put their label on them. They're who you'd want to avoid.

Getting a GTX 970 and a better PSU now and a Skylake intel CPU and motherboard in 6-9 months is a good idea.

This 650w PSU from XFX is a very nice quality one and should provide more than enough power for a 970 and skylake intel CPU: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-power-supply-p1650gts3x

 

[Guest]

Without knowing the games you play it's hard to tell if the CPU or GPU is the limiting factor in your performance. I suggest you post your games and do some research about the min/rec requirements for the game as well as whether the game utilizes the CPU heavily or not. Just off of what you've given, I'd recommend buying a 970 now and buying a Skylake CPU with 1151 motherboard when they release in the coming months. This might not be the best option, however, if your games are CPU intensive and the i3 is the bottleneck in your system.

Please post your brand/model of your PSU. If you have a low quality PSU it is best to replace it first as a bad PSU is more likely to fail and can damage other components. There's no sense in spending money upgrading if you don't have a good PSU. The link in my sig shows a break down of several PSUs by brand and model, tier one being the highest quality.

Cheers

Hey man, first, thanks for answering!
I've just opened my case and the PSU has Nova Tech on the side (so I'm guessing that's the brand).
The game I've been playing recently is BF4 and my rig struggles to keep up all the time, also games such as 7 Days To Die and BIOSHOCK Infinite. Recently I've been playing older games but I want to at least have a fighting chance of running Fallout 4 and Battlefront well on my PC, although their requirements haven't been released yet.

Also the GPU is the newest thing alongside my PSU in my system, although the 650 Ti seems to be getting bullied by games out there. But then again my CPU is very old and an old model as well.

Thanks man!

Novatech isn't a good brand, or not a reliable one. They take other branded PSUs (Like Corsair, and OCZ, both you generally want to avoid, and both who also don't actually make the PSUs just put stickers on cheapo made ones) and put their label on them. They're who you'd want to avoid.

Getting a GTX 970 and a better PSU now and a Skylake intel CPU and motherboard in 6-9 months is a good idea.

This 650w PSU from XFX is a very nice quality one and should provide more than enough power for a 970 and skylake intel CPU: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-power-supply-p1650gts3x

Ah well that sucks, ok well I'll heed your advice and get a new PSU and GPU first. Tell me though would cheaping out on a 970 and getting a 960 be a problem? I'm not sure I'll be able to make the purchase in the time I'd like due to the £80 more it will cost. I may be able to scrape together another £80 but as I said not in the time that I'd like! If that's a bad idea, then I'll wait, if you could be even more helpful and give me some tips on the brand I should choose, I've only had EVGA before and am uncertain on other brands as I haven't had any experiences with them before. I'm also a little confused on what sorts of the 970s and 960s I should go for, for example, the meaning behind SLI, PCI Express and the RAM capabilities of a Video Card. If this could be explained that'd be great, but if not any recommendations are highly appreciated.

 

[jsgrant31]

I agree with James Mason, 970 and new PSU now with Skylake CPU and 1151 mobo in 6 months or so. I think it would be better to save the extra money and get the 970 over the 960; you're playing AAA games, the 970 is just a better card, and it's still the best performance-to-price ratio out of any GPU if I'm not mistaken.

SLI: nvidia term for using two or more GPUs in a rig (AMD term is Crossfire), this is not something you need to worry about because you're only using one GPU
PCI(e): the slots on the motherboard where you attach additional hardware (GPU, wifi adapter, sound card, etc.), the "express" designation is just newer/faster than original PCI
Video RAM: basically the video card has xyz amount of memory to store/process image information, 970s have 4 GB, there's a lot of reading material out there that will give you a more specific description if you want

All these terms are really general to GPUs. When comparing cards, you can look at clock speeds but really it's best to just find reviews. TH has some good reviews and JayzTwoCents has some good Youtube reviews that will talk about a specific 970 and how it performs relative to other brands. Personally, I've enjoyed my EVGA 770 SC ACX (SC="superclocked" with a higher clock speed than reference, ACX=EVGAs non-reference cooling system, other brands will have this as well just under a different naming convention) quite a bit. If I had to purchase a card today I'd go EVGA again or I'd like to try the Asus Strix cards. There are plenty of proponents for Gigabyte G1 and MSi Gaming cards as well. Really I'd say you can't go wrong; the EVGA/Asus/Gigabyte/MSi cards are all super comparable although the companies have different reputations for customer service (EVGA considered the best I believe).

Cheers