Upgrading my gaming PC

[h0mesk420illet]

I want to upgrade my PC but not for more than 300 $ this includes reselling my old parts. My current build is an Intel i5 -4460 3.2 GHz, Powercolor Turbo Duo radeon r9 285, 8 g of ram and no separate cpu fan. i think my pc overheats an hour into gaming. Should I focus on upgrading my videocard or slightly uprading all of them. Another question is I got a cheap motherboard, would a better motherboard get the most out of everything else?

 

[Th3-Hunter333]

What are you looking to gain out of the upgraded system, an i5 4460 and a 285 is still fairly capable.

You didnt list what your motherboard is, what your psu is, and also what your temperatures are

 

[capt_taco]

Since you have a non-overclocking CPU and only one video card, your choice of motherboard doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference.

I personally wouldn't change anything with that system unless you are noticing performance issues. The components are still pretty good.

What makes you think the CPU is overheating? Does the system shut itself off? And do you mean you have no fan at all on the CPU?

 

[Mercian]

I run a I5 4460 on an inexpensive motherboard (Asus H81M-C) and it is a great cpu even though it is the least expensive current I5. If your £ is burning a hole in your pocket you could upgrade to a GTX 970 or R9 390. If you are having heat issues I would suggest the GTX 970 if playing at 1080p where you will see little difference with the R9 390. At anything above 1080p the R9 390 will pull a ahead.

 

[h0mesk420illet]

What are you looking to gain out of the upgraded system, an i5 4460 and a 285 is still fairly capable.

You didnt list what your motherboard is, what your psu is, and also what your temperatures are

I want it to handle better graphics because it can handle high settings most of the time but not all the time and ultra would be nice too. My psu is an evga 500b and my motherboard is an asrock h81m-dgs. I don't know how to check my temps though

 

[h0mesk420illet]

Since you have a non-overclocking CPU and only one video card, your choice of motherboard doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference.

I personally wouldn't change anything with that system unless you are noticing performance issues. The components are still pretty good.

What makes you think the CPU is overheating? Does the system shut itself off? And do you mean you have no fan at all on the CPU?

within an hour to 2 of gaming it will freeze and id have to hit control alt delete to use task manager to force close the game.
the cpu has it's stock fan,

 

[Mercian]

What are you looking to gain out of the upgraded system, an i5 4460 and a 285 is still fairly capable.

You didnt list what your motherboard is, what your psu is, and also what your temperatures are

I want it to handle better graphics because it can handle high settings most of the time but not all the time and ultra would be nice too. My psu is an evga 500b and my motherboard is an asrock h81m-dgs. I don't know how to check my temps though

This is a good program to check temps etc.http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.htmlmps and also other stats like cpu/gpu usage.
It will give current/min/max stats. There are other programs that do similar but I like this one. The highest my 4460 has gone under stress is about 60c. My idles at the moment are at high 20c but it depends in your ambient temps. I am not sure about the temps for your graphics card as I run Nvidia and recent Radeons tend to run hotter.

 

[capt_taco]

A non-overclocked CPU shouldn't be overheating even with the stock fan, unless there's an airflow problem or the fan is failing.

Usually, overheating would lead to one of two issues: The CPU throttling itself and giving you a big performance slowdown, or the system shutting itself off and not being able to turn back on for a few minutes. That leads me to believe the problem is likely something else.

Is there any process that runs regularly in the background - perhaps an AV scan or update, or something else that your system tries to do every two or three hours? If so, perhaps it's a software conflict where the game is "tripping" over that every time the other process starts.

Unstable RAM sometimes also causes random freezing, but generally you'll get a nice mix of freezing, crashing, system restarts and BSODs, and it doesn't sound like you're getting the others.