What component to upgrade?

[ikilsher]

Hey, I'm looking to upgrade my hardware in the near future, wondering what I should be upgrading first and possibly what upgrades I could buy that would be compatible for under or just barely over £100


Processor: 3.40 gigahertz Intel Core i7-3770
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti

RAM: 8144 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory
Slot 'ChannelA-DIMM0' has 8192 MB
Slot 'ChannelB-DIMM0' is Empty

HDD: WDC WD10EZRX-00D8PB0 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB)
HDD MANUFACTURER: Western Digital
SSD: Crucial_CT525MX300SSD1 [Hard drive] (525.11 GB)
Mother Board: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. CM6330_CM6630_CM6730_CM6830_M11AA Rev x.0x

Thank you in advance to anyone that responds.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The only upgrade worth doing to that configuration, well, two actually, but only one really worth doing, would be adding another 8GB of RAM.

Upgrading the graphics card could be worthwhile too, but only really if you plan to upgrade the rest of the platform sometimes in the near future.

Otherwise, I'd just sock the money away and save it up to upgrade the entire platform. You can get a decent Ryzen 5, motherboard and 16GB of memory for like £350-ish, and that would be a far better use of your money than trying to upgrade your current outdated platform that is probably about the right age where you're getting likely to see a motherboard or graphics card failure sooner than later.

This would be worthwhile, BUT you would also need a CPU cooler as well as it doesn't come with one. Unless you have one that you can get an AM4 adapter for.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600X 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor (£136.00 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard (£99.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£125.99 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £361.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-07 01:45 BST+0100


Otherwise, adding 8GB of RAM and overclocking your current CPU, which will also require a decent aftermarket cooler, would be the only real options aside from a bigger graphics card and you're still going to be looking at a substantially bigger investment to do that.

What is your current power supply model number? That's the one item most people overlook, even though it's the most important piece of the puzzle.

 

[ikilsher]

The only upgrade worth doing to that configuration, well, two actually, but only one really worth doing, would be adding another 8GB of RAM.

Upgrading the graphics card could be worthwhile too, but only really if you plan to upgrade the rest of the platform sometimes in the near future.

Otherwise, I'd just sock the money away and save it up to upgrade the entire platform. You can get a decent Ryzen 5, motherboard and 16GB of memory for like £350-ish, and that would be a far better use of your money than trying to upgrade your current outdated platform that is probably about the right age where you're getting likely to see a motherboard or graphics card failure sooner than later.

This would be worthwhile, BUT you would also need a CPU cooler as well as it doesn't come with one. Unless you have one that you can get an AM4 adapter for.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600X 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor (£136.00 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard (£99.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£125.99 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £361.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-07 01:45 BST+0100


Otherwise, adding 8GB of RAM and overclocking your current CPU, which will also require a decent aftermarket cooler, would be the only real options aside from a bigger graphics card and you're still going to be looking at a substantially bigger investment to do that.

What is your current power supply model number? That's the one item most people overlook, even though it's the most important piece of the puzzle.

Dark Breeze, I really appreciate your reply, you have helped me immensely. Would i be able to get the "Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory" for the time being and see some sort of improvement, then eventually in the future get the rest of those components?

Also, I would appreciate a suggestion for a nvidia geforce GPU upgrade

 

[ikilsher]

The only upgrade worth doing to that configuration, well, two actually, but only one really worth doing, would be adding another 8GB of RAM.

Upgrading the graphics card could be worthwhile too, but only really if you plan to upgrade the rest of the platform sometimes in the near future.

Otherwise, I'd just sock the money away and save it up to upgrade the entire platform. You can get a decent Ryzen 5, motherboard and 16GB of memory for like £350-ish, and that would be a far better use of your money than trying to upgrade your current outdated platform that is probably about the right age where you're getting likely to see a motherboard or graphics card failure sooner than later.

This would be worthwhile, BUT you would also need a CPU cooler as well as it doesn't come with one. Unless you have one that you can get an AM4 adapter for.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600X 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor (£136.00 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard (£99.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£125.99 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £361.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-07 01:45 BST+0100


Otherwise, adding 8GB of RAM and overclocking your current CPU, which will also require a decent aftermarket cooler, would be the only real options aside from a bigger graphics card and you're still going to be looking at a substantially bigger investment to do that.

What is your current power supply model number? That's the one item most people overlook, even though it's the most important piece of the puzzle.

Power Supply is:

Corsair CX500

 

[Darkbreeze]

For a lot of current games, it's likely you'll see an improvement with another 8GB of RAM, HOWEVER, I would recommend that you download HWinfo

*Download HWinfo


then install it, run it, choose the "Sensors only" option (Only this option. Put a check in the box next to this and remove any other checked boxes) and then open up your most demanding game you commonly play. Play the game but keep an eye on the HWinfo window. Take note of how much remaining free memory there is under your most demanding conditions. If you get low on memory then adding memory will certainly help things, and even if you don't, it might.

You cannot, however, get that memory for now with your current system. That is DDR4 memory used on newer platforms. Your system uses DDR3 memory. The two are not compatible. If you want to add memory to your system you will want to identify what the part or model number of your current memory module or modules is and get an identical unit. Even then, there is no guarantee they will "play nice" together if they were not purchased together in a matched set. Usually they will, but sometimes they just won't.

I'll be honest. I think putting money into your current system is a waste. You would be much better served to simply save until you have enough for a platform upgrade with all three items, CPU, motherboard and memory. Realize, your current platform with an Ivy bridge CPU is six years old. There have been five generations of Intel processors released since then and another is releasing this coming month.

If you upgrade to any current mid tier graphics card like a GTX 1060 or RX570 or higher tiered card, you are certainly going to be facing deflated performance, what is known as a bottleneck, from that CPU. It won't be as bad as some other hardware like old FX series CPUs, but it's still not going to let your graphics card work at its optimal level.

If you just can't upgrade at any time in the foreseeable future, then adding another 8GB of RAM to your current configuration (Forget about overclocking, I just noticed you have a locked CPU) is about all you can do really unless you buy a new GPU card and then you'll be bottlenecked by the CPU for sure.

Also, that's not a dumpster fire quality power supply, but it's not a very good one either. I'd highly recommend you start thinking about upgrading that as well if you intend to upgrade the platform or graphics card at any point.

 

[geofelt]

£100 will not buy you much.
Whatever you spend it on should be able to be carried forward to a much stronger build.

If you are a gamer, I think your cpu is good enough to run a better graphics card.
That is easy to carry forward to a new build.
To test this, Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
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.
But, about the minimum significant graphics card upgrade should be at least as good as a GTX1050ti which is a £150 card.

One of the most satisfying performance upgrades is to migrate to a ssd for the windows C drive.
It just makes everything quicker.
£100 will buy you a Samsung evo of 250gb.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Actually, it's much less than that.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£54.46 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £54.46
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-07 04:30 BST+0100


And I can agree on that. An SSD will make many things quicker. But, the only thing it will aid in gaming is map, level and texture loading, it won't increase gaming performance in any other way than when reads or writes are necessary, and that's ONLY if the game files are stored on the SSD. However, the OP already has an SSD so it's rather not relevant in this case.

The graphics card is a great idea, like I said though, can't be done for £100. Not one worth doing anyhow. That you are right about, just about £150 for a 1050ti, which would be a really nice upgrade from the current GPU card and would totally work with that 3770, no problem.

 

[ikilsher]

I already have a Crucial SSD by the way. Thank you both for your answers.