Question What gpu should i pair with an i5 6600k

[siaan312]

my friend msged me saying she wants to upgrade her pc, and asked what compnent, so looking at her specs i said, get another 8gb of ram (cause she already has 8gb)
she has a gtx 960 4gig, but wants to upgrade, shes got an ssd so no worries there. the motherboard is a z170 from gigabyte so the only thing i see really needs an upgrade other than ram
is the gpu

but to which one? i thought maybe rtx 2060 super or 5700xt which is a lil faster, but she does stream sometimes so the h264 encoder and ofcourse rtx on the 2060 super is good
but is a 2060 super too much for the i5 6600k? it is not overclocked.

 

[WildCard999]

What is the monitor resolution and refresh rate?

What is the PSU model?

 

[siaan312]

What is the monitor resolution and refresh rate?

What is the PSU model?

shes got 2 1080p60hz monitors and just might upgrade down the line but not from the time being,
so a lil future proof will be nice but she wont get 4k or 2k 144hz I dont think

will update on the psu as soon as I get that info

 

[WildCard999]

The 2060S is a good update as long as the PSU is decent but I think the 2070S is a better choice for $100 more. It's a bit overkill for 1080P but when she does upgrade it should still be a viable GPU for 1440P or medium settings @4K.

As for the CPU it depends on the games, while 4 cores could be limiting in some games then 6600K has very good performance per core especially when overclocked.

What is the max she could spend on upgrades?

 

[King_V]

In order to make a decent recommendation, it would be good to know what the end-goal is for the future monitor's resolution and refresh rate, as well as how near or far down the road this purchase will be.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Well you need to ask her if she games, and if so what kind of games she plays. Getting a high end graphics card will do squat if she plays games like Terraria, or Roblox which will run on any hardware.

You'll also need to take a good look at her PSU. Upgrading a PSU and a GPU might put her over budget. If you aren't sure, the 960 has about a 120W->160W power envelope. (https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960,4038-8.html) So you might have to stick within that power budget. The closest power wise would be a NVIDIA 1660ti

IF she does not game, the RAM upgrade to dual channel is your best bet. 2 Slots used are typically the fastest as it can run dual channel and not have additional latent latencies associated with 4 banks populated. 1 Slot only runs in single channel. Make sure you get single rank ram for both slots. Matching RAM helps with stability. If you are buying just 1 stick try to get the same brand/speed if you can. Otherwise check those timings between the old stick and the new stick you are adding!

Also the Z170 chipset supports NVMe. If her board has a NVMe slot then an Intel 660p 1TB might be a worthy upgrade at sub $100. It's certainly faster than 2.5" SSD.