What to upgrade, possibly for 4k. Currently using a 380 4GB and i5 6500

[velocitygamingeu]

Hi gang,

I mainly use my PC for gaming and it's plugged into the TV in the living room, I've recently bought a 4k TV and would like to get a computer that can match that if possible. Not sure if anything can be salvaged from the current system or if it's worth getting a whole new one, or if there are any small upgrades I could put into this machine.


Approximate Purchase Date: next few months

Budget Range: around £500

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, Streaming netflix, youtube etc, light work in Microsoft Packages

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade: Mainly the GPU, possibly others if it needs?

Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H
Sapphire 380 4GB
Intel i5 6500
Corsair 1x8GB DDR4
1x Kington 128GB SSD
1x Seagate 2TB HDD
EVGA 550W PSU


Do you need to buy OS: No


Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Anywhere. Amazon, Scan, Ebuyer, CCL etc

Location: UK, Scotland, Aberdeen

Parts Preferences: Preferably intel CPU if possible

Overclocking: No

SLI or Crossfire: No

Your Monitor Resolution: 4k



This is just to give me a rough idea of the actual cost to get a 4K machine running and to see if there's anything I can salvage from this current system, failing a 4k upgrade if there is anything I could do to the current computer to improve performance. I realise now is maybe not the best time to upgrade since the new Nvidia series is being released.

 

[bmockeg]

4k is out of reach on that budget. You really need 2 sticks of RAM,in a dual channel configuration.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1080 8GB DUKE OC Video Card ($449.99 @ B&H)
Total: $449.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-23 11:20 EDT-0400

Get this card and another 8gb stick of RAM, preferably the same model number that you own. You will get 1440p gaming

 

[mahanddeem]

Not even a 1080 is enough for good 4k. 1080ti should be the card.
For OP you need a hefty gpu for 4k, good dual channel ddr4 and a better cpu.

 

[Finstar]

Not even a 1080 is enough for good 4k. 1080ti should be the card.
For OP you need a hefty gpu for 4k, good dual channel ddr4 and a better cpu.

Except that it is.
I've been gaming in 4k with a gtx 1080 for over 2 years now and it's very much enough.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Resolution doesn't really impact CPU usage so you might be able to get away with using your current CPU, depending on the game. But as others have said you'd probably want at least a 1080 Ti if you want to be able to get 60 fps at high-ish settings in new AAA games. And another 8 GB stick of RAM would be good as well. Not specifically because of 4K, just in general.

 

[bmockeg]

I mean you can game at 4k with low settings but to me it defeats the point of,4k.

 

[Finstar]

I mean you can game at 4k with low settings but to me it defeats the point of,4k.

The point of 4k is to have a sharper, less pixelated image. No matter how low you set the settings the picture will still look much sharper than on a 1080p or 1440p display. So no, it does not defeat the purpose.

 

[bmockeg]

To each their own, I use a 1080ti with the settings turned up.

 

[geofelt]

Displaying 4k resolution on a monitor @60hz is not that difficult.
I do that using a GTX750ti

The question comes in when you need to support fast action gaming.

The performance difference between a r9-380 and a GTX1080 is considerable.
Using a 550w psu, GTX1080 is about the strongest card that can be used.
For less active games such as mmo and strategy games, GTX1070ti/GTX1080 may be all you need.
I would do that first.

If no joy, then look into a cpu/mobo/ram upgrade.

 

[TJ Hooker]

What exact PSU do you have?

 

[velocitygamingeu]

What exact PSU do you have?

EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply


Thanks for the responses guys. This was more to get an idea of the real cost etc, but in order to be future proof it would make sense to just get an entirely new machine and a better CPU with a more recent socket? In regards to adding anything to the current build am I really going to see any difference with an extra 8GB of RAM? The most intensive thing the computer does it play games at 1080p

Too add a bit more detail the main games are Vermintide 2, Battlefield, GTA V, Rainbow Six. Should it matter

 

[cryoburner]

When it comes to 4K gaming, the graphics card is likely to limit your performance more than anything else, since it needs to render 4 times the pixels of 1080p. However, this also means that you would need a much more powerful card to run many recent games reasonably well at 4K, with a GTX 1080 probably being the lowest you would want to go for that now.

An i5-6500 is still a reasonably good CPU for gaming. And 8GB of RAM is arguably still okay, though some games are starting to benefit from having a bit more, so an upgrade to 16GB might be worthwhile.