Upgrading my current PC.

[Deleted]

Hi, thanks for having the time to help.

I built my pc for roughly 2 years now and I think it's time i should upgrade parts of it.

My pc:
CPU: I5 3570k OC 3.8Ghz (Stock cooler 65c underload. The temps are getting worse, I will upgrade this with a good cooler this week, i've only just noticed the temps are really high recently. Originally I had it OC 4.2Ghz 60c underload ~2hours)
MOBO: Asus p8 z77-v LX
RAM: 2x4GB DDR3 (Kingston HyperX)
GPU: MSI Radeon HD 7870 Twin Frozr III OC (I've overclocked this to the max stable settings i could 1200 Core clock & 1450 Memory Clock. Runs at roughly 65c temp under load)
HDD: 500gb (Windows/programs)
HDD2: 1TB (Games/Documents/Files)

No SSD hard disk upgrades for me, i have almost no interest in those.

I mostly play games such as Dota2/WoW/Minecraft/Hawken and sometimes Guild Wars 2. Also, many newer release games.
I also create a lot of digital art on photoshop and also render a lot of animations and 3D objects. Currently I can max run these games above 60fps, but the reason I'm wanting to upgrade is because sometimes I stream and Record games. Mostly I'm still able to do this at smooth frames but as the new generation of games are becoming more demanding on the systems. I want to keep up with that.

My budget of upgrading will be ~£300 But I can spend a little more than that if it's really worth it.

The last 2 years or so i've been really out of touch with new hardware and currently have no clue which is the GO-TO upgrades these days. If anyone can help me out on this I would be so happy. You can save me hours of research

If there's any other information you need, let me know.

Thank you for any information you can provide me.
- Rixx

(Apologies for my bad English)

[Deleted]

65C on both the GPU and CPU is absolutely fine.

I know you said no interest in an SSD but I wonder why? OS will feel smoother/snappier, faster loading games and textures, coming back faster after a crash or reload and they're relatively cheap now, example:

Crucial MX100 256GB

Only other thing I could think of would be a better GPU, perhaps you could sell your current one? The games you play are not all that graphics intensive but it'll be an upgrade.

MSI Radeon R9 280X 3GB TWIN FROZR £211

A decent aftermarket cooler for your CPU maybe like you mentioned.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the reply.
Yeah I thought 65C was fine. But after quite a few hours my CPU starts hitting 70C. And if i OC back to 4.2Ghz like i used to i start hitting 82C straight away and that scares the hell out of me lol. So i think a new CPU cooler is a definite Must right now.

I would get a SSD but my MOBO only supports 2 of the new SATA connections at 6gb (i think) and one of them doesn't work for strange reasons. I currently have to use my gaming 1TB drive on the faster SATA connection. And i also use this for rendering large files. SSD drives are usually small in capacity. I use the other 4 connections for other HDD's. Maybe I should get a new motherboard.

Though i do agree that SSD is something i should consider at some point.

I think my GPU is ok. I don't think ill get much improvement upgrading that at the moment.

After some research just now i've found that there's 4th gen i5 i7. I might consider upgrading CPU. I'll have to go on some more research.

[Deleted]

HDD on SATA II or III makes no difference but if you got an SSD you would want that on the SATA III.

256GB SSD can hold a lot of stuff, granted your steam lib. could be huge, I don't know. On my 128GB I could have OS, programs, WoW, Rift and a few other smaller games.

I run the same CPU as you, I have no issues with any games I play. The new i5 is an upgrade but it's not that much and not worth spending ~£280 on the MB/CPU, unless you absolutely had to, something broke, you needed some specific feature from the Z97.

[Deleted]

Maybe I haven't researched into SSD enough and just off thinking how good they could be?. I'll have a look into them. I do notice a stutter when loading new areas on open world games. Maybe the SSD could fix that. Thanks I will look into this more.

[Deleted]

Definitely, big difference from loading into a crowded area in say WoW on SSD and then same thing with HDD.

[Deleted]

SSD excepted, your build is absolutly fine today for most usage.

upgrading the GPU can be usefull _IF_ your rendering software support acceleration for then. So you'll start crawling the editor forum to find benchmark and see if it's worth it compared to your current GPU.
You may also monitor your RAM usage when working with intensive rendering, as it can be a cheap upgrade.

The only way I can see a real upgrade to your current build is for switching for a high class CPU, like Xeon with 6-8-12 core, but it's absolutely not in your price range... and the current X79 plateform is quite old, meaning you may wait for the upcoming haswell-E intel arch (Q4)

- - - Updated - - -

also, you can gain 15-20% in rendering if your tools support multi threading, by upgrading the i5 3570K to a i7 3770K.
I personally think it's not worth the cost, but it's possible.

[Deleted]

Thank you both for your contributions. So it seems the best upgrades for me to get would be SSD drive for my games/OS and a possible RAM upgrade since they are indeed cheap. I guess my pc should be ok for another 2 years or so then. After that I'll go for big upgrades.

I've ordered my new CPU cooling. I want my cpu cores back up to 4.2ghz with less than 60c under load again.

Thanks again