Need help with choosing upgrades for my PC.

[Deleted]

Hi

With legion coming out this year, it's about time i upgrade my almost 4 year old pc parts.

My budget is 1200$

I of course play wow, but i also like to play many others games such as, SC2, D3, Hots, Battlefield.
I also want to be able to play games such as fallout 4 and Rainbow 6 Siege.

I play with 1920x1080 resolution and i want to be able to max out settings.

This are my current specs:

CPU Intel Core i7 3820 3.60GHz
RAM 16,0GB Triple-Channel DDR3 667MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. P9X79 (LGA2011)
Graphics
(Monitor) VG248 1920x1080 144Hz
(Monitor) SyncMaster 1920x1200 59Hz
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670

I also have this part and they're going to be reused.

Corsair H80 92.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM
Cooler Master Storm Trooper ATX Full Tower Case
Corsair Professional Gold 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

I also have keyboard, mouse etc.
The only parts i need to upgrade is my motherboard, cpu, ram and gpu.

[Miyagie]

The i7 3820 is today still a good CPU you wont see much perfomance increase from the new i5 6600K in gaming.
I would only switch the GPU to a R9 390 and maybe upgrade the SSD to a Samsung Evo 250-500GB.

Maybe upgrade CPU, RAM and Mainboard if you can sell your parts for a good price, if you fear this Hardware will break down the next year/s.

[Denkou]

Upgrade to an R9 390 or GTX 970, whichever is cheaper for you. They both are pretty equal in performance, the 390's extra VRAM won't make much of a difference at 1080p, the 970 uses a little less power if that matters at all for you. Both will be able to run just about any game maxxed out or very close to it at 1080p.

[Miyagie]

If he downsample or use mods you can use the extra VRAM.

[Artorius]

Keep everything and buy a better graphic's card. In your case you can get a 970 or 390. If you want to go safer then 390X or Fury.

[Aridn]

The only thing in your rig worth the money to upgrade is your GPU. Your sandy bridge CPU is still great, your ram is slow, but shouldn't matter much, and the rest of the parts are still pretty current.

As others have noted, the GTX 970 and R9 390 are great GPUs and provide really good performance at 1080p for all of the games you listed. You are in much better shape than you'd like to believe

[jrojason]

As others have said, your CPU and MoBo should be still handling things quite well. If you were to upgrade, and wanted to continue going i7 (not necessary unless some kind of editing or streaming is being done as well), you'd be looking at the 6700k and a z170 board. Prices are still quite high on skylake, so I wouldn't recommend that at the moment unless you REALLY want to stay up to date. Keep in mind, if you upgrade your board to a z170, you'll also have to buy DDR4 RAM, which isn't really a big deal because your RAM appears to be the worst part of your components besides your GPU... though I wouldn't suggest upgrading it either until you upgrade your board (Sandy Bridge isn't affected by RAM speeds as much as Haswell or Skylake).


In summary; Just get a 390/390x/FuryX/980ti depending on budget. If you want to spend a lot of money and stay current, also grab a Z170 board with i5-6600k (if only gaming) or i7-6700k (if streaming/editing/etc) along with some good DDR4 RAM. Don't expect more than a moderate increase in performance from going to Skylake though. An up-to-date beast GPU will do wonders for you.

[Deleted]

Thanks for all the replies.

I will get a new gpu and probably overclock my cpu for now.

[Artorius]

If you were to upgrade, and wanted to continue going i7 (not necessary unless some kind of editing or streaming is being done as well), you'd be looking at the 6700k and a z170 board.

If you consider that the 5820K is at the same price or cheaper, and it has 2 more real cores and can OC'd. The 6700K doesn't make any sense whatsoever for the cases that you'd want something better than the 6600K or 6500.

[Deleted]

If you consider that the 5820K is at the same price or cheaper, and it has 2 more real cores and can OC'd. The 6700K doesn't make any sense whatsoever for the cases that you'd want something better than the 6600K or 6500.

Thats BS, for Gaming alone a 6700K beats a 5820K and a X99 System is always more expensive than a Z170. I really see no reason going for X99 unless you need the extra 2 Cores for professional Video-Editing etc.

I'd say go Z170 because Benchmark have shown that fast DDR4 RAM (3000+) can improve Performance in some Games quite a lot.

[Deleted]

a X99 System is always more expensive than a Z170..

In the US prices are pretty much comparable for 6700k/Z170 vs 5820k/X99. In the EU the 6700k would be the cheaper option.

[Lathais]

Thats BS, for Gaming alone a 6700K beats a 5820K and a X99 System is always more expensive than a Z170. I really see no reason going for X99 unless you need the extra 2 Cores for professional Video-Editing etc.

I'd say go Z170 because Benchmark have shown that fast DDR4 RAM (3000+) can improve Performance in some Games quite a lot.

For gaming alone, other than a few outliers like WoW, CPU doesn't really matter tbh, as long as it's Quad Core, though in most games, even an i3 can keep up. There will not be much of a noticeable difference between the 2, even in something like WoW that is CPU dependent.

Also, you may want to check prices before spouting nonsense. An X99 build is currently about the same as a Z170 build.

Z170:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($418.57 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! PURE ROCK 51.4 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($34.90 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3P ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($89.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($45.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $589.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-13 10:20 EST-0500

X99:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($374.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! PURE ROCK 51.4 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($34.90 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X99-UD3P (rev. 1.0) ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($153.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($45.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $609.85
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-13 10:22 EST-0500

$20 more this week, but it changes week to week of course. This was also not really looking for any sales or anything at all.


In addition, X99 platform uses DDR4 RAM as well. So using that as a reason to stick to Z170 is quite absurd really.

[Evildeffy]

In addition, X99 platform uses DDR4 RAM as well. So using that as a reason to stick to Z170 is quite absurd really.

Yeah but we're not aware of if Haswell-E can utilize DDR4 to the same extent as Skylake.. there's no real tests out on that yet.
But if Haswell is a give away then chances are DDR4 has no appreciable effect to improving gaming performance where it does do so for Skylake.

That said .. if you can get the same price 6700K vs. 5820K (or close to) I would still go 5820K due to various reasons.

[Artorius]

It makes no sense to buy a 6700K right now.

If you're buying a i7 that's because you want the HT for something. And if you're buying a K model you want to OC.

For the usage that the HT can make a difference, mainly professional work or streaming, the 5820K is in an completely different category due to having 2 extra real cores.

On top of that it can also OC and they'll do virtually the same at games, which even i3s or pentiums will do the same. It's irrelevant.

If you don't need HT and just want to game, the 6500 is the best option. If you want a K version to play things like WoW which are exceptions, then the 6600K. The 6700K's HT is useless at this scenario.

So yeah. At any scenario that the 6600K -> 6700K makes a difference, the 6600K -> 5820K makes a bigger difference. And you're paying pretty much the same for a lot more.

[Remilia]

Recently more games are utilizing multi-cores a lot better than well, a few years ago so it's not exactly a terrible investment especially when you consider the better utilization that DX12 has.
Saw someone made this list, it is lacking Skylake for some reason.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2460228

[Deleted]

Recently more games are utilizing multi-cores a lot better than well, a few years ago so it's not exactly a terrible investment especially when you consider the better utilization that DX12 has.
Saw someone made this list, it is lacking Skylake for some reason.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2460228

Well, how long do we have 4 Core CPUs now? 10 Years? And still its only since the "new" Consoles that more Games actually make use of more than 2 Cores o_0
I would not count on Games making much use of 6-8 Cores soon. A 4 Core CPU with HT and a high Core-Clock like a 6700K will always be the best choice for gaming.

[Artorius]

Well, how long do we have 4 Core CPUs now? 10 Years? And still its only since the "new" Consoles that more Games actually make use of more than 2 Cores o_0
I would not count on Games making much use of 6-8 Cores soon. A 4 Core CPU with HT and a high Core-Clock like a 6700K will always be the best choice for gaming.

No.

Best choice for gaming is a 6500. Best choice for WoW or other stupid CPU-bound games is the 6600K.

6700K is a CPU that doesn't make any sense because you can get a 5820K for the same price.

Why? Because at everything that the HT isn't useless and the 6700K is a better option than the 6600K, mainly professional multi-core software like modelling or video editing or rendering, the 5820K is an entire universe ahead of the 6700K due to the 2 cores difference between them. Which is a 50% difference at number of cores.

- - - Updated - - -

And @Remilia, I saw those charts some months ago and I think that some of the performance difference the 5960X is putting comes from its bigger caches as well.

I think the best comparison that can be made regarding core count and gaming performance is using a 5960X at all scenarios:

2 cores and no HT, 2 cores and HT;
4 cores and no HT, 4 cores and HT;
6 Cores and HT;
8 cores and HT.

Then we can conclude something for sure since everything else will be the same.

[Kagthul]

Thats BS, for Gaming alone a 6700K beats a 5820K and a X99 System is always more expensive than a Z170. I really see no reason going for X99 unless you need the extra 2 Cores for professional Video-Editing etc.

You never tire of being completely wrong, do you?

Z170

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/qG9xvK
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/qG9xvK/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($399.99 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.44 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($135.99 @ B&H)
Total: $565.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-05 02:48 EST-0500

X99

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/n4p7sY
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/n4p7sY/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($374.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.44 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock X99 Extreme3 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($159.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $564.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-05 02:49 EST-0500

Those look to be about the same price to me. Within pennies. And that's only because the i7 6700K is on sale this weekend at NCIX - theyre normally ~40$ more expensive.

I'd say go Z170 because Benchmark have shown that fast DDR4 RAM (3000+) can improve Performance in some Games quite a lot.

... really, lets see one. Go ahead, we'll wait.

Skylake gains a lot more from faster RAM than previous CPUs, but we're still talking about less than 4% difference in the very best scenarios, and that's comparing base DDR4 (2133) to 3000mhz+. Oh.. know how many of the scenarios are games?

Zero many.

[Karon]

because DDR4 support is the only reason to buy a Z170 plattform.

Screw X99 and add-in M.2 PCIe slots.

[Deleted]

because DDR4 support is the only reason to buy a Z170 plattform.

Screw X99 and add-in M.2 PCIe slots.

Eh what do you mean, both got ddr4 and some x99 have m2?