Upgrade or start from scratch?

[redderz1]

Hi.

I primarily play wow. I built this myself in May 2013!. I've not kept myself up to date with new technology in the mean time and am not even sure if the old "Wow is a cpu game" is still a thing. I'm looking to upgrade as its getting noisy after 4+ years and im having occasional trouble with screen freezing and the MoBo reading incorrect temps.

CPU - i5 4670k (3.40ghz)- Haswell - Socket 1150
MoBo - Asus z87k
Ram - Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 8gb (4x2)
GPU - Asus GTX760 OC CU11 2gb

In terms of upgrades I was thinking of a GTX 1060 6gb. Obviously to upgrade the MoBo I'd be constrained by the need for Socket 1150 by the CPU. I also want to add some more memory up to 16gb and more then likely an SSD.

Question is this....

Is it worth upgrading around the CPU and the constraints that brings or can I do better for WoW with a newer CPU and MoBo? Also is a GTX1060 6gb the best bang for buck I can get or is it worth looking at AMD GPU's?

Thanks

RD

[Deleted]

If I was in your shoes (and I'm close) all I would do is get SSD then try to trouble shot the rest. Your cpu and probably gpu should be more than enough for wow alone

where did you get idea that your mobo needs replacing? How do you know temps are incorrect? If system got loud and temps are high first thing to do is clean radiator, fan, re seat the cooler with fresh paste (remove old first and clean the cpu with spirit). This should fix noisiness and temps.

Now about these freezes - you have to say something more about them. When do they happen - in game, anywhere. Do they go away? Is it short freeze (longer stutter) or does it end with reset/bosd? Is sound still playing when it is happening? From my personal limited experience most of these are caused by either HDD going bad and freezes whole system to load some shit into ram or psu is going bad and fails to power gpu with juice it needs.

Long story short I would not build new system, I would probably not upgrade GPU if its just for wow, I would get SSD and troubleshot rest. Gl

[Uurdz]

Hi.

I primarily play wow. I built this myself in May 2013!. I've not kept myself up to date with new technology in the mean time and am not even sure if the old "Wow is a cpu game" is still a thing. I'm looking to upgrade as its getting noisy after 4+ years and im having occasional trouble with screen freezing and the MoBo reading incorrect temps.

CPU - i5 4670k (3.40ghz)- Haswell - Socket 1150
MoBo - Asus z87k
Ram - Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 8gb (4x2)
GPU - Asus GTX760 OC CU11 2gb

In terms of upgrades I was thinking of a GTX 1060 6gb. Obviously to upgrade the MoBo I'd be constrained by the need for Socket 1150 by the CPU. I also want to add some more memory up to 16gb and more then likely an SSD.

Question is this....

Is it worth upgrading around the CPU and the constraints that brings or can I do better for WoW with a newer CPU and MoBo? Also is a GTX1060 6gb the best bang for buck I can get or is it worth looking at AMD GPU's?

Thanks

RD

I upgraded my Ram to 4x 8gb from 2x 4gb about a year ago and it made a massive difference for me with general game crash/slowness issues. Highly recommend you do this however, can't promise it'll fix your problems.

Having an SSD means things load crazy fast, unsure if it impact actual gameplay & i just upgraded from a 960 gtx to a 1060 GTX 6gb after researching (just bought it) and felt that was the right upgrade call.

Edit: If you're in Australia, the ASUS 1060 GTX 6GB is going for $365 from MWAVE for the Black Friday sales. Was going to get the $419 Gigabyte Windforce but the price savings was huge!

[Deleted]

Well, Wow still is pretty much a CPU game that doesn't even scale well on multiple cores, so for the best performance you'd be looking at the highest clock rates and best IPCs, which at the moment still means Intel. Having said that, your CPU should handle WoW fairly well especially if you overclock it.

As for upgrades, I wouldn't upgrade the RAM on the current MB - that money is wasted when you upgrade the mainboard eventually. Also if playing WoW is your main use case you don't really need 16GB.

A GPU upgrade would carry over to a new system, but it won't do all that much for WoW - other titles may benefit from it though.

An SSD would do nothing for the FPS but it reduces loading times and overall startup times dramatically. This is something I wouldn't go without on a new system. It's a bit of work though as you'd have to reinstall onto the new disk if you want the OS to benefit from the SSD as well. You'd need a bigger SSD then (256GB+) but it's money well spent IMHO.

So if you're looking for an incremental upgrade I'd go SSD -> GPU -> MB/CPU. This is for WoW - if you have games that are more GPU dependent getting the GPU first is an option as well.

Also look into overclocking your CPU if you haven't done so yet, because that can give you quite a boost for little (new cpu cooler) or no money.

[Sorshen]

WoW is still extremely cpu intensive. Extra ram won't do anything noticeable. SSD for qol, eventually a decent cooler to overclock the cpu. GTX 1060 won't really make a huge difference in WoW, but it will for other games.

[Blackmist]

Get a SSD. A GTX 1060 is about twice as powerful as your current card.

CPU is fine for pretty much all gaming.

[redderz1]

where did you get idea that your mobo needs replacing? How do you know temps are incorrect? If system got loud and temps are high first thing to do is clean radiator, fan, re seat the cooler with fresh paste (remove old first and clean the cpu with spirit). This should fix noisiness and temps.

Now about these freezes - you have to say something more about them. When do they happen - in game, anywhere. Do they go away? Is it short freeze (longer stutter) or does it end with reset/bosd? Is sound still playing when it is happening? From my personal limited experience most of these are caused by either HDD going bad and freezes whole system to load some shit into ram or psu is going bad and fails to power gpu with juice it needs.

Apologies. Should have gone into that. I have an intermittent fault where the screen just freezes. Whatever is on the screen is stuck there with pc still running. I say intermittent because it hasn't happend for two weeks now. Then, ill have a day when it happens 3-4 times. Next day....Nothing. The only thing to do is hit the power button when this happens. I tried to troubleshoot this with the help of these forums a few months back. I stress tested with Fumark and Prime95 but didn't arrive at any conclusions.

I felt it was the MoBo because the mobo was showing false temp readings. It would show temps up to 113 degrees when it clearly wasn't anywhere near that. Right now with wow running its showing 28 degrees. I had the feeling that maybe faulty temp sensor was causing problems.

- - - Updated - - -

WoW is still extremely cpu intensive. Extra ram won't do anything noticeable. SSD for qol, eventually a decent cooler to overclock the cpu. GTX 1060 won't really make a huge difference in WoW, but it will for other games.

I probably should have mentioned i have a Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo. Is this up to scratch for overclock on my CPU?

[Deleted]

Go new. The only part you'd be able to reuse is basically your card. Both Intel and AMD (spit!) just released new socket platforms that's gonna last for a couple of generations, so you can eventually upgrade down the road if required. Even a budget build with a 1060 and a i5 8600k would out perform your current system by miles.
No sense in putting money into a system that's not compatible with anything moving forward.

Edit: Provided you have the money, of course. If not, then a card is obviously the way to go

[Deleted]

I probably should have mentioned i have a Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo. Is this up to scratch for overclock on my CPU?

Absolutely. As long as you don't want to shatter overclocking records, it should work just fine.

People seem to be able to get 4.2-4.4Ghz on a 4670k with it. Note that there is no guarantee that your CPU will be able to reach those levels, though.