2012 PC. Upgrade components or start anew?

[Burnster]

Hello everyone.

I've finally come to the point where I want to replace my PC, I built it with the help of this forum almost a decade ago, and I'm hoping everyone can help me once again! My PC has served me very very well, it just keeps chugging along. I've managed (sometimes slowly) to play all the games I have been interested in. I am by no means a PC guru, I know some basics and enough to assemble the components together lol.

After 9 years of this PC, my life has changed a lot. Two kids, house, career, my playtime is random, and sometimes very limited. I'm not looking to Overclock, I'm not looking to trick anything out, I'm not looking for the best of the best! I'm just looking for something that will let me play the games of the future that interest me, while maintaining a fairly high frame rate / graphic setting.

Here is my current PC specs;

CPU - i7 - 4770K @ 3.50 Ghz
MOBO - Gigabyte z87x-UD3H-CF
RAM - 8 GB 1333Mhz DDR3
GPU - GTX 970
PSU - Seasonic S12ii - 620 Bronze
Case - Corsair Carbide 500r
SSD - 240GB (unsure of brand)
HDD - 1 TB (unsure of brand)
Monitors - 2x Asus VE247 / 1920 x 1080 / 60hz


Budget - $1000 to $1500 CAD
Resolution 1080 for now, maybe 1440 in the future?
System Purpose (gaming, workstation, HTPC, etc) - Gaming
If a gaming system, what games and settings are desired? - World of Warcraft, Path of Exile, What ever i find interesting really
Any other intensive software or special things you do (Frequent video encoding, 3D modeling, etc) - No
Do you plan to overclock? - No
Country - Canada
Preferred Stores / Sites - Amazon, Memory Express, Canada Computers
Parts that can be reused - Unsure
Do you need an OS? - Unsure
Do you need peripherals (e.g. monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, etc)? - Not currently, maybe monitors in the future

Few points to the above questions,

- I have windows on my SSD, I don't know where the discs are. I'm guessing if I get a new SSD I will need a new windows copy?
- I originally built the computer with a GTX 580, I cant remember the reason but I replaced it with a GTX 970.
- I would like a smaller case compared to the Corsair Carbide 500r, I would also like a fully modular power supply.

Thank you everyone.

[Promethieus]

Hah! I am almost in the same boat as you, minus the kids, the house and the career (lmao). Same specs, but for me I don't have any issues with games.
I had a 580 the PC came with and upgraded to a 980 FTW edition eventually. Now the motherboard and CPU are so old that if I upgraded the graphics card any further I'd just be bottlenecked by everything else.

IMO (could be a bad opinion) when it's time to replace the motherboard you might as well just start fresh.

I'll be following this thread!

Edited to add: If you're really wanting to be lazy, you could just spec a PC out at something like Cyberpower PC and upgrade that over time. That's what I did!

[Flatspriest]

IMO (could be a bad opinion) when it's time to replace the motherboard you might as well just start fresh.

I fully agree here. Once the motherboard is needing replaced, it is definitely time to buy new rather than upgrade.

[Azerate]

Yes, just get everything new. CPU and GPU are the main thing you always want to exchange of course so that's a no brainer, but then the new CPU will require a new motherboard, and that will also require new memory, which would be a nice upgrade for you anyway (ddr3 in 2021 is not the best idea, and you won't be able to put that into a new board anyway). New generation SSD might also require a new motherboard - the new m2 ssd's have completely different slots.

Obviously you keep your storage hdd and maybe the old ssd for less demanding games, but get everything else new, and a new ssd as well.

- I have windows on my SSD, I don't know where the discs are. I'm guessing if I get a new SSD I will need a new windows copy?

No. There is software that lets you transfer an existing windows installation to a new ssd/hdd. People who transition from HDD to SSD for the first time usually use that. I'm sure you can do that to transfer from SSD to a new SSD as well. Might be worth starting afresh though - your choice.

IMO (could be a bad opinion) when it's time to replace the motherboard you might as well just start fresh.

Pretty much yeah. And these days it happens much quicker than before. These days it's like 2 generations of CPUs after which they start requiring a new socket and thus a new motherboard

[jellmoo]

Honestly, I'd repurpose the monitors since there's nothing wrong with them for now (you can look into high refresh 1440 down the road), repurpose the drives (if you have enough capacity fir your needs), and repurpose the video card. While it would be great to upgrade the video card, it is just about the worst time to do it. Prices are sky high, available is practically zero, and a 970 is better than nothing.

Concentrate on getting a new case, new PSU, new mobo and new RAM. Plan ahead for what you eventually want to pop in there GPU wise, but for now just get some great bang for your buck options.

Obviously, what you do with your machine will influence what you should get. But there are great options going both the Intel and AMD routes.

[Exkrementor]

To be honest, that system is not that bad for 1080p60hz gaming. You cant buy a GPU right now anyway so you will need to keep/reuse the GTX970 for a while but it is still a decent 1080p GPU. You can play newer games on mid-high and expect around 60fps.
The I7-4770K is also not that bad. The worst part is that it uses DDR3 RAM and you want to have 16GB RAM today. Dont know how reasonable it is to buy new DDR3 RAM since its almost as expensive as DDR4 RAM.

Also 1500 CAD is not that much for a new gaming PC so Ill try to put together a good value build for 1080p gaming that is capable of 1080p144hz OR 1440p60hz as well.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($249.00 @ Canada Computers)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($37.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME B550-PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard ($174.50 @ Vuugo)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory ($124.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Crucial P2 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($77.50 @ Vuugo)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB GAMING OC Video Card
Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($99.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Total: $763.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-03-15 21:22 EDT-0400

Notes on that build:

As I said GPUs are not available right now so you need to wait until you can buy one. That GPU should cost around 700-800 CAD. I dont know your tax situation in canada.

That PSU is semi modular but that one non-modular cable is necessary anyway, so why bother?

You can buy new Win10 Keys for 10-20$ on keyseller sites.

Your SSD and HDD can be reused.

The old case can be reused as well but you said you wanted something smaller. Cases are more a personal preference thing so you should probably decide for yourself.

[Kagthul]

And these days it happens much quicker than before. These days it's like 2 generations of CPUs after which they start requiring a new socket and thus a new motherboard

Its not "quicker than before" unless by "before" you mean "over 10 years ago".

Its been that way since ... oh, the 2000 series chips.

To be honest, that system is not that bad for 1080p60hz gaming. You cant buy a GPU right now anyway so you will need to keep/reuse the GTX970 for a while but it is still a decent 1080p GPU. You can play newer games on mid-high and expect around 60fps.
The I7-4770K is also not that bad. The worst part is that it uses DDR3 RAM and you want to have 16GB RAM today.

Eh, 16GB is not that essential if you're just gaming (and not doing anything else.. which is all you're going to be doing on a 4770K anyway). 8GB is still fine. Gamer's Nexus (and Paul, and Jay) have all done videos on it, again, recently. RAM only affects performance when you dont have enough and have to swap in and out all the time (and speed/timing can matter a ton for Ryzen, but for DDR3, its kinda moot).

I wouldn't send any money down that hole.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($249.00 @ Canada Computers)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($37.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME B550-PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard ($174.50 @ Vuugo)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory ($124.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Crucial P2 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($77.50 @ Vuugo)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB GAMING OC Video Card
Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($99.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Total: $763.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-03-15 21:22 EDT-0400

Notes on that build:

There's nothing inherently wrong with the build.. though i dont see the need to replace the Seasonic S12II. Its a perfectly good PSU, and unless it is actually the full 9 years old itll be fine.

No need to replace the SSD either, unless its no longer big enough. If thats the case, then the one chosen is just fine.

If i were going to have a criticism its that you could get a 10400F (which performs within about ~5% of the R5 3600) for substantially cheaper than the 3600. You could even skip to a 10600K (which will outperform the 3600) for only slightly more than the 3600. But the 3600 isnt going to be trash or anything... just potentially 125$ more expensive for not a lot more performance (and that's if you keep the same cooler; the 10400F you can easily get away with the stock cooler).

For an Intel option (this is not "better" - itll perform about the same - just a little cheaper).

PCPartPicker Part List: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/PFPcrr

CPU: Intel Core i5-10400F 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor ($171.25 @ shopRBC)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 35.14 CFM CPU Cooler ($39.99 @ Canada Computers)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B460M DS3H Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard ($129.80 @ Vuugo)
Memory: OLOy 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($91.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($49.75 @ Vuugo)
Total: $482.78
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-03-16 02:39 EDT-0400

This assumes you will re-use:
PSU
GPU (temporarily, until stock is availabe).
Storage (if you are satisfied with your current storage situation, if not, any 500GB-1TB SSD in the Crucial P2/WD Blue price range will do you fine).

It will perform... slightly worse than a 3600 - but in all cases we're talking above 100fps, and its very unlikely to ever make a huge difference, particularly if you jump to 1440p which starts shifting the bottleneck to the GPU. I dont think the 3600 is really worth the extra ~125$ CAD it costs, and if you've got that kind of money in the budget - just jump to the 10600K or the 5600X (10600K iis showing at 280$ CAD, which is a steal given that it will trade blows with the 5600X which is quite a bit more expensive (500+ CAD!) - of the two the 10600K is a much better buy right now, even if you arent going to Overclock (as it will turbo to 4.8Ghz), so you dont NEED to get a Z490 motherboard and could make do with the same B460 i linked above.

[Azerate]

Its not "quicker than before" unless by "before" you mean "over 10 years ago".

Its been that way since ... oh, the 2000 series chips.

I'm 30 years old, so yeah I meant over 10 years ago. I don't change my pc gear too often but I've been building them since I was pretty much a kid still. I found it really weird when I did upgrades the last 2 times when I found out you pretty much have to buy a new motherboard whenever you buy cpu upgrades nowadays. Pretty annoying and one cant help to think it's just done intentionally to make people replace more stuff at once

[Viikkis]

so you dont NEED to get a Z490 motherboard and could make do with the same B460 i linked above.

3200Mhz is overkill for B board. It will default to 2666Mhz with the i5 10400 paired with B-chip no matter what XMP profile says. Shouldn't be any issues though it will just run slower.

[Kagthul]

I'm 30 years old, so yeah I meant over 10 years ago. I don't change my pc gear too often but I've been building them since I was pretty much a kid still. I found it really weird when I did upgrades the last 2 times when I found out you pretty much have to buy a new motherboard whenever you buy cpu upgrades nowadays. Pretty annoying and one cant help to think it's just done intentionally to make people replace more stuff at once

On average, with CPUs lasting as long as they do now, there's no point in upgrading every 2 years. Youll gain next to nothing. You're going to get 5-ish years out of a computer even if you want to stay on a "high end" performance curve.

You're almost assuredly going to want to upgrade your MoBo after 5 years anyway - due to new technologies being deployed to the motherboard (like USB-C, 3.2 Gen 2x2, Thunderbolt, PCIe 4.0, faster RAM compatability, etc.) if you're bothering to upgrade anyway (if staying on the high end of the performance curve; if you dont need to do that, you can fairly easily get 7+ years out of a modern CPU for daily driving and non-super-intensive tasks).

Its a complete non-issue, and the number of people that make an issue out of it like it matters is silly. (Also, i'd challenge you to find a time when you could upgrade a CPU (to a modern CPU) in a motherboard that was 6+ years old, pretty much ever in history - MAYBE Socket 775?).

- - - Updated - - -

3200Mhz is overkill for B board. It will default to 2666Mhz with the i5 10400 paired with B-chip no matter what XMP profile says. Shouldn't be any issues though it will just run slower.

Its just not much cheaper (which is why i picked the kit i did), and depending on which CPU you go with, it actually supports 2933 (i7s and i9s default to 2933) on B460 and H470.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Man, the problem with a new build now is video cards are going to be rough to find and expensive if you do.

I might suggest just upgrading your motherboard / CPU / memory core right now and just deal with the 970 for the moment even though its not insanely ideal. Your game list benefit a good bit from CPU and the video card is more than enough for now to push at 1080p. When you decide to make the jump to 1440p that 970 probably will will be good enough for that game list, but if its down the road a bit and the silicon situation is a little better you could probably drop a newer graphics card in at the sametime since its a quick and easy thing to do.

With that said you probably could drop like 200-300 bucks into that system to keep it doing fine with your current game list as well. Like 70-80 bucks to get yourself like 16gigs of ddr3 ram (like 30-40 bucks if you can find a matching stick), maybe a better cpu cooler so you can put 400-500mhz onto that processor with an overclock for like 60-100 bucks, and then maybe for a bonus just drop like a 100 on an SSD for the data drive (and it can easy go to the next system too) and replace that aging hard drive. I normally wouldn't suggest this when you consider you could just keep your in mind budget and build something completely new but I fear you will just be stuck on that 970 with the time being, the prices of a lot of PC stuff is just higher right now/harder to find considering the silicon situation, and if you can just stretch this system another year or so you probably can get onto the newest AMD platform with a new GPU for like a 1000 bucks and be set for another 10 with a couple viable upgrade paths going forward that wouldn't require full rebuilds from that point.

[Exkrementor]

Eh, 16GB is not that essential if you're just gaming (and not doing anything else.. which is all you're going to be doing on a 4770K anyway). 8GB is still fine. Gamer's Nexus (and Paul, and Jay) have all done videos on it, again, recently. RAM only affects performance when you dont have enough and have to swap in and out all the time (and speed/timing can matter a ton for Ryzen, but for DDR3, its kinda moot).

I wouldn't send any money down that hole.

Wrong. OP is playing WoW. I played WoW with 8GB RAM 2 years ago and I noticed some random stutters and freezes. (My system was a I5-6600K@4.3ghz, 8GB 2133mhz, GTX970)
I upgraded to 16 GB RAM and the stutters were gone. Turns out my system needs about 11 GB RAM for WoW. And I wasnt even doing much else on the side. Discord, Teamspeak and like 3 Chrome Tabs. 16GB RAM is the minium requirement in 2021. Unless you only play games from 2009.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the build.. though i dont see the need to replace the Seasonic S12II.

OP said he wanted a new modular PSU. Otherwise that PSU is fine, yes.

[pansertjald]

Wrong. OP is playing WoW. I played WoW with 8GB RAM 2 years ago and I noticed some random stutters and freezes. (My system was a I5-6600K@4.3ghz, 8GB 2133mhz, GTX970)
I upgraded to 16 GB RAM and the stutters were gone. Turns out my system needs about 11 GB RAM for WoW. And I wasnt even doing much else on the side. Discord, Teamspeak and like 3 Chrome Tabs. 16GB RAM is the minium requirement in 2021. Unless you only play games from 2009.




OP said he wanted a new modular PSU. Otherwise that PSU is fine, yes.

No its not. Please go somewhere alse with your BS

[crakerjack]

With how bad the gpu market is, I’d recommend buying a prebuilt on sale. 3060 ti, 3070 or 6700xt which comes out in a bit.

[Daedius]

I'd just do up a new PC.

[Exkrementor]

No its not. Please go somewhere alse with your BS

Yes it is. Please go somewhere else with your BS. Especially since you have clearly no idea what you are talking about.

[Kagthul]

Yes it is. Please go somewhere else with your BS. Especially since you have clearly no idea what you are talking about.

Yes, we should clearly take your completely anecdotal evidence (that, btw, doesn't coincide with our own) and not the rigorous testing done by Gamer's Nexus.

Or Jay. Or LTT. Or Paul.

Just because you opened Task Manager and saw 11GB of RAM comitted doesnt mean the application in question actually NEEDS 11GB of RAM. The OS doesn't flush RAM until it needs to.

Maybe.. take a little time and educate yourself.

Or not.

No skin off my nose if you continue to make a fool out of yourself.

[pansertjald]

Yes it is. Please go somewhere else with your BS. Especially since you have clearly no idea what you are talking about.

8GB vs 16GB vs 32GB RAM | How much RAM do you need for GAMING in 2021?

Looks like games in 2021 runs just fine on 8GB and even with some apps running

[Exkrementor]

Yes, we should clearly take your completely anecdotal evidence (that, btw, doesn't coincide with our own) and not the rigorous testing done by Gamer's Nexus.

Or Jay. Or LTT. Or Paul.

Just because you opened Task Manager and saw 11GB of RAM comitted doesnt mean the application in question actually NEEDS 11GB of RAM. The OS doesn't flush RAM until it needs to.

Maybe.. take a little time and educate yourself.

Or not.

No skin off my nose if you continue to make a fool out of yourself.

OK, have fun with your 8 GB RAM then. No point in arguing with internet people who "believe" in things when you know the facts. Also maybe watch the whole videos and try to understand them.

[pansertjald]

OK, have fun with your 8 GB RAM then. No point in arguing with internet people who "believe" in things when you know the facts. Also maybe watch the whole videos and try to understand them.

Then come with some evidence of your claims....... You say you can't game with 8GB of RAM in 2021, but my video shows, that you can game just fine with 8GB of RAM