I wanted to get my old rig running some newer games for my family. I’ve only done pretty builts before so I have no idea if it can be upgraded.
I wanted to get my old rig running some newer games for my family. I’ve only done pretty builts before so I have no idea if it can be upgraded.
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Depends on the level of gaming performance you want to achieve.
Replacing the CPU for a cheap (used) 6th/7th i7, and swapping the GPU to something around GTX 1070 levels of performance will already make something capable of running mostly anything from a few years ago without problem. Very modern and demanding games would be more difficult.
It could be upgraded but I’m not sure it would be worth it. GPU is holding the system back the most, but the entire rig is pretty outdated at this point.
It’s done. Just upgrade the whole system
Protip: Any PC built/bought in the last 10 years can always be made relevant again and capable of modern games by upgrading the GPU. Games depend less on samey CPUs anymore. Also devs don’t exploit core game design concepts by making the engines any more sophisticated than they have ever been because nobody gives af as long as whatever is new looks pretty.
Personally I would build a new pc. New motherboard/cpu/ram/gpu/storage and psu. And new case if the current one isn’t great/usable/outdated.
Edit: and a new monitor don’t forget about that. Other things like microphone,headphones,speakers, mouse and keyboard are in my opinion also important for the experience but not the most vital thing to replace if you’re on a budget or happy with what you have of course.
What games do you want to run? ‘As is’ this will be fine for the typical e-sports titles at 1080p. Going up to a GTX1060 would give you good performance bump, and an i7 6700 if you find one cheap. As long as PSU is half decent this would keep it going a bit longer. You won’t be playing the latest triple A games though.
Me reading this comment section with a worse PC:
You can get a used GTX 1060 6GB / GTX 1070, which would improve the performance dramatically and would be okay with an i5 6500, but that’s about it.
SCSI…
When I upgraded mine, I had an i7-2600 and GTX 560. I knew I wanted to upgrade so I said screw it the a then-flagship 2080Ti in there and played as happy as a clam. It was a ridiculous setup and I still get a chuckle out of it.
It honestly handled things just fine because I wasn’t terribly pick about framerates. Then one day I was playing Just Cause 3 and an indoor part with a lot of physics objects was taking all that poor i7 could give and I decided to upgrade the CPU, Memory, and Mainboard.
I did end up going overkill on that too and had an i9-9900ks running under a broken Intel stock cooler, which was also hilarious but not great so I got an AIO a little while later.
Then I needed more storage, saw a case I liked on sale, wanted more fans, more storage and more storage, and added a custom water cooling loop but that’s getting outside the point: you don’t have to do it all at once. I’d just upgrade the GPU to something spicy and if it’s failing somewhere else, upgrade that later on down the line.
If you are ok on medium settings and 1080p/60, you’ll probably be ok. Try it first, you have nothing to lose.
I’d still be using an i5-6500 with my 3070 if i didnt find a free i5-8500 cleaning out a vacant apartment 2 months ago.
Theoretically could put a 7700k into that motherboard and upgrade the GPU a bit. If you’re on a budget you could string it along a bit more.
Replace GPU with a 2060.
You might extend the life of this pc with a cheap 20 series card. That said, I would wait and save some money for a fresh build.
Depends on the game and what performance you expect.
I’d go for a rx580 2048sp from aliexpress, around 60$ for that upgrade (performance are the same as 1060 that other people are suggesting for much less); counting you can also make a bit of money back from selling the gpu it’s a really low cost upgrade for a nice bump in performance
I would definitely upgrade the entire system
Would make a decent enough home server or NAS. For gaming, I wouldn’t put any money into it.
Depends on the gaming you do
best thing you can do is a new gpu.
You can get an i7 7700k and a better gpu for some better performance. In the end it depends on your budget.
Just let me die
Let her rest. She’s led a good long life.
It ain’t dead, you could throw a used 6600k and rx 480 in there for under a hundred bucks and revitalize it as a mid tier machine. Think the total cost would be around 80 bucks for those parts
I have an i7-3770 and a GTX 1060 and it still a very capable 1080p machine. Your rig is definitely still worthy of a 10xx or a 20xx series GPU if you can find one cheap enough
If this is just for casual gaming then I see no reason not to just get a used card like a 1660 Super or 2060 and you’ll be able to run most games at low/medium settings. A used SATA ssd would also help greatly. I personally wouldn’t buy new because all of the new drives are NVME and it’s not worth buying new for something thats already very outdated. Or just buy an NVME drive and adapt it to SATA, that way it can be carried over to an upgraded system.
What’s the budget? What kinda games are you looking to play at better FPS?
I’d say you’re on the cusp of having a mostly obsolete system for modern gaming but with a small budget, you might be able to get some reasonable upgrades that could get you a couple more years of okay performance at many new games, and much better performance at older games.
For instance, the best CPU that is compatible for that motherboard is an intel 7900x that still sells used for around $125-150. A more reasonable 7700 can be had for about $80. Also a 1080 or 1080 Ti is gunna run you another $150-250 with questionable longevity. Reasonable low price of $230 you can extend the life with an generous increase in performance.
At that price, I would definitely consider buying/building something new. For $500, just twice that upgrade price. You can get brand new parts that will blow the pants off your upgraded build and offer the option to expand to much better part and performance down the road if you ever discover you need/want more power.
There’s never such a thing as “future proofing” in PC building but getting a cheap 12th gen intel or 6000 series AMD can be significantly upgraded to something that will most likely be effective for the next 5-7 years.
Having 16 GB of RAM you could go for a GPU upgrade, like a 1070, 1660S/Ti, or even a 2060. That would get you playing at 1080p fine, though your CPU might become the bottleneck especially if you’re expecting high framerate.
I wouldn’t go for a RTX 3000 / Radeon RX 6000 or newer GPU because getting their full performance potential relies on ReBAR/Smart Acess Memory and you won’t have that with your CPU.