Hey Guys I'm sitting (not literally) on a build I put together around 5 years ago and it's now really feeling the strain when I play games outside of League of Legends (GTA, H1Z1, all new games literally have to be set to bare minimum specs and even then runs laggy) I'd like some advice please on what I should get to reap the most amount of increase in performance for the least investment. Ideally if i can get away with just a SSD, GFX card and 4k Monitor? Budget: Loose - the less I can spend/replace the better but would be willing to go closer to all out if need be. As i say, if i can get away with the below, plus a gtx 980, £300-400 monitor plus a 256 SSD, bonus! Otherwise i'll probably have to downgrade to 970 and then get mobo + chip. So i guess around £1000ish? Main uses of intended build: Gaming Previous build information (list details of parts): According to my order history I have the following: Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) Asus P7P55D-E Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard Corsair Memory Vengeance Jet Black Low Profile 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 520W Seasonic M12II-520 Mod 1GB PALIT GTX460 SONIC PLAT OC Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case 1TB Samsung Spinpoint HD Monitor resolution: Ideally going towards 4K Will you be overclocking: No Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): No Any help mucho appreciato! Also, would my PSU hold up or would that need upgrading too? Thanks
If you're thinking of going 4k with a 970/980 with an old i5 clocked at 2.8Ghz then I think you will run into CPU bottlenecks long before the 970/980 will be able to stretch its legs (and consequently suffer from poor FPS at 4k). If you were to step down to a good 1440p monitor though... then you will probably be alright. You'll also want to swap out the PSU as that Seasonic has 2 x 20AMP 12v rails and I believe MSI's website recommends a 30AMP rail (or better) + 500 watt for a 980.
4K isn't ready for primetime on PCs yet, so I wouldn't even go there right now. Better off to stick with1440p/2K. You probably would be OK with a GPU update and SSD to stretch it out a little bit more (especially if you OC will bridge the performance gap much more). Then you can save more and take your time to decide on the main platform update once the 100 series and 1151 socket parts are available.
The 30A recommendation from MSI would be for the whole system, so as long as a PSU has 30A+ (combined) on the +12V rail(s) then it shouldn't have a problem. The S12II-520Bronze has 40A combined on the +12V rail, and in the past/in some places it is actually advertised has having a single 40A +12V rail. And at least one review found that it infact only has one +12V rail.
I'd just get a 970 and an SSD to start, then get a 1440 monitor. If you want 4k gaming you will end up spending a lot of money and really need the 980 Ti as a minimum, and even then it will struggle at 4k in some games. I'd honestly forget about 4k gaming for now and stick to 1440 at the most. The 970 is an absolute beast of a card for the money, the SSD will transform your PC like almost no other upgrade and are so cheap now it would be borderline criminal not to get one these days - then the 1440 will make the most of the 970 and really have you playing games at very acceptable levels. Further down the road you can then think of getting a new mobo/cpu/memory etc and all these parts will go over to it seamlessly.
