You can also game at 4k on a monitor that cost less than $300. My point was he bought a “Premium” monitor and wanted to drive it with thrift store parts. It’s a total waste of money. Now, he is planning on eventually getting to the point of being able to properly drive that monitor which is fine I guess but not the route i would have gone.
I’m mean fair enough. If it were an OLED monitor for the same price you could enjoy a lot of games and content regardless of your frame rate. Buying a 240hz monitor is probably not an ideal purchase for his gaming habits. There is always CounterStrike!
Yeah, if you’re going for the cheapest possible upgrade, maybe pair a 2nd hand i7-6700 with a 2nd hand RTX 2060 Super.
I would say just buy a newer GPU to help, and then when you do build the new PC (which you will need, as your CPU is too old to be compatible with Windows 11) you can just move the GPU to the new PC. The GPU is the biggest driver of what you can display by far. CPU doesn’t matter nearly as much in most games. A 6th Gen Intel isn’t going to hold you back from 1080p, or probably 4k in some games.
But, to truly run 4k at decent framerates, you will need an 80 series Nvidia GPU at minimum.
I would also worry about the PSU you have can’t support a beefy card like that.
Honestly, 2016 -2024 is a good run for a PC. Look into buying a new one, or building a new one with parts from your old PC to make it cheaper.
What kind of SSD do you have? I can’t imagine a PC from 2016 had a Gen 4 PCI-E NVME SSD in it, that upgrade will be glorious alone.
Yeah, a $1000 monitor for an eight year old PC was overkill.
It’s not that I don’t have the money, it’s just a question of whether I want to drop it right now, all at once, or if I can do it incrementally. I’m an old man, I grew up when you could totally do this stuff incrementally if you wanted to, but maybe JonRowe is right, 2016–2024 is a pretty good run.
I am starting to come around to the idea maybe it’s time for a full replacement…something like this, maybe? PowerSpec G717 Gaming PC Platinum Collection; AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2GHz Processor; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER 12GB - Micro Center You’re gonna break my not-entirely-iron resolve here!
You could go with something like this. Even though I put the Win11 Pro OEM I don’t particularly like OEM. You also said you already had a case so you could nix that if you wanted or pick something different. I like having more power in my PSU so you could also lower that if you wanted to most anything with gold. You could add in another M.2 if you wanted or swap it, but all of these are solid.
Yeah, do it!
I could link more roll-your-own parts but honestly the price would be about the same. That’s an awesome machine that will last a good while and definitely won’t be thrown out of the club if it approaches that screen you own.
No Sir, it’s a great run. She served you well, let her rest now.
I have had multiple powerspec PCs and loved all three. Great bang for your buck and quality parts.
If you really want to go incremental than do it in tandem with old faithful. Leave her be and slowly build your new one overtime taking advantage of the best deals.
Yeah, man! You’re coming around!
Seriously, that would be the type of computer someone like yourself would probably get another eight years out of, and that’s cool! That sounds like it’s right up your alley! It also will take full advantage of that monitor you already bought. Throw on Cyberpunk 2077 on that machine, hit the RUN BENCHMARK button and bask in the glory.
Life is short and time is too precious to waste on incremental upgrades that will not have any real impact until the whole kit is replaced anyway. Replace it all in one shot when you are ready! Buy or build a whole new system since your existing case probably does not have the correct front USB connections for a current mobo.
These LED fans that seem to be on all gaming PCs now: can the lights be turned off?
Good lord I hope so, or I will have to build from non-LED-bedecked components.
Usually there’s control software.
That is the sweet spot, and you’ll definitely appreciate what it can do on the monitor.
Yeah, I think you all have convinced me not to go incremental. Whether I end up buying something like the above or building a new system from scratch, it’ll be a new beast.
Final-ish question: Any coming tech releases I should hold on? Upthread someone mentioned that Nvidia is likely to release its new cards “soon,” with most rumors sites saying by the end of this year. Is that end of 2024, or some weird fiscal year, or do we just not know? I’m fine with waiting a couple months and then getting significantly more GPU for my $400 or whatever.
We don’t know, but there are increasing rumours/leaks which suggests that at least a paper launch is coming soon. I hope so, because my 3080 is really starting to show its age now I have an ultrawide monitor. Who knows when you might be able to actually buy an affordable card though - Nvidia tends to string out the release schedule with the stupid expensive cards launching first.
If I were you, I’d either get a whole pre-built system now with a 4 series Super card or an AMD equivalent, or do the case/motherboard/PSU/CPU/RAM upgrade now and hold off on the GPU, either for incrementalism purposes (if you’re only playing at 1080p you’ll get more value out of the CPU upgrade anyway) or to wait for Nvidia to show its hand.
I think you’ll be satisfied if you go with a system that has a 4070 Super inside. That card is only eight-ish months old now.
Sometime in the next 3-6 months AMD will launch their 9000 X3D CPU’s. I’d simply go ahead with the 7800X3D bundled in that system above. It will be a great CPU for years to come.
Nvidia will release cards this year (probably) but honestly, I wouldn’t wait on that. They’ll be overpriced with very marginal gains over previous gen.
Rumour mill is saying Nvidia will launch RTX 5000 series in CES 2025 in January.