Decent mid level gaming PC

[Derek Chevalier]

My son currently has a 3-year-old gaming PC with the following spec

1660Ti graphics card
i5 9400F processor
8GB DDR4 RAM 2666

It's starting to struggle a bit with some of the games, and I'm wondering whether I should update some of the components or instead bite the bullet and buy a new machine. If I do go down that road, it will be something like the following


RTX 3070
i7-12700F
16GB DDR4-3200

which will cost around £1,600 and I would hope it would last for at least another 3 years before needing an upgrade/replacement.

if anyone has any views on whether:

1. I should upgrade the existing machine.
2. Buy a new machine with the proposed spec
3. Buy a new machine with a better/different spec
4. Buy a new machine but wait for the chip shortage to resolve (is that still an issue?)

I'd much appreciate it

[Brainpox]

Does that price include a new motherboard? 12th/13th gen Intel use a different socket to your current 9th gen.

If he is just gaming and not doing any production a 13600k will be a better gaming CPU.

[mmm-five]

What are the rest of the specs of the current machine (PSU, motherboard, storage, case, monitor)? What games/resolutions/graphic settings?

If they're decent enough, then it may just be a case of needing paired sticks of 8GB 3200/3600MHz RAM and an RTX3070 or RX6700XT/6750XT GPU.

If it has a single SSD/HDD for the OS and games, then another (or faster) one might speed up game loading / normal operations.

[deckster]

The 1660 is by far the weakest link in that machine. The 9400F is fine for general gaming - there is no need to upgrade go through the ballache of replacing motherboard and everything else - and whilst 8GB isn't ideal it's not disastrous. But slapping in another 8GB is cheap and easy enough to make it worthwhile anyway.

The other thing you don't mention is storage - I presume he's running an SSD or (better) an NVMe M.2 drive? Solid state storage is pretty much a necessity and, again, not expensive these days.

But that 1660 is holding him back for sure. A 3070 would be a great upgrade and, presuming he's happy to game at 1440p or less, will be enough for a few years yet.

[NWMark]

The 9400F is a good CPU for gaming and that still hasnt changed 3 years later id be very surprised if that is the bottleneck with 6 cores at 4+ GHz,

In games its way more likely to be the graphics card and on the desktop more likely to be the RAM.

If it was me, i would keep the cpu / motherboard and upgrade the graphics cards and RAM - 3070 is ideal (personally i think the current sweet spot for price/performance) and id upgrade the RAM to 16Gb (ideally 2 x 8Gb sticks).

[Derek Chevalier]

Thank you all for your replies.

Brainpox, the £1,600 would be for a whole new machine, maybe something like this....

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/3xs-gamer-rtx-inte...

mmm-five: The original spec is attached. Games like Call of Duty on 1920 x 1080 ((I think) with the graphics settings reduced slightly from optimal.



deckster: yes I think he has the M.2 drive from the screenshot above

NWMark: Yep, I the 3070 is mentioned a lot - I think currently around £600? And 16GB RAM around £50-£60?

[NWMark]

If he plays at 1080p, using 3070 is probably a little overkill, but I would still recommend this over anything below it as it will last the 3 years you're looking for.

reading the spec of his current PC it looks like it only has 4Gb RAM - i'm surprised SCAN would sell a machine with so little even 3 years ago, but if this is the case i'm not surprised it feels sluggish, an upgrade of the RAM is needed more than the graphics card!

One other thing i would go for is to upgrade the installed M2 SSD from 256Gb to 1Tb or to add a new 1Tb SSD drive (~£100) and make sure he installs his games to this drive will improve his load times and general feeling of 'snappyness' to the PC.

[deckster]

Agree with NWMark - 240GB is too small I and I will bet good money that your son is actually installing games on the bigger HDD. So adding a 1 or 2TB SSD will allow him to install games onto that.

Looking at the motherboard, I see that it only has 2 DIMM slots so it's full with the 2x4GB that you currently have. So you'll need to get 2x8GB to replace them.

Finally, your PSU might not be man enough for a 3070 - NVidia recommend 650W for the 3070 as opposed to your 550W. So that could use an upgrade as well.

[mmm-five]

It looks like that is a SATA m.2 as well rather than NVMe, so it is likely to be nearly full as well as relatively slow (i.e. 5 times faster than a HDD, but 10 times slower than a decent NVMe m.2).

Unfortunately there's only a single m.2 slot on that motherboard, so the games may have to stay on the same drive as the OS/apps...or you could fit a additional 2.5" SATA SSD purely for game installs (even if it's only SATA, it will be quicker than the HDD). Then just use the HDD for music/videos or backups.

[satfinal]

A couple things to note. Your motherboard doesn't support anything over 2666MT, intel segments anything higher (technically overclocking) to Z motherboards.

The NVME drive slot is PCIE 2.0, so just buy a PCIE 3 drive if you are wanting to upgrade that also. There's always a deal on SSDs, so you can probably get something good still. 1TB PCIE3 drives are pretty cheap now https://www.hotukdeals.com/tag/ssd

Personally would just go for a GPU and SSD upgrade for now. Make sure your PSU has enough plugs for the GPU though!

Edited by satfinal on Monday 5th December 13:42

[mmm-five]

satfinal said:

Personally would just go for a GPU and SSD upgrade for now. Make sure your PSU has enough plugs for the GPU though!

Non-modular PSU too, so if there's not enough cables dangling out of the PSU housing then you're a bit stuck...although a semi-modular 80+ Gold 750W PSU can be had at £80+ (or fully-modular for £100+)...and you can have some fun rewiring everything

[Derek Chevalier]

Thanks all, it's much appreciated.

[ALawson]

Thanks to the OP and replies, given me a good idea for my son who is looking for a similar machine. Currently has a Xbox S but I am sure he will use it for games so no point not getting a decent spec now.

PC Pro reckons this is a good spec,

https://www.palicomp.co.uk/intel-hellfire-review-a...

CPU is slower than that above but it have the 3070 GPU. Is the 3060 Ti worth considering or sticking with the 3070? Will be 16Gb ram and a i5 12400 or similar.

Will just be used for web, office and the odd game.

Conscious I will need to get software and a monitor etc. on top.

Any other similar suggestions appreciated! Apologies for jumping on this post.

[xeny]

Decide what size/resolution you want. The pick a graphics card that will give you the frame rate you want in the likely games he will want to play.

[ALawson]

xeny said:

Decide what size/resolution you want. The pick a graphics card that will give you the frame rate you want in the likely games he will want to play.

Ok, so I need to choose a monitor then, and/or size and resolution. Are they any approximate rule of thumb?

[mmm-five]

ALawson said:

Ok, so I need to choose a monitor then, and/or size and resolution. Are they any approximate rule of thumb?

GPU:

• 3060/3060Ti (ar AMD 6600/6650) for 1080p
• 3070/3070Ti (or AMD 6700/6750) for 1440p
• 3080/3080Ti/4080 (pr AMD 6800) for 4k

Monitor (assuming standard 16:9 aspect ratio):

• 21-24" for 1080p
• 24-32 for 1440p
• 32+ for 4k

For all the monitors you'll be wanting 144Hz plus - but what FPS you get from the GPU will depend on the specific game and graphics settings you use.

In any case, they'll all deliver more than the default 60fps @ 1080p of an Xbox One S

Edited by mmm-five on Wednesday 7th December 11:39

[ALawson]

Thanks for that, most helpful.