# Upgrading Gaming PC after 8 Years



## HarrisLam

Was going to recommend a new CPU and possibly some better RAM, but looking at the number you planned to spend, I guess you will have to buy a AMD 3600 CPU and a $80 motherboard. Keep the RAM unless you are willing to spend an extra $80~100


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## NateZ28

HarrisLam said:


> Was going to recommend a new CPU and possibly some better RAM, but looking at the number you planned to spend, I guess you will have to buy a AMD 3600 CPU and a $80 motherboard. Keep the RAM unless you are willing to spend an extra $80~100


Do you foresee me encountering any issues running with a Ryzen 3600? Are there any boards you recommend?


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## Happy Trails

Like 3600 suggestion maybe a $120 mobo budgeted.

Been also playing Cyberpunk very good game, great graphics and good stories. It demanding on a pc but thinking 3600 + 2070 should be solid in mid range. If you want explore some raytracing may consider 3060ti-3080. Good luck with update.


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## ubbb69

If you can catch a 10400 for $150, and motherboard for $150 or so The ram will work perfectly. If you want to be able to oc this will not work though.


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## NateZ28

ubbb69 said:


> If you can catch a 10400 for $150, and motherboard for $150 or so The ram will work perfectly. If you want to be able to oc this will not work though.


Cheapest I'm seeing those for right now are about $180. I'm not sure my old Enermax T40 cooler will be compatible with the newer chipset. Overclocking is always a plus. Also those motherboards are pretty pricey for 10th gen are they not?


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## NateZ28

Happy Trails said:


> Like 3600 suggestion maybe a $120 mobo budgeted.
> 
> Been also playing Cyberpunk very good game, great graphics and good stories. It demanding on a pc but thinking 3600 + 2070 should be solid in mid range. If you want explore some raytracing may consider 3060ti-3080. Good luck with update.


My original post was a typo, the card I'm getting from my buddy is a 2080 super.


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## Ichirou

You need to state what resolution you are playing on and what FPS it is you are trying to get.

If it is any help, I'm currently rocking an i7-8086k with a 2080 SUPER, and with tweaked settings I get an average 75-85 FPS on 1440p. Feels great with G-Sync on.
Quality is placebo from Ultra, but the 2080S isn't good enough for RTX on 1440p, unless you don't mind sinking to a maximum of 60 FPS or so.


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## UltraMega

Realistically if you could get 16GBs of cheap DDR3 2133mhz ram to replace the 8GBs you have now, with an overclocked 2700K you could keep using that until DDR5 is out, or at least until prices on 16 thread CPUs come down a bit more... especially if you are going to be gaming in high res like 4K. If you care more about low res and high refresh rate gaming then it is time for a new CPU, but at 4K there would probably be basically no difference between the CPU you have now and a newer one in 99% of the games out today. If you want to go for high res, just get the best GPU you can afford and wait for DDR5, or until you actually need a better CPU to keep playing games that come out in 4K. 

ddr3 2133mhz 16gb | eBay


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## Happy Trails

NateZ28 said:


> Also those motherboards are pretty pricey for 10th gen are they not?


Yes go up some. Sticker shock here since last pc build was very old. Build new pc 4 mo ago so everything seem expensive particular gpu.


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## NateZ28

UltraMega said:


> Realistically if you could get 16GBs of cheap DDR3 2133mhz ram to replace the 8GBs you have now, with an overclocked 2700K you could keep using that until DDR5 is out, or at least until prices on 16 thread CPUs come down a bit more... especially if you are going to be gaming in high res like 4K. If you care more about low res and high refresh rate gaming then it is time for a new CPU, but at 4K there would probably be basically no difference between the CPU you have now and a newer one in 99% of the games out today. If you want to go for high res, just get the best GPU you can afford and wait for DDR5, or until you actually need a better CPU to keep playing games that come out in 4K.
> 
> ddr3 2133mhz 16gb | eBay


That's very interesting! I'll most likely be playing at 1440p. I'm currently using an older overclocked 1440p 120Hz Catleap Korean IPS monitor connected via DVI. Since the 2080 Super doesn't have DVI I'll have to try an adapter, or get a whole new monitor all together. You don't think my current CPU will bottleneck a 2080 Super?
Ironically 16GB DDR3 on eBay is going for more than it was when I built the computer. You think only having 8 GB RAM is holding me back that much now?



Ichirou said:


> You need to state what resolution you are playing on and what FPS it is you are trying to get.
> 
> If it is any help, I'm currently rocking an i7-8086k with a 2080 SUPER, and with tweaked settings I get an average 75-85 FPS on 1440p. Feels great with G-Sync on.
> Quality is placebo from Ultra, but the 2080S isn't good enough for RTX on 1440p, unless you don't mind sinking to a maximum of 60 FPS or so.


Most likely 1400p. But I may need to get a new monitor to run about 60 Hz since my current one is an older overclocked panel running through DVI.


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## UltraMega

8GBs is fine for most games. I feel like by now there has got to be a few games that run better with more than 8GBs of ram but I don't actually know of any.

At 1440p your cpu will hold you back from getting higher frame a little but in the games that you wouldn't be GPU bound, you should still see pretty decent FPS.


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## NateZ28

UltraMega said:


> 8GBs is fine for most games. I feel like by now there has got to be a few games that run better with more than 8GBs of ram but I don't actually know of any.
> 
> At 1440p your cpu will hold you back from getting higher frame a little but in the games that you wouldn't be GPU bound, you should still see pretty decent FPS.


So you think it's worth the $75 to upgrade to faster RAM, get the 2080, and wait a while before upgrading the rest of the hardware? I also can't utilize M.2 storage or PCIe 3.0 with this old rig.


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## Happy Trails

UltraMega said:


> feel like by now there has got to be a few games that run better with more than 8GBs of ram but I don't actually know of any.


Have seen the Cyberpunks use up to 10gb ram. Trying remember how much RDR2 and SOTTR use hasn't been that long but forget. Since patch Cyberpunks utilize more cpu so they fix it. 3600x here and see utilize up to 70% at times very interesting because RDR2 and SOTTR dont use anywhere close to that much.


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## UltraMega

What kind of ram do you have now? Potentially you could get 8Gbs more of the same ram for less money than 16GBs would be, but really you can get by on 8GB for a while longer. Also what motherboard?

Cyberpunk 2077 8GB vs 16GB vs 32GB RAM - YouTube

RDR2 8GB RAM vs. 16GB RAM - YouTube

This video will give you an idea of what kind of difference the CPU will make at 1440p, but for you the difference would be smaller since this video uses a 2080Ti and also your CPU is overclocked and the CPU in this video is not: i7-2600K Vs. i7-9700K | 1080p and 1440p Gaming Benchmarks - YouTube


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## Ichirou

NateZ28 said:


> That's very interesting! I'll most likely be playing at 1440p. I'm currently using an older overclocked 1440p 120Hz Catleap Korean IPS monitor connected via DVI. Since the 2080 Super doesn't have DVI I'll have to try an adapter, or get a whole new monitor all together. You don't think my current CPU will bottleneck a 2080 Super?
> Ironically 16GB DDR3 on eBay is going for more than it was when I built the computer. You think only having 8 GB RAM is holding me back that much now?
> 
> Most likely 1400p. But I may need to get a new monitor to run about 60 Hz since my current one is an older overclocked panel running through DVI.


Since you're going to get a 2080 SUPER anyway, the best thing you can actually do is to simply test and see whether you do get bottlenecked or not.
If you're only playing at 1440p60, you don't need a whole lot of processing power. The 1440p120 monitor is still perfectly good if it works, so I would try an adapter first.
At 60 FPS, you can play with some basic RTX enabled just fine on a 2080 SUPER.


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## NateZ28

UltraMega said:


> What kind of ram do you have now? Potentially you could get 8Gbs more of the same ram for less money than 16GBs would be, but really you can get by on 8GB for a while longer. Also what motherboard?
> 
> Cyberpunk 2077 8GB vs 16GB vs 32GB RAM - YouTube
> 
> RDR2 8GB RAM vs. 16GB RAM - YouTube
> 
> This video will give you an idea of what kind of difference the CPU will make at 1440p, but for you the difference would be smaller since this video uses a 2080Ti and also your CPU is overclocked and the CPU in this video is not: i7-2600K Vs. i7-9700K | 1080p and 1440p Gaming Benchmarks - YouTube


My RAM is G.Skill 2X 4GB DDR3 dual channel 1600 9-9-9-24: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL - Newegg.com
My motherboard is a ASRock z68 extreme3 gen3: ASRock > Z68 Extreme3 Gen3



Ichirou said:


> Since you're going to get a 2080 SUPER anyway, the best thing you can actually do is to simply test and see whether you do get bottlenecked or not.
> If you're only playing at 1440p60, you don't need a whole lot of processing power. The 1440p120 monitor is still perfectly good if it works, so I would try an adapter first.
> At 60 FPS, you can play with some basic RTX enabled just fine on a 2080 SUPER.


I would be very surprised if I can push 120 Hz with an adapter at 1440p. My understanding is I'm basically operating outside DVI's designed spec already. But it might be possible. I've tried researching it but from what I can tell there's not a whole lot of people still running these monitors. I tried asking in the original Catleap overclock thread on these forums, but no response thus far. Some people asked the same question on the Nvidia forums and they were basically told to "**** and buy a newer monitor".


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## UltraMega

I saw in your other thread that you said the ram is 1600mhz, which will be your biggest bottleneck right now. 2133mhz ram would help a lot. On top of that, 4.4ghz is not pushing it at all for a 2700k. Most of them can do 4.8ghz. You could hit 4.6ghz at least I bet.


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## NateZ28

UltraMega said:


> I saw in your other thread that you said the ram is 1600mhz, which will be your biggest bottleneck right now. 2133mhz ram would help a lot. On top of that, 4.4ghz is not pushing it at all for a 2700k. Most of them can do 4.8ghz. You could hit 4.6ghz at least I bet.


I used to run 4.8 stable. But in recent years I was getting BSOD's and had to lower the clock. Per your suggestion if I go the route of upgrading the RAM for now I may just clean it out/re-apply thermal paste, then try to overclock again from scratch with the faster RAM.


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## NotReadyYet

What did you end up getting?


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## NateZ28

NotReadyYet said:


> What did you end up getting?


I followed the advice of several forum members on my other post here: Old OC'd 2770K sufficient for a 2080 Super?

I ended up overclocking my CPU and upgrading my RAM. I have yet to get my hands on the new card since the stock for the 3000-series is non-existent right now.


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