I’m helping a family member upgrade their PC, and thought it might be good to get a second opinion on it since I’m not a pro either when it comes to PC parts.
Here are the specs:
- Intel Core i5 6600K
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 970
- Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (and a 2TB HDD)
- 2x4GB DDR4 RAM from Corsair
- ASUS Maximus VIII Ranger
- Corsair RM750i
Intent of the upgrade is to enhance gaming experience.
My first thought was to upgrade the SSD since 500GB isn’t a lot anyways and the product page of the 850 EVO says it has 540 MB/s read speed which doesn’t seem like a lot to me these days. Then also maybe the RAM, but I have no idea how much of an impact upgrading it has.
The other thing is upgrading CPU and/or GPU, but for that to be worth it I think you need to spend a lot more. I was thinking about giving them my RTX 3070 when I upgrade my own PC soon, in that case what would be a good CPU to go with it. Or would it be fine to just upgrade the GPU?
RAM.
RAM, RAM, RAM, RAM. Then the GPU.
8 gigs is basically considered barely enough to run a wristwatch these days. Upping that thing to 32 should only cost you around $50 and will be a worthwhile investment for sure.
The SSD is fine unless you find you’re running out of elbow room for whatever the rota of currently installed games is. Loading modern games off of a mechanical hard drive is really the pits, but if the user is only playing one or two big games at a time it is very easy to swap installs between the big hard drive and little SSD, especially if you’re using Steam. A modern NVME drive will be faster, but you may not even have a slot for one on your board. IF so, you can add one via an expansion card if you really want to. I wouldn’t worry about it unless you absolutely need more room.
After RAM I would look into upgrading the GPU. The GTX970 was quite capable in its day, but it’s very elderly now – four full generations behind, arguably five if you want to count the not-yet-quite-available 50xx cards from nVidia. Even a “last gen” and fairly dinkum RTX4060 should run you about $300 these days and will handily outperform the 970 by just about triple, not to mention support modern rendering platforms, and raytracing, etc. if you care about that. An RTX4070-whatever (super/TI/etc.) is arguably the “true” current gen successor to your existing card but will be significantly more expensive.
If you are not yet willing to upgrade to a newer motherboard as also suggested here, which in reality is really just building an entirely new computer since your processor and RAM probably won’t be compatible with a current board, the advantage of doing the GPU now is that you can easily transfer it to a new PC later. And RAM is cheap. I’m surprised they don’t give DDR4 away for free in cereal boxes these days. What processors you can use are motherboard dependent and the damn socket types are changing all the time, so with limited exceptions you’re stuck with what you have and throwing money at whatever the fastest version of what fits in your old socket is generally not a good value. But GPU’s are easy to move to a new PC. Sure, your processor is “old” but it’s not as much of a bottleneck as people try to make it out to be for pure gaming use. I just upgraded my old PC from an i7 2600k (hello 2011!) and I was still able to run modern games on that crusty old chip just fine. CPU performance has really hit kind of a plateau in the last couple of years and yes, current bleeding-edge chips are “faster” in a numeric sense, but the difference is really not enough to make a massive difference for normal users.
Thank you for the tips and insights, very much appreciated! I think for a start I’ll get some more cheap DDR4 RAM then and put in the 3070.
Also, about the RAM: If I get like 2x16GB, do I leave the old RAM in or is that a bad idea/ doesn’t work?
You can leave your old RAM in place. As others have noted, this may have a marginal impact on speed, but it definitely will not be any slower than it is now provided whatever RAM you slot in there is at least equal to or greater than the speed of what you already have. The entire bank of RAM will run at whatever the speed of the slowest module is. If you’re lucky, your existing RAM modules will have a sticker on them describing the speed.
The speed is the number like DDR4-2400, -2666, -2933, -3000, -3200, etc.
In the bad old days of single data rate RAM (We’re talking like '80’s and '90’s, here) the speed rating was literally the bus clock speed, in megahertz, that the RAM was rated to cycle at. Nowadays with DDR RAM that communicates more than once per system clock cycle, the speeds are in “megatranfers” and are to a certain extent both theoretical and a marketing description of the absolute ideal case scenario.
In any event, higher numbers = faster, although in reality your memory speed is unlikely to make much if any observable difference in the performance of your computer since most ordinary desktop or even gaming tasks are not especially memory speed dependent and even if they are, even slow modern DDR3/4/5/whatever RAM is still, in real objective terms, quite fast to begin with. Also, your processor and board almost certainly also have their own maximum RAM communication speed, which may be less than the fastest RAM modules you can buy. Thus buying RAM any faster than whatever your board/processor’s maximum is will be pointless anyway.
Not having enough RAM to do whatever you’re doing will force the system to use the SSD or hard drive as virtual memory, though, which will instantly make it dogshit slow.
It’s a trade off. You could get 32GB of whatever speed, up to the DDR4-3400 limit of the board. You’ll probably end up with DDR4-3200. Your existing RAM, having been purchased years ago, is probably around 2400.
All RAM must operate at matching specs, which is why you sometimes see that it can run at 3200, 2666, 2400, 2133. It will (usually) run at the highest spec supported by all of the pieces - every stick, the motherboard, and the CPU.
So, in the above scenario, you could either have 32GB @ DDR4-3200, or 40GB @ DDR4-2400. If you don’t need more than 32GB, the extra capacity won’t help, and the speed difference is all you would ever notice. But if you need more, the extra capacity will make all the difference.
It can work, but it is best that all RAM sticks have matching specs. Timing differences will slow down the faster sticks to the slower ones. It is usually not a great option unless you are starved for memory.