1
Hardware and Tech / Re: New PC Talk...
« on: Today at 01:24:43 am »My current system is a...
ASUS ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming LGA 1151
Intel Core i5 8th Gen - Core i5-8600K Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.6 GHz
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3000
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING
EVGA 600 BR 100-BR-0600-K1 600 W
And then have a 1tb SSD I've been using, but no specs on that because I bought it after my initial PC build.
I'm sure there's some room for improvement, but a graphics card wouldn't be all I'd need right?
Some things I can mention.
1. i5 CPUs are fine but for modern gaming it seems i7 is the minimum. There is obviously some crossover between ages, such as perhaps a newer i5 is better than an old i7 but as I've mentioned earlier, we are at CPU plateau so a 10 year old i7 (or equivalent) is going to be the same for gaming as a modern one. So an i7 or a quad core with Hyperthreading and at least 2.8 GHz is the minimum.
2. RAM is cheap, so if you board can support more you should get more. However, you are likely not going to actually need more than 16 GB. The only situation I've run into where you'd want more than 16 GB is running modded Minecraft. On my system I would allocated 12 GB to Java. But in general, PC games aren't going to be using enough, but as stated the prices may be low enough that it doesn't matter.
3. As far as I'm aware, there are no video cards with over 8 GB VRAM that run on BIOS. Many/most 8 GB cards are either BIOS (very few), UEFI, auto-detect (not reliable) or switchable (very few). And worse is that those types of capabilities are not often advertised with any degree of certainty. Second thing to be aware of and this is important is that you need to know how your OS is installed if you want to do an upgrade. If you are currently running on BIOS or CSM enabled, and your disk is MBR, if you were to buy a video card with more than 8 GB VRAM, the card is UEFI and you may not get any video at POST or boot. If your system is on UEFI and using GPT disk, then you are safe to get one of these modern cards.
I want to mention that the video card I am using, the Sapphire Radeon RX 580 is 8 GB and is one of the few cards that has a physical switch. I am running on BIOS on a board 2 generations older than yours. So this card is the best card I can ever use in this configuration. That being said, I haven't run into any games that do not work on this card. The most demanding game I have run on it was COD Warzone. Now if I run into a situation where I need to get a card with more VRAM, I'm going to have to do some work to get compliant with that. There is a way to do it without reinstalling the OS, but I'd rather not do it.
Am I getting that much of an upgrade with just some new parts? I tried to sorta browse what I think an upgraded build for me could be on Youtube and it didn't seem like I would be getting a huge leap on more graphic heavy games that are out now. An improvement for sure, better than what I got now, but I'm trying to do a big leap in quality while also setting myself up for the next couple years along with likely getting a 1440p monitor. I'm cool with the price of the upgrade, I have the money for it, though I am waiting till Memorial Day to see if I can take advantage of some sales.
I just want to make sure the build I have is going to get me what I want and that I have all the main parts I need and there was nothing weird to the choices. From what I looked up, while it doesn't seem like New Egg specifically goes out of its way to check for compatibility with its pc builder, it tries to make sure the only parts that can be chosen should work with the parts picked, the only possible things that may not count being like GPU's and how they fit into a case.