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Upgrade PC: CPU and motherboard (fan, PSU?)

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Nilaz

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Apr 13, 2017
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EDIT: After some consideration, I'm moving towards purchasing a brand new budget PC as it seems to be the easiest solution given the age of my current rig and my lack of expertise in the area. However, if anyone would still recommend something for upgrading, or specific requirements for new PC, advice is welcome.

I'm a "semi-casual" PC gamer who is looking to upgrade my PC, but prefer not looking to spend a lot of money for maximum performance. Since I play most games on PS4, I mainly want to play my current games on high settings with good FPS (no specific stadandard, but reliant 60+ would be nice). I mostly play Guild Wars 2 and most Blizzard games (Overwatch and Diablo 3, fx). I'd also like to play future games with good settings, but not necessarily on ultra with super high FPS. My current monitor is 1920x1080. (I assume this monitor is good enough and PC components are more important to upgrade).

I own an Acer Predator G5900 PC from 2011, and the only changes since then are a new graphics card (AMD Radeon 7800 HD), RAM (8 GB) and hard disc. I figure that the obvious components to upgrade are the motherboard and CPU (I assume they have to be upgraded together in my case). The CPU is i7-870.

I looked at www.LogicalIncrements.com as it seems to be a good help for people who want easy choices. It suggests i3 7100 for all midrange specs, so that seems to be the obvious choice for CPU.
If i5 7400/7500 if a significant upgrade for the ~100$ extra, I might consider that instead. But if i3 7100 is enough for my games, that seems adequate.

For motherboard, the site has few more options. For budget midrange, it suggest either MSI B250 PC MATE or Asrock H270M Pro4 (or Asrock H270 Pro4 as a slighty more pricy option)

I honestly don't know if there's an important difference between those two options. I assume that the only difference between the Asrock models is that the "M" version is for micro-ATX. It looks like my PC has a microATX now, but I'm not sure if it can take a normal ATX. I guess the micro-ATX version is the best choice if I want to keep my current case.

I guess I may also need to buy a new fan assuming that the old one won't fit or is oudated. I'm not sure if I also need to upgrade PSU, but I guess that a new MOBO and CPU might demand more PSU.

Given the fact that the only big change to my PC in about 6 years is the graphics card, I'm thinking of just buying a brand new PC now that I have some cash to afford it. However, I'd prefer to upgrade this one for only a few hundred dollars if possible.

Any advice is appreciated.
 
Last edited:
After some consideration, I'm moving towards purchasing a brand new budget PC as it seems to be the easiest solution given the age of my current rig and my lack of expertise in the area. However, if anyone would still recommend something for upgrading, or specific requirements for new PC, advice is welcome.
 
Hello Nilaz,

Purchasing a new PC would be the easiest option but not the most financially viable option, I wouldn't put anything less than an i5 CPU in an Intel gaming build, you have an ok 4 core i7 CPU so an i3 would be going backwards.

Purchasing a new MB and CPU would also mean purchasing a new Microsoft product key unless you have a full retail product key + you would be looking at doing a clean install of Windows as well.

I would look at upgrading the add on video card and if needs be the PSU, the latter would depend on the brand and model of the present power supply.

Can you post the brand and model name or number of the present PSU for us please.
 
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