• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

System upgrade advice

Otrant

Member
Hi all,

I am looking for some system upgrade advice on a budget, hoping to spend around $300-350 CDN or $230-270 USD or so at most.

The games I play are not particularly demanding graphically, examples include Overwatch, Hearts of Iron 4, Football Manager 2016, and CS:GO. However, I have been playing Battlefield 1 recently and while the performance is actually acceptable to me on this machine with low/medium settings (and the game looks good enough too), I am exploring the possibility of a modest upgrade to help boost performance a bit.

The main things I have been looking at are 1) new GPU (but not sure which one would be best value for money); 2) upgrade to 16 GB RAM; 3) add another SSD drive so all games can be stored on it (current SSD is tapped out with OS install and 1-2 games).

I know I can’t fit this all in on my budget, so advice on prioritization would help too. I am leaning towards upgrading the RAM regardless since it's so cheap right now anyway, see what gains I get from that, and then upgrading the GPU with remaining budget, but would love to hear some advice on this.

Here are my core system specs:

CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4 GHz
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LX
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8 GB (2x4 GB) DDR3 1600
Storage: Samsung 120GB SSD and Western Digital 1TB 7200 RPM
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 7850 or 7870 (100% sure it’s in the 7800 family – is there a way to tell in a CPU-Z report which specific model it is?)
Monitor: BenQ V2400Eco 24” and BenQ E2200HD 22”

Bonus points if you are able to recommend products from this vendor, as would be easiest for me to purchase from: http://www.canadacomputers.com/

Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
Another 8GB of memory and the GTX 1050 Ti when it comes out next week. If there is room left over maybe an extra 1 or 2 TB HDD as well.
 
Back
Top