I'm looking for advice on upgrading my current PC for smoother and more consistent 1440p gaming. The system has a Ryzen 7 7700X, Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE cooler, ASRock B650M-H/M.2+ motherboard, 32GB of Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 memory, a Gigabyte RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, and an EVGA 700 GD power supply. Some games show high CPU usage while others push the GPU hard, so I'm not sure which component is actually holding the system back. Should I upgrade the graphics card, processor, or something else first?
3 Answers
The graphics card is the clear first upgrade for 1440p. Something around an RX 9070, RX 9070 XT, or RTX 5070 Ti should give you a much higher graphics and FPS ceiling. Your 7700X and 32GB of memory are still perfectly capable for this resolution.
High CPU or GPU usage by itself isn’t necessarily a problem. The important things are your actual FPS, frame-time consistency, and 1% lows. Since the 4060 Ti is the weakest part of this build for 1440p, I’d replace it first. Only consider a CPU upgrade later if you’re targeting very high refresh rates or still seeing poor lows and stuttering.
If you move to a substantially more powerful graphics card, check its power requirements and connector setup. The 700W supply may be adequate for some upgrades, but a higher-quality 850W or 1000W unit could make sense for a particularly power-hungry card. I wouldn’t replace the 7700X unless your testing shows a consistent CPU limit.
A non-XT RX 9070 could also be worth considering if its price is significantly better than the XT model.