I built this PC for about $150 using used and salvaged parts so I could move on from an old laptop. I mainly want to play the Fallout games, Dishonored, indie titles, and other games from roughly 2013–2020 rather than demanding modern releases.
The system has an ASUS H97M-E motherboard, an i5-4690K, a GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB of DDR3 memory, 120GB and 250GB SSDs, a 500GB hard drive, a 700W Chieftec A-80 power supply, and several case fans.
What upgrades make sense without replacing the motherboard? Could the i5-4690K hold back a significantly faster graphics card, and are there any other worthwhile improvements for this kind of gaming?
3 Answers
Before spending heavily on a CPU or GPU, consider improving storage. A larger SSD would make Windows and game loading much more pleasant, especially since the current drives are quite small. A PCIe-to-NVMe adapter can work for adding a fast drive, although the platform will not get the full performance of newer systems and a normal SATA SSD may be the better value.
I would also avoid paying modern-market prices for a five-year-old CPU upgrade. If you eventually want a major platform improvement, selling the motherboard, CPU, and DDR3 memory together and moving to a used Ryzen system may offer better value than buying an expensive i7-4790K.
That is an excellent amount of hardware for the price. The motherboard can support a faster fourth-generation CPU, with something like an i7-4790K being the most obvious upgrade. Some H97 boards can also run a Broadwell chip such as the i7-5775C with the appropriate BIOS, but those processors are often overpriced used.
A graphics card upgrade is more likely to help in many games. A GTX 1080 Ti would be a major jump over the 1060, while an RTX 3060 12GB is about the upper end of what I would pair with this platform. Check the power supply's actual condition and available PCIe connectors before installing a much faster GPU.
There is no universal answer to whether the CPU will bottleneck a graphics card. It depends on the game, resolution, graphics settings, and frame-rate target. Monitor CPU and GPU usage while playing: if the GPU is near full usage, the graphics card is the limit; if one or more CPU cores are maxed while the GPU is underused, the processor is holding things back.
For the older games you listed, the current CPU and GTX 1060 should already be a reasonable combination. Overclocking the unlocked i5 and the 1060 may provide a small improvement if temperatures and power limits are under control.
For those games, I would probably keep the current CPU and only upgrade the graphics card if performance actually becomes a problem.