Upgrading my PC

[kowalski655]

Mods,Ive put this in here as I think that its more likely gamers will see this & be able to give upgarde advice , rather than general tech.

Anyway,I currently have a PC with these specs :
i7 4770 CPU @ 3.40 GHz(8 CPUs)
12 Gb RAM
NVidia GeForce GTX 745 4Gb
3 Hard drives (1+1+3 Tb) 90% full
NVidia audio via Corsair 7.1 headphones
Win 10 64 bit

I would like to upgrade so I can get some better performance, what would the PH experts consider the best upgrade? Im not sure but.. Graphics card? I think I need a new Hard drive too-would an external one via USB be OK to play games from?
Most of all I need to upgrade my internet speed but there is damn all I can do about that currently

Thanks

[vonuber]

Definitely your gfx card, you as a good few generations out of date there. It will be the thing in which you will see the biggest improvement imo.

[mikef]

Graphics card, possibly PSU depending on what you currently have (headroom for higher spec GPU), SSD for system disk and swap a 1TB disk for a 3 or 4TB

[paulwoof]

pretty much the GPU is the weak point there, The rest although could be brought to their modern equivalents , The GPU will be holding back the gaming.

Power supply dependant, The new Nvidia cars are very low power draw. Although GPU prices are a bill over the place due to cryptocurrency mining.
The AMD cards specifically now are hard to even get hold of let alone at normal prices, RX480's going for £300 plus etc.

CPU although older wouldnt be too much of an issue, And a new CPU would need new motherboard and then if supports DDR4 memory you would want to change that while you are their. So CPU would be the expensive route..

[RobDickinson]

CPU is solid for games, 12gb is fine ( few games are 64bit anyhow).

Add an nvidia 1060
Add a 512 SSD as primary boot
and a 3TB+ HDD for storage

[born2bslow]

As always with PC upgrades it depends how much you want to spend...

My CPU is older (i7 950 @ 3.06GHz OC'd to 3.45) and I have 12GB of RAM, but I've constantly upgraded my GPU and now with a 980ti I can run an oculus VR headset with no issues (other than the annoying message from Oculus telling me my PC is not up to the min specs), most games can be run at high to ultra settings with very few issues, although I only really play driving/racing games anyway.

Spend as much as you can afford on a GPU (stick with Nvidia as they're better supported generally) and an SSD, if your PSU is old it may be worth chucking £100 at a new one. You've got 5TB of hard drives almost full, have you ever considered a NAS? not cheap but once you've got one you won't ever need to bog your PC down with multiple hard drives full of crap you hardly ever use

[chris285]

RobDickinson said:

CPU is solid for games, 12gb is fine ( few games are 64bit anyhow).

Add an nvidia 1060
Add a 512 SSD as primary boot
and a 3TB+ HDD for storage

This

[Zad]

^ That

SSDs are a revelation if you have never used one. GPU will depend which games you are playing. Older games like WoW tend to be CPU limited rather than GPU, and whether you choose Nvidia or AMD can depend on the individual game. If you are getting stutters in any specific game, try disabling your swap file. Your CPU is fine. Since the i7-4 series, Intel's focus has been on power efficiency rather than throughput, and the older CPUs have a monster single core horsepower.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html