Outdated system - help me upgrade :)

Games, Gaming & Hardware
1

This is my first ever post on the WoW forums so hey guys :slight_smile:

Right I’ll list my specs below but before I do I need to note that I only play WoW so no need to take any other games into consideration when making suggestions - first a small story as to why I’d like to upgrade.

Recently I’ve dug my old gaming PC out and have decided to give WoW another bash. I risked putting it in a bit of a cramped space to keep it neat and the graphics card started overheating and crashing my system. No worries, I did it at risk, I pulled it out again and now it has the air to it. It’s this that made me decide to download some temperature tracking programmes for the first time in my life (while I was soloing ICC) and because I’d never thought about these things before I was honestly shocked by the results. the GPU was hitting 70(ish). I’d always played WoW at 10 but I had no idea if this was normal or not. After a LOT of Googling I found it was apparently normal but I could lower those temperatures instantly with a few simple setting changes, one being V-Sync to keep it at 60fps (not sure I’ve had to play with this before). I spent an entire afternoon messing around with temperatures and it seems to average at 45-55 but in Icecrown (not even Citdadel) it shoots up to 70(ish)… I’ve lowered some settings now but it still hits similar numbers… As I’ve never used temperature programmes before I have no idea if I’ve hit these numbers since day one with this computer or not but as I’m feeling like I’m having to change settings now and taking the future of WoW into consideration as well I’ve figured I should maybe just take the plunge.

Based on the Googling I’ve done I’ve pretty much found that my GPU and CPU are massively out of date. I bought this computer back in 2012. I’ve read WoW is more a CPU based game. The RAM I have is more old RAM out of old computers. I’m happy to pick up cheap second hand stuff from eBay and would like to ask for opinions on the GTX970 and opinions on a RAM upgrade to Corsair Vengeance 16gb (8gbx2) DDR3 as I can get those for fairly cheap second hand. If I’m right in thinking a GPU, CPU and RAM upgrade will sort me right out then it’s the CPU I need help with.

So here’s my specs:

  • Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-Z77-HD3
  • Processor - Intel® Core™ i7-3770k CPU @ 3.50GHzz 3.90GHz
  • RAM - 12 GB
  • Hard Drive - Seagate ST1000DM003 1TB
  • Graphics Card - GeForce GTX660
  • Monitor - Samsung UE50NU7400 Smart TV
  • Operating System - Windows 10 Professional 64bit

I’m not a GIANT computer whizz when it comes to components etc as I’m sure you can tell from above to speaking in as best “english” as possible would be appreciated :stuck_out_tongue: ,

Thanks :slight_smile:

Oh and just to add in - I blew all the dust out of it before starting this baby back up so everything is all cleared out. I took the graphics card out to blow that out and actually just replaced the fans in the case

2

That’s a very usable PC for WoW - all I’d recommend is add, not replace, a SSD as your system drive & keep the HDD for back-yp/data storage (documents, music, etc).

From personal experience, watch your GTX660 fans - some variants have ‘cheap’ fans that couldn’t keep up with the workload asked of them & their bearings failed/seized.

3

Thanks for getting back :slight_smile:

I have always thought this has been usable for WoW which is why I’m so confused. The only thing different playing this time around is my monitor. The last time I played I was using a 1080p 42" LED TV whereas this time it’s a 4k 50" TV. As far as I can remember I’ve never had to play with the V-Sync in the past. Will playing on such a high resolution “monitor” push for my graphics card to do more until I then enabled the V-Sync to limit its frame rate to 60fps and stop having it push so hard? Even now though it hits 60-70 degrees in Storm Peaks/Icecrown (I’m doing old content atm) due to the lightning/weather effects and I swear it’s just not something I’ve had to deal with before. I’ve not even started BFA content yet as I’m happily plodding along with this old content having boosted this character but don’t see this is causing me issues I’ve never had before. I’d always run at 10 settings with no issues and this time it literally cut out due to overheating before needing some settings be tampered with? It’s mind boggling.

Doing some more Googling it seems there was a big update graphics wise last year to do with DirectX 12. Will this have affected me? I end up with 20 tabs open in Google Chrome reading about other people’s WoW graphics problems with no idea if they’re related to mine or not haha. I’ve not made any purchases, I’m getting along ok for now it’d just be cool to have some closure I guess.

4

My GTX-660 has gone the way of all flesh - it got replaced by a GTX-1050ti.

1 Like
5

That system should be able to handle it on 1080p no problem.
And 70c is normal for a graphics card and shouldn’t cause any issues, but you might want to change the thermal paste on the cpu and gpu if it hasnt been done recently.

But if you really want to upgrade I would look at GPU first. I use a gtx 970 and it handles WoW at 1080p graphic 10 at 90fps in outside world and 45fps in main city. But it I use graphic 7 which is recommended i get 140fps outside and 60fps in main city. And you should see about the same performance with a 1050ti or 1060 3gb.
With the recent update your cpu should still be fine, but if you want an upgrade i would look at ryzen 5 with some faster ram, or a second hand intel if it is really cheap. But AMD is working on ryzen 3000 right now and they are rumored to be very efficient and might actually outperform intel now.

But since you only play WoW it might not be worth the money unless you do rated pvp or hardcore raiding.

6

Just a quick check, considering you mentioned a 4k TV, are you putting your OS resolution on 4k as well? If so consider changing it to 1080p, 4k monitors are very taxing even when idle on older GPUs that weren’t designed for it

That might win some FPS gains until you get a replacement if you havent done so yet

7

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.