Gaming PC Upgrade

Hi there,

Sorry if this is not the right place for this kind of post but I wasn't too sure.

It is almost a year now since I purchased my first gaming PC, as designed by Ouseborn in November of last year. I have been extremely satisfied by my PC but as I have continued to use it, and the games I have been playing/software have improved and become more demanding, I have realised that I would like to improve my computer. I have also decided to improve my PC as in the future I would like to use a 144Hz monitor, a frame rate that my PC would probably not be able to reach on many games that I play currently.

I was talking with some friends and they suggested that I start by getting some more RAM, although I am not sure what RAM to get. I have been maxing out my RAM regularly so this would be a priority. I should have about £100-£150 to spend on this quite soon. I understand I need DDR4 but not sure exactly what to go for.

Additionally I have my birthday coming up towards the start of November. I'm aware it is not great to look for PC parts this early but I just want to get an idea while I get my RAM. As of the start of November I should have another £250 ish to spend on upgrading, although this is another point where I'm unsure on what to do. I've looked into getting new CPU but I'm not sure if this would be the right move to make my PC more powerful, or if you would advise something else. Additionally I am unsure on compatibility.

Below are my current specs:

Many thanks,
Nic

Case
CORSAIR SPEC-04 MID TOWER GAMING CASE - BLACK/RED
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i3 Quad Core Processor i3-8100 (3.60GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME Z370-P: ATX, LGA1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP
1st Hard Disk
1TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
LED Lighting
50cm UV LED Strip
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 (64-bit) DVD with paper sleeve
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

I was talking with some friends and they suggested that I start by getting some more RAM

Click to expand...

While more RAM could be a nice-to-have, in general it's not a major issue for games performance. If you're looking to 144hz gaming, adding more RAM isn't your top priority.

I have been maxing out my RAM regularly so this would be a priority

Click to expand...

What is it that maxes out your RAM? And how do you know the RAM is insufficient?

Have you seen this: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...gement-and-use&p=419956&viewfull=1#post419956
If you look at it and think TL;DR, then start with post #3 which explains using Windows Performance Monitor.

Furthermore, RAM is monstrously expensive at the moment and prices are expected to come down due to manufacturers having stepped up production, and other factors too. So it's not a good time to buy RAM right now.

I have also decided to improve my PC as in the future I would like to use a 144Hz monitor, a frame rate that my PC would probably not be able to reach on many games that I play currently

Click to expand...

If that's true, then the overwhelming majority of games will simply need a more powerful GPU to get higher framerates. e.g. Witcher 3.

Many mutiplayer competitive games like Overwatch should easily achieve high framerates on your current system.

For most games, upping the RAM and replacing the CPU would not net the benefits you are looking for. It would be a very rare title indeed that is being CPU / RAM bottlenecked such that you need to replace / add those to get high framerates, while retaining the same graphics card. In fact I can't think of any.

1) What games are you playing
2) at what settings?
3) what framerates are you getting on them?

specifically the ones you'd like to play at high framerates.

Thank you for your quick and informative reply!

Below are some of the games (not all as it would take too long to test, I hope this provides a good idea) that I currently play or plan to play. I have monitored the fps through gameplay and benchmarking to give you a good idea of my current situation. It is worth adding that I usually play with v-sync on for all these games so the fps do hang around 60 fps, but obviously if I did get a 144Hz monitor in the future I would want them to sit at that frame rate. I always make sure that my game graphic settings allow my games to have the ability to be above my v-sync rate to ensure that I do not notice any frame drops.

I tested all these games with only Discord (a few percent of my CPU and about 200MB of RAM) as well as the actual game itself running. I do not usually run google chrome at the same time as gaming (although I would like to to listen to music etc) because I feel it causes some frame drops, and doesn't help with RAM.

I also forgot to mention that I do run a dual monitor setup with my PC, using HDMI and display port on my graphics card. However I only game on my main HDMI monitor and the second monitor usually only shows Discord.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six siege (very fast paced/precision based relies on steady fps):
On high settings, an average fps of 85 dropping to 60 occasionally. On maximum settings I could achieve 65fps with drops to 30 in some cases. The game did say it wanted 4GB of VRAM for the max settings, more than my GPU has.

GTA V
On high settings I was getting 80 fps with drops to around 60. This was a game that I was having some RAM problems on as I was using 95% RAM on my computer (with the only apps running being GTA and Discord), which caused GTA V frame drops to around 30fps. It was only after enabling a free month of AVG tuneup to 'sleep' some background apps that my overall RAM usage dropped from 95% to 80% reducing the frame drops greatly.

Rocket League:
On max settings I can achieve 140 fps with drops to 45 ish. The game just seems quite unsmooth without v-sync, I think this was the main problem.

Also there have been two betas that I played recently, I'm aware they should be taken with a pinch of salt as they are still optimised and in development:

Battlefield V beta:
On low settings - 40 fps average with drops to around 10 (My overall RAM usage was over 90% on this game)

Black Ops 4 Blackout Beta:
On medium settings - 70fps with occasional drops to 45 fps. (Again my RAM was high)

I hope this helps you understand my current situation,

Additionally my friend was talking to me about reinstalling my OS as this would speed up my PC, is he correct?

Many thanks,
Nic

this would speed up my PC, is he correct?

Click to expand...

Quite possibly. It could improve framerate too if there is some kind of problem with your existing install.

When you say your RAM usage is ~90%+ - you are referring to what Task Manager says? Check the link re performance monitor above.

Also, having not enough RAM doesn't affect framerate too much. See these articles for what happens when people deliberately tax their system's memory:
http://www.techspot.com/article/1043-8gb-vs-16gb-ram/page3.html (where they run 50 Chrome tabs while gaming, with 8gb vs 16gb RAM)
https://techbuyersguru.com/gaming-ddr4-memory-2133-vs-26663200mhz-8gb-vs-16gb?page=3 (1440p gaming, 8 vs 16gb RAM)

The PCs and the games could hardly care less. An acquaintance of mine who tried the same experiment did report alt-tabbing to be more sluggish when running a game, spotify, and a shedload of junk on 8gb RAM, though agreed framerate was basically fine.

For Rainbow 6 Siege:


https://www.techspot.com/review/1675-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1050-3gb/
https://www.pcgamer.com/rainbow-six-siege-benchmarks/

Notwithstanding that it's a multiplayer game, so your mileage may vary, it sounds like your performance is perhaps a bit low given the above charts.

Not having enough VRAM often won't really affect your framerate most of the time. What you might get is hitching or stutter as new textures are loaded (e.g. if you ran the 6 gig texture pack on Shadow of Mordor on a GTX 1060 3gb or my GTX 970). But it's periodic, and ultimately not really a problem. Furthermore, some games (including GTA-V if I recall correctly) are quite well optimised so that even when they want more VRAM than you have, it won't really hurt performance (either it was the optimisation and/or Nvidia's texture compression - the point was, 2gb VRAM was fine).

It strikes me as highly unlikely that RAM quantity is the cause for a low average framerate given the above articles.

It won't be the CPU either for Rainbow 6 Siege or the others afaik as the game is clearly very happy with quad core CPUs (see the i3 8100 result there - doesn't stop it from getting over 120fps at 1080p ultra):


The Betas as you say are that, and will have had poor performance. Not sure if you ran BF 5 Beta on DX12, but if you did that will have contributed to the poor performance. This dude allegedly on a worse system than you by a long way (also with 8gb RAM) was getting higher FPS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h8hW5AOcAQ
There's not much fighting until the end, but still.
This guy with more fighting and a waker system still: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMdEfMA8X_s

i.e. I don't think your hardware is at fault.

It could well be that successive Windows patches or other OS/driver/software issues are causing problems with your performance.

If you wanted to "speed up" your PC in general, one upgrade you certainly could invest in is an SSD. SSD prices are coming down a bit (unlike RAM prices so far), and unlike the CPU or GPU you're not replacing anything to add one so there's no wasted cash. It won't improve framerate (or, if it does improve framerate, it's because something was taxing your HDD while you were running games). But it will make loading the OS, programs, and any games you install onto it faster.

It was only after enabling a free month of AVG tuneup to 'sleep' some background apps

Click to expand...

This strongly suggests it's not your hardware that's fundamentall inadequate, but other factors affecting performance.

If the hardware was inadequate, nobody would be able to afford to play these games outside of consoles.

If you want to upgrade because you want to upgrade, I can't stop you and it's not my job to either, but ultimately your hardware is not why your system seems to be underperforming. Running a game and one or two background programs shouldn't bring your PC to its knees.

The most basic things to try first would be sweeping the GPU drivers with DDU and performing a clean install:
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?59691-Clean-Installing-Graphics-Drivers

Then checking power settings:

Set the Windows Power Plan to High Performance:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/778-power-plan-settings-change.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/292971-pcie-link-state-power-management-turn-off-windows.html


And set the GPU power settings to max performance:
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answ...ent-mode-from-adaptive-to-maximum-performance

And then looking into RAM usage more thoroughly.

Thanks you.

I will work through some of the things you have said (including updating drivers, checking power settings and monitoring RAM in detail) and get back to you with what I find.

Hopefully what you have suggested should boost my fps for now, but what would you recommend to get 144Hz in the future? Possibly saving for a better graphics card?

Additionally I was just looking through my PC specs and noticed my RAM is 3000Mhz. In task manger it says that I am only running my RAM at 2133Hz. Should this be the case and does it make any difference?

Many thanks,
Nic

Regarding your RAM, and in support of what Oussebon has been saying, you can't really tell whether you're out of RAM just by looking at how much is apparently in use. 90% RAM 'in use' isn't necessarily a problem, it's actually good use of the RAM you have. 90% RAM use only becomes a problem if another RAM hungry process starts, in that case the Memory Manager will steal (unreferenced) pages from other processes to free up RAM. This page stealing only becomes a problem if a process later references one of those stolen pages, you see this via the Hard Page Fault Rate. See the link Oussebon gave you to see how to track the Hard Page Fault Rate, they key paragraphs there are these...

By far the best way to see whether you are paging (and thus short of RAM) is to use the Windows Performance Monitor. Start the Performance Monitor (type perfmon in the Run box). In the tree menu on the left click the Performance Monitor entry. The Performance Monitor starts with a %processor time counter already running, we don't need that so we'll remove it. Right-click anywhere in the graph display area and select Remove All Counters (click Ok when asked). Now we need to add a couple of performance counters, so right-click anywhere in the graph area again and select Add Counters. In the dialog listing the available counters scroll down to find the Memory entry and expand it (click the right down arrow). Scroll down in the Memory section to the Page Faults/sec and Page Reads/sec entries, highlight both and click the Add button to add these counters, then click Ok to close the dialog.

Below the graph you'll see the colours assigned to each counter (typically these are green and red). You'll see the page faults/sec value varying quite wildly and often being clipped at over 100, that's because this is showing both hard and soft page faults (the values we see in Task Manager). In a system with enough RAM the page reads/sec counter will barely shift off the bottom of the graph. If you see the page reads/sec counter shooting wildly up and down like the page faults/sec counter consistently and over long periods then you are most likely short of RAM (but check that the hard page faulting is system-wide and not just one process). Note that even on a system with plenty of spare RAM you may still see the odd few page-ins occasionally, this is perfectly normal and not at all a cause for concern.

Click to expand...

If you see a consistently high Hard Page Fault Rate that is system wide (ie. not all coming from one process) then you are short of RAM, but if you don't then you're not (not yet anyway). If you suspect that the hard page faults are coming from a single process then suspect a memory leak in that process (watch the Working Set Delta column on the Details tab in Task Manager, if that keeps going up for one process then there's likely a memory leak in that process).

As far as a reinstall speeding up the system that's generally true, but only because it effectively defrags the drive and locates all the files and folders close together and close to the Master File Table (MFT). You might be able to achieve a similar disk performance improvement simply by running the Windows defrag tool. It's worth a try before you go down the reinstall route.

Oussebon is much better qualified than I to advise you on the most cost-effective upgrades but given your spec I would be looking at an SSD for Windows and programs before I considered a RAM upgrade. It doesn't need to be huge, 256GB would be ample, I manage with a 128GB SSD partition for Windows and my programs. That will make a very noticeable difference to overall performance.

Regarding the RAM frequency, I don't know why your RAM is running at only 2133MHz though others might. I doubt getting it to run at 3000MHz (if that's even possible on that motherboard) will make any noticeable difference.

Additionally I was just looking through my PC specs and noticed my RAM is 3000Mhz. In task manger it says that I am only running my RAM at 2133Hz. Should this be the case and does it make any difference?

Click to expand...

No idea why.

It could be Task Manager just giving you the base speed of the RAM instead of what it's been set to via the XMP profile. Task Manager often doesn't get the CPU frequency right either.

Try downloading CPU-Z and seeing what it says
https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
What does it say in the BIOS?

Hopefully what you have suggested should boost my fps for now, but what would you recommend to get 144Hz in the future? Possibly saving for a better graphics card?

Click to expand...

Basically this. If you want higher framerates, you'll ultimately want a better GPU.

You shouldn't need to replace things like the CPU / mobo / RAM any time soon. If there are performance problems that relate to RAM usage etc these should be fixable rather than the HW not being enough.