Wanting to upgrade GTX 1660 for 1080p gaming - some clashes with PSU, motherboard and maybe CPU bottlenecking.

[BendyG]

Hi everyone,

So I'm looking to upgrade the GPU in my old build. I'll post the specs at the bottom in case they're needed. I knew next to nothing when I got that build, I know the PSU might be baffling, but I didn't grasp the importance of them back then. And to be fair, I've had no issues with the PSU at all in three years.

Prefering to stay with an Nvidia card this time, I think my two sensible options are a 3060 or 4060. I've never changed a PSU before, and am pretty wary of doing that.

The 4060 would be my preference. It's newer, and somehow it's got even less power draw than my 1660. I know upgrading the PSU would still be advisable, but my current one should still maybe be plausible? But looking into it, (I'm new to this, so apologies if I miss the obvious), it says it uses an x8 PCIe 4 connection, and my motherboard only accepts PCIe 3.0, 16x? Looked up a few benchmarks, and in most games the difference is marginal, but could be a bigger problem in the near future?

The 3060 would run better on my motherboard (I think), and my CPU might be less of a bottleneck. It's just over £30 cheaper from PCS, compared to the 4060. But I'd have to upgrade the PSU. I'd try and get a gold rated modular one, either 550w or 650w, but that would push the price up £67-£78. So I'd be paying more to use a last generation card, but if it's more compatible, is that a better option? I'm a bit stumpted on this one...

So I'd want to keep it around the £300 mark (hopefully I'd get something for my old card too), and it's for 1080p non-competitive gaming, so I'm not chasing ultra high frame rates. It's with a 1080p, 75hz monitor.

Build as it is now:

Case
CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES™ 200R COMPACT GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Six Core Processor i5-9400 (2.9GHz) 9MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME Z390-P: ATX, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2400MHz (1 x 8GB) (Upgraded to 2 x 8GB 2400MHz last year)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1660 - HDMI, DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (2200 MB/R, 1500 MB/W)
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W CV SERIES™ CV-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler Black Edition
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Firefox™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 12 working days
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book - United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland
Logo Branding
PCSpecialist Logo
Price: £0.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z370-pc/5cd9Gny5aq/

 

[TonyCarter]

There are a lot of things there that are sub-optimal and potentially eating FPS/performance...and I'm not including the GPU in that, as I think it's fine for 1080p:

1. Very slow 2400MHz RAM - ideally it would be 3200/3600Mhz
2. Quite a slow, small boot drive...where I assume your games are installed to...which will slow down as it fills up
3. Very low power PSU...more of use in a office PC than a gaming PC...Nvidia recommend a 650w+ PSU for the 4060
4. Old/unrealiable wifi/bluetooth card
5. Bullguard (if it's still installed, then it's worth fully uninstalling it from it's own uninstaller as it does nothing over the built in security suite

 

[BendyG]

There are a lot of things there that are sub-optimal and potentially eating FPS/performance...and I'm not including the GPU in that, as I think it's fine for 1080p:

1. Very slow 2400MHz RAM - ideally it would be 3200/3600Mhz
2. Quite a slow, small boot drive...where I assume your games are installed to...which will slow down as it fills up
3. Very low power PSU...more of use in a office PC than a gaming PC...Nvidia recommend a 650w+ PSU for the 4060
4. Old/unrealiable wifi/bluetooth card
5. Bullguard (if it's still installed, then it's worth fully uninstalling it from it's own uninstaller as it does nothing over the built in security suite

Hi, thanks for the reply =)

On the things you said:
1. It's a bit embarassing, but I didn't know about XMP when I got that RAM. I saw the stable RAM speed max at 2666MHz for my CPU and/or board, so thought 3200MHz was off the table. Wondering if my CPU and motherboard would be okay with XMP and 3200MHz (although it does add in cost).
2. I don't really have any issues with speed (that I've noticed), but yeah, it is very small. I did wonder if I could put a second SSD drive in the extra M2 slot, but read it can slow down the other slot, or could interfere with my SATA hard drive (might have got things a bit muddled there)
3. Another one of my concerns, but based on the lack of problems I've had and lack of confidence with upgrading it, not sure how to proceed with it...
4. Can't say I've had issues when I used wi-fi, now I'm near the new router so use an ethernet connection. Don't use any bluetooth devices.
5. That's long gone, thank goodness. (Took a lot of effort, but it's gone).

Thanks again for the help. Do you think the CPU might bottleneck a newer xx60 card, if I got one? With my current GPU, it's been fine at medium settings for a while, but it was struggling with a demo for a game coming next month called Lies of P. Was stuttering around the low-mid 50s, but now I wonder if the RAM was holding it back.

Yikes, feels like opening a can of worms... luckily that's the only time I'll ever (at the time, unknowingly) skimp on components. Lesson definitely learnt..

Edit: Quick bit of digging on the RAM, looks like my motherboard supports speeds of 3200mhz. Not a really expensive upgrade, I might have to just do this in stages. Upgrade the RAM first, see if that's stable and solves the problems. If games are still struggling, then I can think about the other upgrades..

 

[Martinr36]

Hi, thanks for the reply =)

On the things you said:
1. It's a bit embarassing, but I didn't know about XMP when I got that RAM. I saw the stable RAM speed max at 2666MHz for my CPU and/or board, so thought 3200MHz was off the table. Wondering if my CPU and motherboard would be okay with XMP and 3200MHz (although it does add in cost).
2. I don't really have any issues with speed (that I've noticed), but yeah, it is very small. I did wonder if I could put a second SSD drive in the extra M2 slot, but read it can slow down the other slot, or could interfere with my SATA hard drive (might have got things a bit muddled there)
3. Another one of my concerns, but based on the lack of problems I've had and lack of confidence with upgrading it, not sure how to proceed with it...
4. Can't say I've had issues when I used wi-fi, now I'm near the new router so use an ethernet connection. Don't use any bluetooth devices.
5. That's long gone, thank goodness. (Took a lot of effort, but it's gone).

Thanks again for the help. Do you think the CPU might bottleneck a newer xx60 card, if I got one? With my current GPU, it's been fine at medium settings for a while, but it was struggling with a demo for a game coming next month called Lies of P. Was stuttering around the low-mid 50s, but now I wonder if the RAM was holding it back.

Yikes, feels like opening a can of worms... luckily that's the only time I'll ever (at the time, unknowingly) skimp on components. Lesson definitely learnt..

Edit: Quick bit of digging on the RAM, looks like my motherboard supports speeds of 3200mhz. Not a really expensive upgrade, I might have to just do this in stages. Upgrade the RAM first, see if that's stable and solves the problems. If games are still struggling, then I can think about the other upgrades..

That's probably the best way to do it, do the ram first, then a second nvm drive for games, then the psu(minimum off the 850 watt rmx) and finally GPU