Hi all, I've just started my new job and I'm looking to treat myself come payday. I bought my current PC 4 years ago (exact list below) and all I've added since is a sad and an x52 +pedals. And a 4k monitor, though I only hope to go 2k for gaming... I'm considering buying a 1070, will that be able to swap out for the 660 in the rig below? Are there any other bits I need to swap out? From my research the 1070 has basically the same power draw as a 660 so that should be fine right?
MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail
Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003)
Corsair Enthusiast Series TX550M High Performance 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply (CP-9020001-UK)
Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black
Cooler Master Hyper 612S CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/1156/1155/775/AM3/AM2+/AM2)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX)
LG GH24NS90 24x DVDąRW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM
Apologies for any bad formatting/spelling. Did this on my phone while at the start of a visual migraine so I'm half blind!
Oh BTW I'm in the UK if that matters...
Hey Lienna, sorry I missed your post.
First, based on your specs with a gtx 1070 in the power draw would be :
Load Wattage:287 W
Recommended PSU Wattage: 337 W
As calculated from the coolermaster psu calculator website. Your psu is decent quality and even with the gtx 1070 included the wattage doesn't exceed what it's providing so you should be fine.
The cpu shouldn't bottleneck the performance of your new GPU and a GTX 1070 is such a good choice. If I could afford one I would get one as well :)
The board will support the upgrade and it should just be a simple remove the old card put the new one in (remove the screw at the rear of the chassis holding the card in then press the little tab down at the back under the card. This will unlock it from the slot then you just lift it out. The gtx 1070 stock card is listed on google is about 1 inch longer than a stock gtx 660 so maybe double check that there's enough clearance in your case at the rear of the card to accommodate something a inch longer. Length varies by manufacturer however, I once had the misfortune of buying a card that was way too long and had to take a dremel to the drive cage to make room for it xD
Other than that your good to go. Another worthwhile upgrade for you would maybe be to add an additional 2 x 4gb ram. roughly £40 upgrade but I hear it can make a bit of a difference in star citizen.
When you do get round to upgrading your motherboard / cpu to one of the newer generations the overclocking process is greatly simplified by a lot of the manufacturers. Asus z170 boards have a TPU switch on the board, set it to 1 or 2 depending on air or water cooling and it automatically calculates a optimum 15% overclock for everything. You don't have to do anything other than let it reboot a few times automatically. Gigabyte boards do something similar too. Older boards there are guides but it can get a little complicated and you will already see a large fps increase just from the gtx 1070 alone I think.