Incremental PC Upgrade

[euromodeller]

I hope that this thread is of use for members to see where PC performance upgrades can make a difference when you are on a tight budget.

I am lucky to have 2 PCs, one is my main PC (i5 and Strix 1070Ti) and the other is built from donated parts, scavenged parts and salvaged parts from main PC upgrade parts.

I am going to upgrade my 'spare' dual monitor PC to be my main PC.

Spec before upgrades was a combo of i3 and GTX 750Ti with 16gb of DDR3 memory.

CM case and CM 650w power supply were both new in August.

This year I've been able to afford a stage by stage upgrade to my second PC using brand new components!

Back in January I added a GTX 1050Ti to the rig and got this benchmark...

UserBenchmarks: Game 32%, Desk 45%, Work 28%
CPU: Intel Core i3-3240 - 53%
GPU: ASUS Nvidia GTX 1050-Ti - 33.3%
GPU: ASUS Nvidia GTX 750 Ti - 24.8%
HDD: WD Blue 500GB (2010) - 40%
HDD: Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 250GB - 42.5%
HDD: Seagate Expansion 1TB - 48.9%
RAM: HyperX Fury DDR3 1866 C10 2x8GB - 67.6%
MBD: MSI Z77A-G43 (MS-7758)

Despite the results I was using it to make smaller routes in TRS19, full marks to the software for that

Next upgrade was late February with new components, a major expense (to me anyway) but I live and breathe Trainz so It is worth the investment.

I replaced motherboard, memory and processor and added a CM Hyper 212X cooler for the CPU and an extra front intake fan...

UserBenchmarks: Game 43%, Desk 65%, Work 60%
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700 - 98.1%
GPU: ASUS Nvidia GTX 1050-Ti - 38.3%
GPU: ASUS Nvidia GTX 750 Ti - 25%
HDD: WD Blue 500GB (2010) - 46.9%
HDD: Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 250GB - 43.3%
HDD: Seagate Expansion 1TB - 51.6%
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 C16 2x8GB - 84.1%
MBD: Asus TUF Z370-PLUS GAMING II

An imporovement, but not good enough yet!
As well as the new components giving a better result, there was a + 5% increase in the 1050Ti GPU performance.
I could now watch TV online smoothly whilst TRS19 was running so that's a positive.

March's update component is due to arrive today and I am really excited because it is a brand new model of GPU.......


April/May's update will be to add 4 x 250 SSDs, brands still in the research stage.
One for OS, one for TANE, one for TRS19 and one for my postcard collection images and databases.
Later updates will be to replace the spinner HDDs with larger more modern ones for storage and general use.

I'll return with the (hopefully better) results after the latest upgrade either later today or tomorrow morning..

 

[euromodeller]

Latest update is a new GPU...

UserBenchmarks: Game 86%, Desk 67%, Work 66%
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700 - 95.2%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1660-Ti - 91.3%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050-Ti - 37.6%
HDD: WD Blue 500GB (2010) - 48.9%
HDD: Hitachi HTS545025B9A300 250GB - 43.5%
HDD: Seagate Expansion 1TB - 52%
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 C16 2x8GB - 83.2%
MBD: Asus TUF Z370-PLUS GAMING II


Some great improvements for this new budget card.
Game benchmark doubled from 43% to 86%!

No settings changed yet, this is just a vanilla installation of the card.

SSDs next increment, hopefully next month.

 

[PC_Ace]

euromodeller -

Some great improvements for this new budget card.
Game benchmark doubled from 43% to 86%!​

That's a very cost-effective upgrade. Congratulations.
Underscores the point that GPUs make the greatest difference in TRS19 and T:ANE; not CPUs, RAM, or storage...

 

[nugget2225]

i know what it feels like to be on a budget, i was lucky and was able to upgrade all at once, and it doesn't happen very often and that was a year ago, your biggest boost from here would be an ssd or m.2, you can get a 480gb ssd for 60.00 on amazon, i bought 2 of them and put them in raid 0. we have the same cpu, the 8700k will be plenty for 3-4 years or longer, the 9900k just wasn't worth an extra credit card bill. i have stayed with my 1080ti because i spent 800 on it for one, and for 2 none of the new cards have 11gb of vram. the top videocard is 1200 bucks and up. just not worth it.you made great choices.

 

[euromodeller]

Thanks for your input everyone.
In TRS19 I've just spent most of today working on a complicated goods yard/loco depot which had ground my i3 rig to a halt because of the amount of track used!
Now with the new set-up it's fast loading with settings set higher than I have ever done before and no jerkines whilst flying from one end of the yard to the other.

The basic Asus GTX 1660Ti card is an amazing performer for the price, I recommend it.
One very happy pensioner here

 

[euromodeller]

I have just completed my latest and most long-winded upgrade.
I have added 2x 500GB WD Blue 3D NAND SATA M.2 2280 SSD to the PC, one as the main C drive and TANE/TRS19 UK assets and routes and the other purely for my TRS19 European assets and routes.
I toyed with the idea of getting a 760 EVO 500gig, but, eBuyer had the WD on offer which meant I could get 2 for the price of one Samsung (1tb for the price of 500GB).
I figured that these SSD would be good enough and a vast improvement on my 9 year old rusty spinner HDD (A WD Blue).
I will use the old spinner for storage and will replce it with a new faster one when finances allow.

So why was it long winded?
Rather than using a clone and paste method I decided that vanilla installs would be beneficial, waving goodbye to unnecessary cr@p that tends to accumulate.
New clean installation of Win10 Pro. from my recovery USB stick, followed by hours of updates over a standard broadband connection. (yes my recovery media was out of date, lesson learned )
Then I had to re-install all of the programs, bookmarks etc.
Next was a clean install of TANE on the new C drive, followed by updates and then transferring my routes via CDP
Then I did a clean install of TRS19 on to the C drive, followed by " " "
Next was a clean install of TRS19 on the second SSD followed by " " "
I've still got my data folders should I need them.
Finally today I reinstalled my Thunderbird email client and transferred my data folder to it.
Things are nearly back to normal, so I did a UserBenchmark test.

So, here is the result..

UserBenchmarks: Game 93%, Desk 94%, Work 82%
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700 - 94.5%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1660-Ti - 93.8%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050-Ti - 38%
SSD: WDC WDS500G2B0B-00YS70 500GB - 117.9%
SSD: WDC WDS500G2B0B-00YS70 500GB - 112.2%
HDD: WD Blue 500GB (2010) - 60.3%
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 C16 2x8GB - 82.3%
MBD: Asus TUF Z370-PLUS GAMING II

So, there we are, a really good PC upgrade that was done on a budget of £1000.

My 4 boys have no inhertance and I have a decent PC

All upgrade components were bought from Ebuyer in the UK

Cost Breakdown..
£135.00....Asus Tuf Z370-Plus Gaming DDR4 ATX Motherboard.
£097.74....Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 2666Mhz
£299.44....Intel Core i& Socket 1151 3.2Ghx Pricessor
£032.49....Cooler master Hyper 212x 4 Heatpipe Tower Cpu Cooler
£259.97....Asus GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Phoenix OC Graphics Card
£091.64....2x WD Blue 500GB 3D NAND SSD M.2 2280 Solid State Drives
TOTAL £916.28

Below my budget, so I might get a new SSD just for my TRS19 Uk assets and routes, as that seems to be expanding rapidly

 

[clam1952]

Looks good Graham.