Hi,
Planing to upgrade my current setup and planned to attack the CPU first.
Next budget Upgrade motherboard and CPU cooler and then lastly maybe next year, upgrade GPU.

Is this plan of mine logical? can shed some light on what i should be focusing on?
my current rig is as below.

Intel i5 12400F (wanting to upgrade to i5 14600KF)
Scythe Mugen 5 ARGB
Gigabyte Geforce RTX 3060TI
Asus TUF Gaming B660M-PLUS WIFI D4 LGA 1700 DDR4
Kingston Fury Beast 16gbx2 kit (32gb)
Nzxt C-series (c650)
1440p 240 Hz monitor
Kingston KC3000 2gb NVMe

Thank you in advance.

This post has been edited by Davird: Jun 25 2025, 01:01 AM

At tht resolution..i would go for GPU upgrade first.

What games are you planning to play?

mobo tak perlu upgrade, upgrade GPU dulu...

LGA1700 is pretty much deadended.
If you want upgrade CPU shoot for 14700 /F (Ksku is also possible if you limit its max TDP to listed spec). Do update to latest BIOS if your going that route to prevent 14th Gen CPU degradation.

Theres no much benefit upgrade the mobo since its dead platform, so I not sure why you want bother it. Unless your a power user I would think your current mobo is okay for use?

If want upgrade mobo & CPU might as well do whole rebuild, either Arrowlake (LGA1851 will support only this gen pulak LOL) or if can wait for Novalake (new CPU socket) or else take plunge to Ryzen AM5 with a bit more futureproof longevity.

Imho you will get more obvious perf gains by upgrading GPU firstly like the other commenters above. But again your 650W PSU will be a limit to how high you can go, I would say 9060XT/9070 nonXT which will give you;


Yep double the perf of your 3060TI.

If you upgrade PSU to 850W can shoot for 9070XT or even 5080.

Thanks for your detailed explanation.

So basically, keep my current setup, go for a PSU and GPU upgrade would be a better option? My current i5 12400f would be good enough to run 9060xt given I upgrade the psu together?

I always had the impression that I needed to upgrade my CPU before the rest could come in.

This post has been edited by Davird: Jun 25 2025, 01:23 PM

upgrade GPU 1st.
save up for next upgrade to AM5, AMD X3D CPU and DDR5 6000mhz RAM

This post has been edited by T.Alvin: Jun 25 2025, 12:52 PM

Mine is intel CPU, mobo supports DDR4 only.

Upgrading GPU will always give you more FPS per dollar than upgrading CPU unless your CPU limited. 12400 is still a competent CPU but games are starting to demand 8cores as minimum from this year onwards.

You can still get away using current PSU when upgrading to 9060XT, no need to change. But if want something more powerful will need to upgrade PSU too, also if you upgrade CPU to more powerful.

Thank you so much for your time and explanation. I truly appreciate you. Now I've got a solid plan and a clear path on upgrades.
I'll get the 9060xt now.
Then in a couple of months or so, I'll top up on the PSU. (Any good brands to recommend?).

Another technical question.
I have a spare Adata sx82000 gen3 1TB SSD lying around. Since my kc3000 1TB is about 80% full.
I'm wondering. Should I run windows on KC3000 and put my games on the Adata or do I put windows on Adata and run games on kc3000.
Will either make any difference?

FSP VITA GM, either 850W or 1000W depends whats your upgrade path (can be ported over to a new build later)
Otherwise 1st Player NGDP series, Coolermaster MWE V2/V3 GOLD series

Keep Windows in that KC3000 as its usable when ported over to a new system next time, the SX8200 being on Gen3 will be too slow in a future new build. Port your games to the Gen3 drive. 80% full is the max I would go as your too little free space for the drive to run in SLC mode (the reason for Gen4 speeds). Try not to fill up your boot OS SSD as its the one that does a lot of mix read/writes, unlike a game drive.

You will want RX 9070 XT or RTX 5070 Ti for 1440p high refresh rate gaming.

Intel Bartlett Lake is coming for LGA 1700. You might wanna hold on and see how good it is.

The vanilla 9070 should do just fine too, if it's reasonably cheap enough, and it might be an even better fit on that 650W PSU

Heard Bartlett coming since 14th gen era, I wont hold my breath.

9070 nonXT is prolly the max I would go with a 650W PSU.

3090 can run more efficient than 3080.
at same power limit.


get 9070xt 1st if you got the deal.
PSU can do later or never.

Not advisable to run a 9070XT with just a 650W PSU. Even AMD recos minimum 700W unit. A 9070 nonXT is the most I would go for.

............

you dont read properly

at Same Power Limit

.......................
3090 limit down power to use same level of power AS 3080, it run Faster.



there is a setting in afterburner can Limit power draw.. or you can downclock it.

Thank you, will keep my eyes out for future upgrade.

Thank you, I've already decided to play it safe and take your advice with 9060xt and then upgrade to a 1000w PSU.

I'll close this topic now as I've gotten a clear path and sound advice. Thank you all so much.

This post has been edited by Davird: Jun 27 2025, 05:17 PM