Advantages of Upgrading CPU?

My PC build is about 7 years old. I have a 1070, and a great SSD but those are the newest parts. I keep thinking about upgrading the CPU which would require a new motherboard, and at that point I may as well get new RAM and PSU. I run most games very well. 1440p, 60fps. Some sub 60 but still good. Which games benefit from CPU these days? I have no clue anymore.

CPU: i7-2600K

Cores: 4 (8 with hyperthreading)
Frequency: 3.4 GHz
Cache: 8mb

It's probably just me being precautionary since I'm worried about some part suddenly failing and being without a PC. Would I see any real benefit to upgrading this year?

I think you'd see a benefit, your CPU is 8 years old now.
My 6700K is 4 years old and the obvious limits are in open world games like Assassin's Creed Origins, which is mostly because it's poorly optimized, i think that's the current king of CPU hogs.

I'm not aware of what modern CPU technology is like, or if there's anything significant coming in the future, as i only research this stuff when i'm in the market for new parts.
If possible wait and see how Cyberpunk performs, that could be fairly CPU heavy with all its NPC's.

I mean, you'll get some kind of performance boost in open world Ubisoft and GTA sandboxes where a large number of NPCs are set to do their specific tasks on a specific schedule, and in city builders, RTS games on the scale of Ashes of the Singularity (which is less of a game and more of a CPU benchmark tool) with other various CPU demanding AI scripts to calculate and whatnot, as opposed to GPU dependent graphical details such as ambient occlusion, screen space reflections, anti aliasing, textures and other thing sin that vein that just make the game look pretty. And, Sandy Bridge is kinda long in the tooth these days. I'll be a matter of time before games will want faster cores and more cores. ...Oh, and, maybe not having to worry about Spectre and Meltdown could be a good reason to upgrade? Maybe? *shrugs*

But, my 4690K (with no overclock) doesn't seem to be much of a limiting factor for me playing games, granted in 1080p and paired with a 6GB 1060. I'm kinda itching for an upgrade to either a newer i7 or Ryzen 7 for content creation. But for just playing games, my Haswell/Devil's Canyon i5 is still doing its voodoo give or take some frames in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, quality-of-life modded Fallout 4, and Final Fantasy XV (though FF15 might be more GPU bound, I dunno for sure since I neither benchmark every game that I buy and look at every Digital Foundry video).

I'm on exactly the same CPU, OCed to 4.4 Ghz, and I see no reason to upgrade, yet.

Any meaningful upgrade would involve changing the mainboard maybe even ram and in my case the water cooling block, all for a gain in min-fps I don't even need in any games right now with my FullHD 60hz monitor and a GTX 1080.

The earliest I would consider an upgrade like that is after the release of the next console gen because that usually pushes the average CPU min-requirements up a notch. But as long as games run fine I see no reason at all to upgrade hardware regardless of it bein 4, 8 or 16 years old, the more mileage I can get out of stuff the better!

With respect to upgrading the RAM if you get a newer processor, there is no "might as well," (@alistercat) or "maybe," (@nethlem) about it. It would be a requirement. The 2600K was made at a time that DDR3 was the standard. Now it's DDR4. They are not interchangeable. Thankfully RAM prices have plunged in the last couple of years, so it's not as big a consideration as it once was.

I recently replaced my aging i5-3570K, and I have definitely noticed an improvement in stability of frame rates, if not the highs (or even averages). What a more modern CPU (in my case I went with a Ryzen 2600x) offered was more multitasking capabilities while gaming without causing a hit to frame rates. I wasn't really able to stream video on one screen while playing processor intensive games, for example, but now I can with a negligible difference.

I had an i5 2500k until last year and I must say I don't regret the upgrade in the slightest.

If you buy a new CPU, you're going to have to buy a new motherboard and RAM to go with it. Both AMD's and Intel's current processors require DDR4 RAM, the processor you currently have uses DDR3 RAM.

Whether you upgrade or not depends on whether you really want to spend that kind of money. I wouldn't say it's necessary, but I also think you would see some gains from it, especially if you multitask while playing games or if you play a lot of open world games.

^^Pretty much this. Unless you multitask a lot while gaming or play something like City Skylines or any other game that has massive CPU loads due to having to process a lot at once, it's usually not worth the upgrade to everything else unless you plan to futureproof the entire thing at once.

@justin258: @shivermetimbers: I multi task pretty much every time I play games. Always have video streaming on a second monitor or a web browser. Needing new RAM is a bummer because I have 16GB of DDR3. I do design work on here, too. Gives me something to think about!

@ralphmoustaccio: Thanks, I hadn't considered the RAM. I was only planning on keeping my SSD and GPU, everything else is 7 years old.

Well, eventually you will want to upgrade, as you said you don't want it to fail...you want to have a computer. But, I would hold off another year.

No matter what you want Intel or AMD the market is about to either get upset or at worst stay about the same. Ryzen 2 and Navi 20 could cause a shift in the market or prices, and if they don't you have not lost anything. Even if you want to go with Intel and Nvidia doing do after they need to react to AMD can't hurt. That just my opinion...

"Design work" can mean a lot of things, but if it means intensive Photoshop work or video editing or 3D modeling or something else that resource intensive, then yes, a better processor and some DDR4 RAM could do you some good. Still, I'd suggest saving up some money and going for a processor, RAM, motherboard, and aftermarket processor cooler all at once, as upgrading the processor you have will need all of those parts at once (I tried the stock cooler on my own Ryzen 7 2700X and the temps got pretty high so I wouldn't suggest depending on that).

If cost is a concern, Ryzen processors have picked up a pretty good reputation for performance-per-dollar since they came out. A Ryzen 7 2700X is around $300 right now.

The thing that bothers me most when upgrading is having to buy a copy of windows 10...building the PC is generally fun. I always reuse the case, PSU , Usually the SSD if its newer , Optical BR Drive, and GPU....So it becomes less expensive with just MOBO, RAM and CPU (and WIN 10).

I have that same CPU in my 2nd rig tho its OCed to 4.5GHZ

You might still be able to upgrade to Win 10 for free. It still worked for me about year ago.

A CPU upgrade to either the newest Intel generation or an AMD Ryzen 2xxx would be a significant jump in performance, somewhere around 20-30% from benchmarks I've seen recently. Time to build a new rig!

Yeah like most said you would need a new board and ram, which would probably give you a decent boost in their own right IMO. I haven't played anything demanding since AC origins, so my i5 6600k is still going strong with my 1080 as far as i can tell but i am on ddr4 etc as well.

However i am hearing that upgrading should probably wait until the new architecture comes out, i've only seen a few vids on it but the next leap is supposed to be pretty big (or has the potential to be)

@obcdexter: @stabfreely: Windows 10 keys can be tied to your Microsoft account, and subsequent installs can be activated by simply logging in with your Microsoft account. It's the same account I use for my Xbox and Outlook email service. Plus, I got the ultra special super duper edition for free from my University... 7 years ago. Still valid.