PC Upgrade Help

Bought a GTX970 last year but I'm looking to upgrade the rest of my machine. Currently running

• INTEL I5 3570K
• GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-D3H
• CRUCIAL BALLISTIX ELITE 8GB

Not sure if this is a bottleneck or not, so I'm not really sure whether I'd see much of a performance upgrade or not. Already running with a 600W power supply which I hope is still beefy enough if not though. It's hard to keep up with all the recommendations these days so any advice is appreciated!

Thanks

Why are you wanting to upgrade?

Those specs are still VERY good.

Yeah that was the problem, it was hard to tell whether the rest of the machine was OK or not - had some FPS drops on the latest Tomb Raider game so wasn't sure.

If there's not problems I'll just leave it, thanks!

Edit: Although would it be worth replacing the RAM at least? Looks like the board supports up to DDR3 2800 so I'm considering getting 16GB in there.

@drshilliams: I'd wait at least a year. We're just getting started in the Skylake microarchitecture, so there'll be some appreciable improvement in the price-for-performance ratio after a wait. When you do upgrade, you'll want to upgrade to the LGA-1151 socket, which means updating your CPU to one that uses that many pins (one of the Skylake models), your motherboard to one that HAS that kind of socket on it, and your RAM to DDR4 since it's become standard on LGA-1151 boards.

Your specs are still solid. If you really wanted to squeeze more performance out of it just overclock your processor or something. 16GB of ram for gaming is completely unnecessary at the moment but if you wanna upgrade to that, it's not terribly expensive and it's an easy upgrade to make.

If you REALLY want to upgrade something I'd say to get an SSD to boot Windows off of. (Assuming you're using a mechanical drive currently)

Awesome, thanks for the advice guys. I'll definitely hold off for a while.

@turtlebird95 Already running Windows on an SSD plus Steam from another so no problems there :)

Upgrade to a new G-Sync 1440p monitor or a nice mechanical keyboard, something like that.

Still running my 3570k, honestly if you feel you need more CPU better to pick up a cooler and overclock. I went to 4Ghz but I bet I could get it even higher, and good aftermarket cooling isn't really too pricey. Never (really, never!) OC on the fan that came with it, though.

Get into a new CPU/mobo/etc. in a CPU gen or two when DDR4 prices arent so high. (that shiny newness tax etc)

Currently gonna pick up some RAM and a 1440p screen myself (mmm tax season)