What to Upgrade?

Welcome to the forums steamur!

If I read you right, you are looking for smart upgrade suggestions for your 2015 Vanquish II here. You haven’t mentioned what you use your rig for, what monitor and resolution you will use...we could be more specific if we knew about that...but generic suggestions I can make!

Looking at your MATX Asus motherboard, you should have no trouble upgrading to a current nVidia RTX card **...the entry level RTX2060 just hit the market yesterday...the RTX2070 is the mid level that plays everything at fairly high settings, and the RTX2080 and way pricy RTX 2080 Ti are the top Ultra settings end. An easy plug and play performance upgrade... just make sure you have the latest nVidia video drivers.

**One thing to keep in mind when considering video card upgrades would be the 600w power supply (PSU) you have now vs the power requirements of any new video card you might want to use. Your 600w PSU will work with the new RTX2060 video card, but things get tight with the RTX2070 needing almost all of that power....so above that level RTX 2060 card you should probably also plan on an upgrade your PSU to a 750w or better model. Corsair makes good PSU’s.   A PSU replacement would perhaps not be a job for a pc novice, but it’s not really that hard...lol...doable if you are good with your hands and want to learn how your motherboard and components are wired & plugged in.

Another easy upgrade suggestion could be replacing your two 4 gb sticks of DDR3 RAM memory with two 8 gb DDR3 sticks of the exact same timing and speed as your current DS DDR3 1600mhz speed RAM.   (Your motherboard only has 2 RAM slots). 8 gb RAM is the minimum needed for gaming, but 16 gb RAM would be the most you would need for gaming and in your case it’s an improvement you might notice as most things you do on a pc use RAM to load and unload programs or games you may use. Newer programs and games may run better with a bit more RAM.   Assuming you buy the correct RAM, another easy plug and play upgrade you could do to see performance enhanced a bit.

If you are still using a standard 7200 rpm hard drive (HHD) for your only drive, upgrading to a much faster SSD and cloning your current operating system over to a new SSD drive to house your op system and some key programs would speed up your op system boot times...but installing hard drives and using drive cloning software is a little more involved for a pc novice.

See if these suggestions give you any ideas. Upgrades will keep your old DS rig working for you much farther down the road.

Glad to try to help!

1} Wait on choosing monitor(s) in till your new videocard is all decided. You can better choose knowing what the new card can do...There are new features like G-Sync you may want to match with card features.

2). You have a 600 w PSU now. The new nVidia entry level RTX 2060 video card I mentioned would work for you without a PSU change. You can read up on that budget level card on the NVidia site...but should fit the bill nicely for a few years. Recommended PSU for the 2060 is a 500w.   

The RTX 2070 video card is considered the middle sweet spot of the lineup...a better stronger choice , it would play most games at higher settings and keep that up for longer... recommended PSU is 550w...so just adequate power depending on what else is powered by your pc....Think in your case I would want at least the RTX 2070 going forward...stay competitive for longer. Powers tight but just enough to work.

3). You should have 2 sticks of 4gb DDR3 1600mhz speed RAM now...you would buy a new set 2 8gb DDR3 1600mhz speed RAM sticks...total RAM 16gb.....double what you have now....but you should find out the timing ( usually 5 numbers with dashes in between like 8-8-8-2-4 etc). listed on the side of your current DS RAM and match that series of numbers on the new set you buy. With power off, you can use a phone cam and photograph the info on the sides of one RAM stick so you can go buy new RAM with the same timing. Less risk of a problem that way...

Once you have the 2 new 8gb RAM sticks...power off and unplug PSU...Ground yourself by grasping the metal case. Your board has just two RAM slots, and at each end there are lever type latches you must push to release the RAM sticks...once both are unlatched, pull straight up on the sticks to remove the old set. Line up the new RAM sticks which will have a notch in middle matching the slot pattern...can only go the right way...and push the new RAM straight in...the side levers should click back into place holding the ends down firm in the RAM slots. Then you can plug back in and restart the PC...should be plug and play... ADATA, Corsair are both pretty dependable for RAM.

4) Good you already installed an SSD ...now you can study up at your leisure on drive cloning software and perhaps get your operating system running on the faster SSD as the new C boot drive...

Good luck, and be sure and let us know what upgrades you install!
Make that old rig fly with some new gear inside...lol.

Edited by HockeyBuck - 19 Jan 2019 at 12:49am

Originally posted by Snaike Personally, I have the Vanquish 2 from early '14. I have upgraded the RAM to 16GB (Crucial.com will help with a compatibility app. 2x8GB is what you're going to need.) I have upgraded the GPU to a 1070, and installed an SSD as an extra. The upgrades have been easy and painless and the machine is still doing exactly what I need it to do these 4 years later. (IMHO the 600W will have no problem with the 2070. But I'm not one of The Smart Guys® that hang around here.)

I would hope a 600w PSU would work, that is what they are including in my vanquish 7 ultimate that comes with a 2070 lol otherwise no wonder it is taking 30+ days to get here, all their testing keeps failing lmao jk but seriously the wait is killing me... But I personally would probably do the 2060 for that right. No PSU upgrade needed and saves you 150-250 USD, plus when overclocked it surpasses a 1070ti according to benchmarks.

Congratulations. That is a really clean install. Enjoy. 

@Cretea I was just making a joke to try to lighten the intense delays.

Hahaha but I'm not gonna lie, I bookmarked that page. Always good to have a power calc on hand. The PSU will be one thing down the line I will update on my vanquish, but it might just get a red twin instead.

OMG the specs for the new Ryzen lineup leaked. Yeah definitely gonna be updating the Mobo and CPU. Ryzen 9 looks so amazing.

The single slot for your graphics card on that motherboard is listed in board specs as 1 x PCIe x16..... The current standard is PCIe 3.0, so your motherboard is behind by a few versions...but video cards are backward compatible to work fine with the older standards so your RTX 2070 or 2060 should work fine. Your original GTX 760 video card was also a PCIE 3.0 card so you should be fine using a RTX 2070 in that slot...I believe the RTX 2070 should be about an inch and a half shorter in length. You have the 760 connected using two 6 pin power connectors to the PSU...while the RTX 2070 should need one 6 pin connector & one 8-pin connector. Big boost in graphics!