Need help updating old computer

Gtaw68

Hello all, this is my first foray back in to computers. I build them as a kid 20+ years ago. Please, treat me like a kindergartener!

I currently have a hand-me-down desktop PC built by Velocity Micro. It's a GREAT PC, but I'm having a terrible time getting decent FPS while gaming.

I'm not sure if my computer specs are in my profile, so I'll list them again here:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

RAM: 16 GB

PSU: Corsair RM1000

GPU: Name NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (Upgraded from a GeForce 1080 on 11.25.2023. This made almost zero improvement in the quality of my games.... This has be baffled and is the primary reason I'm asking for help.)

Recently, I replaced my old SSD with a Samsung 870 EVO SATA III SSD 1TB 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive. This made a huge improvement in response and solved a few boot / crashing problems I was having.

For reference, Counter-Strike 2 can barely maintain 80 fps in firefights. Game runs very choppy with all settings turned to low, including Nvidia settings set to performance only. It even struggles to run World of Warcraft classic.

I am at a loss why my computer would struggle at all on such old and simple games? Now I'm reaching out to the experts for some guidance or insight.

Thank you for your time, eager to hear what others have to say.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@Gtaw68

Platform needs an update. The old Devil's Canyon CPU was the last generation to use DDR3 as I recall. You just want to upgrade the platform, and we have a lot of combo's on our site. You can get a 12900K, board and 32GB DDR5-6000 for $400. That'll solve your problem and hold up well for a long time. I'd pick up an NVMe drive and use the SATA SSD as a data drive.

Haz

Ah the Intel 4790K that’s a legendary CPU that I haven’t heard in a while. Despite being over 8 years old it still performs decent with the correct parings. Heck I still have this CPU in my system to this day. I believe your issue is the RTX 4070 bottlenecking the CPU. That CPU given that it only has 4 cores and 8 threads makes a little weak in 2024. But I have found that these GPUs work well with it. The GTX 1070 8GB (no bottleneck), RTX 2060 6GB (5 % bottleneck), RTX 3050 8GB (5% bottleneck).

Alternatively if you still want to keep your RTX 4070 you can buy the Mirco center motherboard combo which includes the cpu, motherboard, and ram. They can range form $330-700.