Back in 2013, you guys helped me pick the parts for my brother's computer.

Old thread: http://www.staredit.net/topic/16081/

Here is the old build for convenience:



The keyboard is now the Razer BlackWidow Chroma.

Price shouldn't be a problem since he now has a job.

His current idea was to change the case for the NZXT H440 (Matte Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
And upgrade to a GeForce GTX 1070.

He thinks he probably needs to upgrade his motherboard and cpu.

Thoughts?

Why the upgrade? What is it not doing that he needs it to do? Even if he's working a budget of what he'd like to spend would help as well.

He said his current one doesn't run the new games that well. He got in The Division 2 beta and he is running it at minimum settings for example.

With budget I'd says ~$1000.

He could do something like this:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($251.35 @ Vuugo)
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty H170 Performance ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($186.99 @ BestDirect)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($79.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($107.99 @ Canada Computers)
Other: RX480 ($225.00)
Total: $851.31
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-22 01:50 EDT-0400

And re-use the rest of the parts from his current build. Actually the Samsung isn't really necessary if his ADATA SSD is working fine but.

My advice: just upgrade the GPU for now. Worst case, your CPU really is a bottleneck (it's not) and you have to upgrade the other components as well, and best case you saved a bunch of money.

I'll second the RX480. If it's everything AMD claims it to be, it's going to easily the best value card on the market, and the go-to 1080p recommendation until Nvidia challenges it with the GTX 1060 or something (which is likely at least half a year away).

Thanks guys! Helps a lot!

The GPU is the most obvious bottleneck and 2GB vRAM isn't enough for a couple select titles anymore.

Another possibility is the RAM. Some games hog 6+ GB and an unoptimized OS and/or Programs like Browsers could take up the rest. He should easily be able to determine that with the task manager.

Not relevant for gaming, but if he is running the SSD on a SATA controller in IDE mode the trim command wouldn't run and make the SSD pretty slow over time.