Omen 870-224 Processor Upgrade

[jMadHatter]

Desktop PC reference: HP Omen 870-224

Present upgrades:

Samsung - 860 EVO 1TB Internal SATA Solid State Drive

A-Tech 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 2133MHz DIMM PC4-17000 2Rx8 Dual Rank 1.2V CL15 288-Pin Non-ECC UDIMM

Present components:

Intel Core i5-7400

• CPU speed: 3.0 GHz (max turbo boost - 3.5 GHz)
• CPU cores: 4
• CPU Cache: 6 MB
• TDP: 65 W
• Socket: LGA 1151

Internal 500 W (100V-240V)

• Total wattage: 500 W external power adapter (100V-240V)

I began playing a new Call of Duty game recently, and I'm having trouble running it in the quality that I desire. I bought an HP Omen 870-224 from BestBuy right around 2 years ago. I have added a 1tb SSD to my rig, and replaced the stock 8gigs of RAM with 2x16gig sticks. I have noticed that when I launch the Call of Duty application, my memory runs around 50% utilization, graphics card (which is stock) around 60%, and processors are running at 100%. The current processor is the stock i5-7400, which runs at 3.00ghz and claims to run at 3.5ghz turbo boost, but in task manager it's only showing 3.29ghz speeds.

Supported upgrades for the current build are the: Intel Core i7-7700 (Kabylake) 3.6 GHz Quad Core,

and the Intel Core i3-7100 (Kabylake) 3.9 GHz Dual Core.

Which of these would be better for gaming purposes?

I am thinking about upgrading the processor to an i7-7700k, which I believe is reported 3.9ghz with a 4.5ghz turbo boost. With speed, threads, and cores factored in, is this upgrade (~$400) enough to make a difference in my gaming, and actually be worth it?

If I do decide to go this route, my current PSU is the stock PSU as well, which will have to be upgraded. The i5-7400 has a 65w requirement, and I believe the i7-7700K requires 91w. What are the minimum specs for a PSU that would run my rig without more issues? And what other upgrades (if any?) will be necessary to support these upgrades? New tower, cables, cooling system?

Thanks in advance.

[KrazyToad]

@jMadHatter

Welcome to HP Community

I have gone through your Post and would like to help

As per the Product Specifications, the following Processors can be used in this computer. Link: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c05389962

If you wish to go for more powerful Processors, then you will need to change the PSU accordingly and also might have to put additional Fans ( Optional )

The minimum PSU should be 65 W

Thank you

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the "Solution Accepted" on this Post and it will also help other community members with similar issue.
 

[jMadHatter]

Thank you for your response, but it doesn't answer any of my questions. I am aware of the compatible upgrades, as I have mentioned them leading up to my question. Would the i7-7700 processor be enough of an upgrade to support the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game without taking up 100% of the processor's load? I am currently running the application at all of the lowest settings across the board on graphics, and even audio. I would like to be able to live stream my video games to services like Twitch or YouTube. Would upgrading the PC's processor from the i5-7400 to the i7-7700 be enough of an improvement to allow for better application graphics, while leaving processing power to handle the load of live streaming software and execution? If not, am I going to need to get a bigger PSU to support a more powerful processor? Or am I wasting my time with further upgrades to my current setup, leaving my only options to be a totally different computer?

[owent92]

Hey @JMadHatter, I'm in the same boat as you.

I just ordered an i7-7700k which should work according to this thread: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Desktops/Upgrading-from-i5-to-i7/td-p/6402019/page/3

But I'm concerned if I will be able to get a CPU cooler to fit so I'll let you know if that works out.

This should be a pretty big CPU upgrade and will help with Modern Warfare. Do you also get random crashes while playing? Not sure if that's a CPU problem but it happens to me a good amount.

As far as streaming, I'm not sure if it will help that much since it still only has 4 cores. It might be better to use NVENC GPU encoding but I'm not sure if it would be with the 1060...upgrading the GPU could help but maybe someone more knowledgeable in that area will chime in.

[jMadHatter]

Thanks for the reply

Lately, I've been experimenting with plugging my monitors into the HDMI ports on the motherboard and freeing up as much power as possible for my GPU and transferring the workload to my processor. Scaling, output, everything I can do to take stress off the GPU, and it appears to be helping. I had to go into BIOS to enable the "intel graphics chipset" or whatever it's called. This seems to have fixed my random crashing for the DEV 6068 error and the "command stack overflow (or whatever it said... can't remember now)" no longer presents itself when closing the game. I'm now running in 1600x900 res @100% render. My HP Omen X 25 is on HDMI cable to my Intel chipset, off of Freesync and on HP Enhance medium. It's not the best picture in the world, but it's a huge upgrade from what I had. Strangely, though, my FPS struggles in CS:GO, now. I think an upgraded graphics card would fix the issues. Even just a 3GB jump to the GTX 1060 6GB. Most of my issues, now, seem to be more around my VRAM lagging down. I've changed my pagefile.sys settings, which has been moved from the HDD and put on the SSD, I think this has helped aswell.

Does anyone know if there's anyway to send any extra aid to my graphics card/GPU? Like dedicating other hardware to aid the VRAM? Maybe a software fix of some sort?

I'm not sure what NVENC GPU encoding is. I'll look into it, though. Let me know how the i7-7700k works out

[Jomama52]

I found disabling HPET in device manager helps a little. Also if you go on youtube and search for tech yes he shows you how to disable spector and meltdown to help performance. I wouldn't bother upgrading the CPU more gpu if you get a rx 580 used or even the 5700xt works great just make sure you have the settings on high and high resolution like 1080 or 1440. Make the game more gpu bound not CPU.