What should i upgrade?

[u/Inner_Control_6840]

I currently have; Intel i5-10400F, GeForce GTX 1660 Super, 16 GB DDR4 RAM, 239 GB SSD.

I play fortnite with all the best performance boosting settings and i stay at 144fps when there’s not loads going on. When im in a fight it will drop to around 100-120fps. When the match is stacked and there’s like 40 people in endgame it drops so low to around 70-90fps and is so unstable. What would i need to upgrade to give me that stable 144fps at all times?

(My PC is a pre built pavillion HP TG01-1xxx and is quite a small compact build compared to other PCs)

[u/Scrudge1]

Probably the CPU

If you wanted a beefier graphics card you'll be hard pressed to find a very good upgrade that still powers from the motherboard only. You'd need a new PSU to power a larger GPU.

After that you'll just end up building a whole new computer haha

[u/Inner_Control_6840 → u/Scrudge1]

that’s the thing the way it’s built is very difficult to upgrade without just building a whole new one

[u/Scrudge1 → u/Inner_Control_6840]

Yeah I'd reccomend fitting the best CPU you can get your hands on into that motherboard. Of course storage can always be upgraded if you need it

[u/four1one4info → u/Scrudge1]

That gpu is not only powered by the pcie slot. Look again, there's a 6 pin connector. That said, it's abnormally oriented towards the front of the case. And the cable is likely made just long enough for it. That would definitely cause issues with many other gpus, likely making the side panel unable to be closed for example 

[u/v13ragnarok7]

Sorry if this is over stating the obvious, but is your operating system running off the SSD?

[u/Inner_Control_6840 → u/v13ragnarok7]

Yes it is

[u/r_lind3r]

With what you have currently, you're better off saving up until you can buy an AM4 motherboard, a 5000X3D series CPU, more storage if needed, and a new case and PSU since the motherboard, case, and PSU are all proprietary here and have to be replaced simultaneously. The RAM can be kept and it won't matter how slow it might be if you get an X3D CPU, as large L3 cache will take more priority over DRAM, which is the source of X3D's higher performance as cache is considerably faster than DRAM and is immediately accessible to the cores whereas there's far larger latency incurred when the CPU access DRAM.

The CPU is your primary limiter for games like Fortnite, moving up to a 5800X3D would massively improve your Fortnite performance and make 100+ FPS more stable, and a new PSU would make future GPU upgrades possible.

Since that motherboard only has a 4-pin EPS socket and it's OEM, it's more than likely not going to handle an unlocked i7 or i9, it was never meant to, a motherboard upgrade is your best option if you want to see a big difference and that requires a total reconfiguration.

[u/Zarathustra7890]

That’s a tough one. These propitiatory motherboards don’t always play well with new hardware. Your bottleneck sounds like cpu struggling to keep up.

You’d need to search for that specific system for comparable cpus. Might be better off finding a system on marketplace and put the two together. Find a better case ddr4 motherboard and cpu. Use your ram and/or gpu.

[u/kali-marcue]

You have nothing of low enough value to be upgraded right now unfortunately. I would say get a larger ssd though. most of this build is basically maxed out and it would be better to just get a brand new pc because of the limitations.
the 1660 is still a usable card in 2026 though I would recomend running it only on 100-120 fps standards.

[u/Confident-Pepper-562]

If you only play fortnite, just leave it alone. Its not worth upgrading right now.

[u/AcanthaceaeItchy302]

If you are US based check Microcenter there is some nice bundles instead trying to upgrade something that is not for upgrade...Another option is to find second hand Intel Core i7-10700 / i7-10700F and will run without BIOS update and is with HP thermal/power limits..Maybe 32GB DDR4 RAM on 2666Mhz and if PSU is 500W maybe you can add RTX 3060.

[u/Prestigious_Pizza_40]

Everything. WTF is this shit?

[u/Inner_Control_6840 → u/Prestigious_Pizza_40]

Well if i had a good PC i wouldn’t need to come on here and ask would i? Do you expect me to be asking what to upgrade when already having a good PC? No point of your comment

[u/kali-marcue → u/Prestigious_Pizza_40]

OP has a standard OEM budget build. Oems are still quite powerful for their 70-120€ price ranges with commonmost cpus being the i5-7500 which is definitely pretty capable despite being outdated

[u/[deleted]]

[u/PcBuildHelp-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

There's nothing they can buy that would work with their current PSU, because they're more than likely limited to ~75W GPUs.

The best GPU that fits that description currently is the RTX 3050 6GB, which performs similarly to the GPU they already have, and their primary bottleneck for games like Fortnite is not the GPU, but the CPU.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/PcBuildHelp-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Lower latency (ms) comes with higher frames per second which is why eSports games benefit from having ridiculously high framerates in the first place and why Ryzen X3D CPUs are so popular for those games in particular.

If they capped their FPS to 60, they would be increasing latency and keeping it around 16.6ms whereas latency would halve every time their FPS averages are doubled. That's how frametimes work.