P3D v5 PC on a budget

[IntelUHD630 0]

I am planning to upgrade from v4 to v5 but my pc may not be able to handle v5.

Current PC has a i5 6500 with a GTX 970 and 16gb ram.

Budget for PC (without gpu) is around $600 US and can spend up to $200 - 250 US on a gpu. What are some good budget friendly options for 1080p?

[bic 44]

 If your good with building...see if you can reuse anything.  I recently upgraded from 4790k to 10700k, so I just needed new motherboard and memory, keeping psu, cpu fan, drives, 1070, and case.  $874 out the door.

pcpartpicker is good place to help, plus all the sites about what's good price wise.

[Sabre57 46]

You can run V5.0 as long as the 970 GPU has at least 4GB and the CPU can go very close to 5GHz or above. I know that because I was running it that way for a while.  However, you will definitely need to compromise on the settings.  Not sure about 5.3 though.  GPU prices are coming down but are still stupid high.  You may want to consider a used 10 or 20 series as an interim step. 

[Bob Scott 7,715]

I wouldn't expect good results with a 970, which effectively has ~3.5GB of VRAM even though they advertise 4GB (nVidia settled a class-action lawsuit over the misrepresentation).

If in doubt, you can always try it out--Lockheed Martin has a 14-day money-back return policy on P3D.

[G-RFRY 1,708]

If you can wait the 3050 8GB GPU may suit your needs and pocket.