Are you talking about purchasing some used equipment that is newer than that which you currently have? Not sure what you mean there specifically, but I always hesitate to purchase any used or refurbished hardware because you just never know what the true condition of those parts is or how much life they have left. Also, there's no warranty on used parts of course.

Anyway, when you say your system is "only" 5 years old, I should point out that 5 years is an eternity in the technology market. New and improved computer tech is coming out almost daily, so if your machine is over 3 years old, it's pretty much past its warranty and considered obsolete in terms of modern technology specifications. For example, since around the time you purchased your system, SSDs have been on a meteoric rise as much faster and more reliable solid state technology has taken over the industry at a blistering pace. Having a modern SSD to run your OS can make a world of difference in the data transfer speed of your computer, improving every aspect of your experience, from booting the OS to launching and running software applications. It won't necessarily help your render times, but it will make a difference in just about everything else you do on your system.

So again, if all you really want is just a noticeable increase in render time when using your current applications, then a new discreet GPU with more cores may help (provided your software supports offline GPU rendering with Cuda or OpenCL to begin with). Your current system does have some other bottlenecks that will eventually need attention though. The CPU, the hard drive, the RAM. All of these things play a crucial role in optimizing your experience when doing graphics processing of any kind. If you're considering replacing any of these devices with used parts, I would highly recommend against it, just based on personal experience with used computer parts. If it were me I would hold off until I could comfortably afford the acquisition of an entirely new system. Of course, that decision is ultimately up to you and how you feel about buying used parts.

______________________________________

My Store
My Free Models
My Video Tutorials
My CG Animations
Instagram: @luxxeon3d
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/luxxeon