[SOLVED] Advice on new build (will be ordering parts this week)

[nate_2011]

Good Afternoon all,

I will be building a new gaming rig this week but I've been out of the components market for a LONG time, I havent built a rig in about 7 or 8 years and all my current gaming happens on GIGABYTE P56xt laptop, which to be fair has an i7 7700 with a GTX1070 and can VR with very reasonable fps.

I have set myself a budget of ~£1600 and would like to know if I am achieving my best bang for buck, or if I could get better results for the same ££ or less. What I'm not after is for someone to completely re-write my build, I have chosen an intel CPU with an NVidia GPU so please don't recommend I swap for a Ryzen with AMD. You may ask why go intel, well I also play a few older games (KSP for example) that only really utilise a single core, so I want the best single core power I can get while still getting the best multi core performance for modern AAA and VR games.

So.… All parts from SCAN
MOBO: ASUS Prime z490-P (Considering ROG Strix z490-F Gaming +£100)
CPU: I7 10700k 8 core OC'd 5GHz
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i RGB Pro XT
MEM: 16GB (2x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3000MHz
(This comes as a pre built bundle factory overclocked and tested to 5GHz, better for warranty cover)

GPU: Gigabyte RTX 2070 Super Windforce OC Turing 8GB
OS HDD: M.2 500GB WD Black SN750 with heatsink
Storage HDD: Seagate Barracuda 4TB ST4000
PSU: Corsair CX650M
Case: Sahara P35 RGB

This build will set me back £1650 with the ASUS prime, £1750 with the ROG Strix which is pushing the budget. Hardware I already own that it will be teaming up with:

HTC Vive
X52 Flightsick
G29 Race wheel

As an example of what I currently or will play...

Flight SIM 2020 when released (who isn't excited for this???)
Assetto corsa race sim (VR)
IL-2 Sturmovik (VR)
Elite Dangerous (VR)
Civ VI
KSP
RDR2
……………… I could keep going but ill stop there

If you made it this far I appreciate you taking the time to read, and any meaningful input or advice before I buy will be greatly appreciated.

Nathan

 

[GarrettL]

So you could buy AMD cpu's and motherboards with PCIE 4.0 now, or I can buy Intel PCIE 4.0 motherboard now, a, Intel 3.0 CPU and then buy a 4.0 capable cpu later? That doesn't make a whole lot of economical sense.

 

[King Dranzer]

If you are spending that high I highly recommend holding off the purchase. The new GPUs from NVIDIA as well as AMD are just 2-3months away. From all info and rumors out till now the upcoming GPUs will have good 50-60% performance increase over previous generation. And most importantly Ray-tracing performance will be more than doubled which means that even with Ray-tracing turned on and high settings the FPS hit will be extremely minimal in comparison to huge hit we face with the Turing series RTX2000 cards.

All that is completely worth waiting a bit longer, specially if you plan to spend that high. In the mean time I recommend adding as much as possible to be budget and get satisfactory build with as little compromise as possible.

 

[John Chesterfield]

I wanted to avoid AMD discussion as I didn't want this thread to descend into another AMD vs Intel fanboy argument but I can see that the argument is a valid one, and against my initial resistance I am now contemplating the Ryzen so id say it is 100% worth spending the time giving that advice as long as its not purely for arguments sake. In this instance its the idea of spending the extra couple hundred pounds on a 2080 Super that has me re thinking my position..

This has now turned into a balancing act between CPU and GPU and where money is better spent. For example on Userbenchmark my build with an I7 10700k + 2070 Super scores 113% for gaming, the 3700x + 2080 117% and the I5 10600k 119% so this whole discussion covering 3 CPUs and 2 GPUs covers a 6% margin. That's ridiculous and Im starting to see why the AMD platform is so popular. Hell when you see Superman building a Ryzen based system you have to wonder why when money clearly isn't a question.

regarding load times I'm really not that bothered, I don't play competitively and if I'm the last guy to load onto the map that's tough for everyone else, we are all only as fast as the slowest guy in this case. I have a 1TB SSD in my laptop and it causes me a headache trying to decide which games are worthy enough, id rather just install them all. Besides 500GB on the M.2 is going to be more than enough for Windows plus a game or 2 should it become an issue.

I appreciate its my money and my choice but I also appreciate the input from people who know more about this than I do, you can help be spend that money more wisely and that's a win for me!

Don't start thinking you have won me over just yet though, that single thread performance is still an important factor for a few older games ill simply never stop playing! I need to research if the gap between the i5 and 3700x in this area is as this suggests https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Well I can indeed very much understand you wanting to avoid flame wars, but I have to say that doesn't seem to happen often here. Almost all of the people seem balanced and advise on the basis of a good combination of value for money and performance, which at the moment does seem to favour AMD a little. However, as vMax rightly pointed out, the new Intels also kick butt. I guess it comes down to peoples' use case. For me, I took delivery of a 3700x, B550 Tomahawk board and 16GB of Corsair memory today and that will replace a 4790k + Z97k based system and that system will be difficult to part with.

But back then, there was really only one team to go for with CPU and that was the case for years, AMD haven't had my custom since the Athlon X4200+ I had. Lots of people would agree with this, that in the period since those chips were around and until the Ryzens came out, there was only one real choice there for gamers who wanted the best CPU for gaming. Thanks to AMD, who I have no particular affiliation towards, we have good competition in the CPU market. And that means better products for those who choose Intel too, hex core i5 chips with HT giving the more budget focused gamers a real option when choosing an i5. So I never get the partisanship some people have for a particular brand because a monopoly is very bad for us gamers, it only helps the elite.

Userbenchmark isn't always the best guide but I think those results you quoted are legit in the real world. The tipping point for CPU for me is 1440p resolution, that's when you start relying much less on the CPU and are GPU limited. Which is good, means we don't have to go for the expensive flagship chip. The 2080 at 1440p with actually any of the chips you've mentioned would kick butt. I now have a 3700x, but what I had to consider is what my eyes would see when gaming with the 2080 at 1440p with that chip, a 3900x, an i7 10700k and the i9 9900k. My conclusion was that my eyes would not be able to distinguish a difference between 140fps and 130, with G-Sync and at 1440p resolution. They would just all look the same, so 3700x it was. Heat was also a factor, the i7s do run warmer but they also have that familiarity about them that they just work. I'm about to discover whether the Ryzens are like that now as so many people seem to say.

But everyone's use case is different. So are there older games that run better on newer Intels than Ryzen? That's new info to me, which ones are you referring to?

 

[GarrettL]

Well I can indeed very much understand you wanting to avoid flame wars, but I have to say that doesn't seem to happen often here. Almost all of the people seem balanced and advise on the basis of a good combination of value for money and performance, which at the moment does seem to favour AMD a little. However, as vMax rightly pointed out, the new Intels also kick butt. I guess it comes down to peoples' use case. For me, I took delivery of a 3700x, B550 Tomahawk board and 16GB of Corsair memory today and that will replace a 4790k + Z97k based system and that system will be difficult to part with.

But back then, there was really only one team to go for with CPU and that was the case for years, AMD haven't had my custom since the Athlon X4200+ I had. Lots of people would agree with this, that in the period since those chips were around and until the Ryzens came out, there was only one real choice there for gamers who wanted the best CPU for gaming. Thanks to AMD, who I have no particular affiliation towards, we have good competition in the CPU market. And that means better products for those who choose Intel too, hex core i5 chips with HT giving the more budget focused gamers a real option when choosing an i5. So I never get the partisanship some people have for a particular brand because a monopoly is very bad for us gamers, it only helps the elite.

Userbenchmark isn't always the best guide but I think those results you quoted are legit in the real world. The tipping point for CPU for me is 1440p resolution, that's when you start relying much less on the CPU and are GPU limited. Which is good, means we don't have to go for the expensive flagship chip. The 2080 at 1440p with actually any of the chips you've mentioned would kick butt. I now have a 3700x, but what I had to consider is what my eyes would see when gaming with the 2080 at 1440p with that chip, a 3900x, an i7 10700k and the i9 9900k. My conclusion was that my eyes would not be able to distinguish a difference between 140fps and 130, with G-Sync and at 1440p resolution. They would just all look the same, so 3700x it was. Heat was also a factor, the i7s do run warmer but they also have that familiarity about them that they just work. I'm about to discover whether the Ryzens are like that now as so many people seem to say.

But everyone's use case is different. So are there older games that run better on newer Intels than Ryzen? That's new info to me, which ones are you referring to?

It’s us older guys that have been gaming for decades that appreciate this history. And it’s hard to believe it’s been so long since we’ve seen this level of performance from AMD.

I’ve been nothing but impressed with my Ryzen so far.

 

[John Chesterfield]

It’s us older guys that have been gaming for decades that appreciate this history. And it’s hard to believe it’s been so long since we’ve seen this level of performance from AMD.

I’ve been nothing but impressed with my Ryzen so far.

You know it brother!

 

[nate_2011]

Well I can indeed very much understand you wanting to avoid flame wars, but I have to say that doesn't seem to happen often here. Almost all of the people seem balanced and advise on the basis of a good combination of value for money and performance, which at the moment does seem to favour AMD a little. However, as vMax rightly pointed out, the new Intels also kick butt. I guess it comes down to peoples' use case. For me, I took delivery of a 3700x, B550 Tomahawk board and 16GB of Corsair memory today and that will replace a 4790k + Z97k based system and that system will be difficult to part with.

But back then, there was really only one team to go for with CPU and that was the case for years, AMD haven't had my custom since the Athlon X4200+ I had. Lots of people would agree with this, that in the period since those chips were around and until the Ryzens came out, there was only one real choice there for gamers who wanted the best CPU for gaming. Thanks to AMD, who I have no particular affiliation towards, we have good competition in the CPU market. And that means better products for those who choose Intel too, hex core i5 chips with HT giving the more budget focused gamers a real option when choosing an i5. So I never get the partisanship some people have for a particular brand because a monopoly is very bad for us gamers, it only helps the elite.

Userbenchmark isn't always the best guide but I think those results you quoted are legit in the real world. The tipping point for CPU for me is 1440p resolution, that's when you start relying much less on the CPU and are GPU limited. Which is good, means we don't have to go for the expensive flagship chip. The 2080 at 1440p with actually any of the chips you've mentioned would kick butt. I now have a 3700x, but what I had to consider is what my eyes would see when gaming with the 2080 at 1440p with that chip, a 3900x, an i7 10700k and the i9 9900k. My conclusion was that my eyes would not be able to distinguish a difference between 140fps and 130, with G-Sync and at 1440p resolution. They would just all look the same, so 3700x it was. Heat was also a factor, the i7s do run warmer but they also have that familiarity about them that they just work. I'm about to discover whether the Ryzens are like that now as so many people seem to say.

But everyone's use case is different. So are there older games that run better on newer Intels than Ryzen? That's new info to me, which ones are you referring to?

Well you may be pleased to hear I have 100% taken your advice on board and I'm now weighing up a Ryzen 3700x setup, coincidently I've chosen the B550 Tomahawk motherboard too as its seems the best all rounder for the money and will support the 4000 series should I chose to upgrade in a year or 2. I've been put off of this with intel as it seems they change their chipsets like the wind so I think AMD would last me a lot longer without the need for a complete rebuild. SCAN have 16GB Corsair Vengeance 3600 that's apparently Ryzen optimised so this would be going with it. PLUS the stock wraith cooler has good reviews so no need to spend more here. All of this would allow me to fit the 2080 Super into my budget at a few pennies over £1600!!

I'm very happy I started this now as otherwise id be closer to spending £1900 with a 10700K, and considering my 1440 screen is 120MHz id really just be wasting frames!! The only lingering thought is will my VR frames be effected considering this would be running at 2880 x 1600.

In regards to older games its not that I think they would run better on intel's than Ryzen, its more they only tend to run on a single core. IL-2 Stormovik for example is a sim I play a lot, and from the various things I've read intel still seem's to have the higher single core clock speeds, the 10700k at 5.1Ghz for example.

And hey I'm not a young gamer anymore either you know! Was only a few months ago I set my Amiga 1200 up just to play Cannon fodder haha. My last gaming rig was built around an FX series CPU when they were first released so historically I've been an AMD user.

 

[nate_2011]

If you are spending that high I highly recommend holding off the purchase. The new GPUs from NVIDIA as well as AMD are just 2-3months away. From all info and rumors out till now the upcoming GPUs will have good 50-60% performance increase over previous generation. And most importantly Ray-tracing performance will be more than doubled which means that even with Ray-tracing turned on and high settings the FPS hit will be extremely minimal in comparison to huge hit we face with the Turing series RTX2000 cards.

All that is completely worth waiting a bit longer, specially if you plan to spend that high. In the mean time I recommend adding as much as possible to be budget and get satisfactory build with as little compromise as possible.

would we really see this kind of performance increase across the whole range though? Ive read we may see this with the 3090 over the 1080TI but there's no way id pay that much for a GPU anyway. Id be more interested in the real world performance increase with the 3070 or 3080 over the equivalent 2000. Maybe in a year or so id consider the upgrade, I'm sure id still get a fair chunk selling a 2080 Super.

 

[King Dranzer]

would we really see this kind of performance increase across the whole range though? Ive read we may see this with the 3090 over the 1080TI but there's no way id pay that much for a GPU anyway. Id be more interested in the real world performance increase with the 3070 or 3080 over the equivalent 2000. Maybe in a year or so id consider the upgrade, I'm sure id still get a fair chunk selling a 2080 Super.

Yes definitely. We will be seeing that big of a jump in performance. But if the 3080Ti(3090) is priced at 1000-1200GBP I recommend going for it. Spend additional 800-900GBP for rest of the system. Till then add as much as possible. Even if you add 100gbp to budget per month it will still take you to 1900-2000GBP. No you won't get great deal selling RTX2080Super unless you sell it for half price or even less as RTX3060 will perform around RTX2080Super level in raster performance and will be superior to it in Ray-tracing. Big NAVI GPUs are also interesting and are said to have twice the performance of RX5700XT which puts it at 50% above RTX2080Ti level.

I say don't rush the purchase. Push it as back as possible. November-December you will get great deals. Add more budget till then and get least to no compromise build.