Question Badly needed Motherboard, CPU and RAM upgrade ?

[quanger]

Hi. I currently have a well used i7 2700k@4.8ghz that isn't cutting it anymore for 1080p ultra gaming. Im out of the hardware/platform loop so I thought I'd start here. Im looking for something mid-range (price wise) that has good overclocking abilities similar to my current 2700k.

Im looking at:
AMD R5 9600X CPU + GIGABYTE B650M GAMING PLUS WIFI Motherboard + CORSAIR RGB 32GB D5 6000MHz Black RAM that is $499cad.

Is this worth considering or should I put a bit more money into something more future proof? (I'm thinking more cores/threads)

I did upgrade my videocard a while back which is an rtx 2070 strx. Thanks

 

[LordVile]

Hi. I currently have a well used i7 2700k@4.8ghz that isn't cutting it anymore for 1080p ultra gaming. Im out of the hardware/platform loop so I thought I'd start here. Im looking for something mid-range (price wise) that has good overclocking abilities similar to my current 2700k.

Im looking at:
AMD R5 9600X CPU + GIGABYTE B650M GAMING PLUS WIFI Motherboard + CORSAIR RGB 32GB D5 6000MHz Black RAM that is $499cad.

Is this worth considering or should I put a bit more money into something more future proof? (I'm thinking more cores/threads)

I did upgrade my videocard a while back which is an rtx 2070 strx. Thanks

You can save money and go 7000 series as performance is pretty much par. The 3D chips are significantly better for gaming

 

[JayGau]

If you want to stick with the 2070, you should not go with a X3D. Those chips are too fast for this GPU and you gonna be bottlenecked, especially if you want to play at ultra settings. But if you expect to upgrade the GPU at some point they are indeed the best gaming CPUs. And I agree with Lordvile about the 9600x. Aside the X3D chips, the Ryzen 9000 series cost more but doesn't give much more performance than the 7000.

 

[quanger]

Looking at a r7 5800x/xt. I think this may be the route to go.

 

[CountMike]

Looking at a r7 5800x/xt. I think this may be the route to go.

That's AM4 and dead platform, AM5 will be good for upgrades for next 3 years.

 

[quanger]

Buy an am5 platform with a 7000series chip?

 

[ohio_buckeye]

7000 series is very viable. If you’re in the USA and have Microcenter near you, check out their bundle deals. They typically have a ryzen 7600x, b650 board and 16gb of ram for 300. Usually you can get the 8 core 7700x with a board and 32gb ram for under 400.

If you really wanted to go cheap and still be on a current platform, you could even go with an a620 board, ryzen 7500f and some ram then toss in your 2070. At least that would get you into a modern platform with an upgrade path where you can update as you get cash.

 

[Moonstick2]

Looking at a r7 5800x/xt. I think this may be the route to go.

That's AM4 and dead platform, AM5 will be good for upgrades for next 3 years.

Depends though on the OP's approach to upgrades? Given that they're currently on a 10+ year old CPU, they may not be the regular upgrader type. There's little point paying extra for AM5 if the only reason is to allow for upgrades that may well never happen.

I long ago stopped worrying about how upgradeable any system I built was, simply because my upgrade cycle is such that by the time it comes round I've generally been far better off replacing CPU/RAM/motherboard/graphics card/PSU as a whole. That's only become more true as time goes on (the difference between a 2005 PC and a 2000 PC was much bigger than between a 2025 PC and a 2020 PC).

 

[CountMike]

Depends though on the OP's approach to upgrades? Given that they're currently on a 10+ year old CPU, they may not be the regular upgrader type. There's little point paying extra for AM5 if the only reason is to allow for upgrades that may well never happen.

I long ago stopped worrying about how upgradeable any system I built was, simply because my upgrade cycle is such that by the time it comes round I've generally been far better off replacing CPU/RAM/motherboard/graphics card/PSU as a whole. That's only become more true as time goes on (the difference between a 2005 PC and a 2000 PC was much bigger than between a 2025 PC and a 2020 PC).

Yes, anything newer than 2700k is and upgrade but AM4 is not going to get anything new so it's "dead" platform, whole series of 5000 with top CPU R9 5950x is last CPU for it
Since Op is going for whole new system might as well go for latest which will last longer

 

[Moonstick2]

Yes, anything newer than 2700k is and upgrade but AM4 is not going to get anything new so it's "dead" platform...

What I mean is that if the OP currently has a 2700K (that isn't even the best processor for their motherboard) it's a big assumption that they'll even consider upgrading their CPU again in the next few years, so probably not a thing to factor in so heavily.

Since Op is going for whole new system might as well go for latest which will last longer

It's also typically more expensive.

I'm not saying the OP shouldn't go for AM5, only that if they do it should be for the right reasons. It doesn't matter if AM5 is good for upgrades for the next three years if the OP isn't going to do an upgrade in that time that they couldn't have done with AM4.

 

[CountMike]

What I mean is that if the OP currently has a 2700K (that isn't even the best processor for their motherboard) it's a big assumption that they'll even consider upgrading their CPU again in the next few years, so probably not a thing to factor in so heavily.


It's also typically more expensive.

I'm not saying the OP shouldn't go for AM5, only that if they do it should be for the right reasons. It doesn't matter if AM5 is good for upgrades for the next three years if the OP isn't going to do an upgrade in that time that they couldn't have done with AM4.

Price has to be divided by years of useful usage. So you take difference in price between AM4 and AM and divide by years expected to be used and you get minimal difference and none if AM5 lasts a year longer nor counting eventual upgrades to prolong it couple more years.

 

[Moonstick2]

Price has to be divided by years of useful usage. So you take difference in price between AM4 and AM and divide by years expected to be used and you get minimal difference and none if AM5 lasts a year longer nor counting eventual upgrades to prolong it couple more years.

I don't agree that price difference / year is a useful metric for these types of decisions. £100/year isn't much in the grand scheme, but that doesn't mean it only makes sense for me to buy a £1000 RTX 5080 instead of a £300 RTX4060 to get me through the next seven years.

If we tried price total / year, using my favourite supplier an AM4/R7 5700X/32 GB DDR4 bundle is £334 vs £474 for AM5/R7 7600X/32 GB DDR5. The OP is only just tiring of a processor that Intel stopped making 12 years ago, so let's say the AM4 system will be good for a maximum of 10 years of useful usage. The AM5 would need to last over 14 years to reach the same price/usage factor. I can't imagine an R7 7600X will be that useful in nearly 2040, or what upgrades would be able to prolong it into 15 years plus. So 40% more paid for a system that isn't realistically going to last that much longer. AM5 only makes sense for people looking to upgrade every year or two.

 

[ThereAndBackAgain]

(the difference between a 2005 PC and a 2000 PC was much bigger than between a 2025 PC and a 2020 PC)

I'd even go a step further and say that we've reached the point where, barring some insane breakthrough, a great processor in 2025 is never going to be inadequate in the future. Gains will only keep diminishing. I cannot imagine that there will be a time where I feel my Ryzen 5600X is too slow. Now, perhaps 20 years from now I might look back on this statement and laugh, but I have my doubts.

 

[dark_globe]

I'd even go a step further and say that we've reached the point where, barring some insane breakthrough, a great processor in 2025 is never going to be inadequate in the future. Gains will only keep diminishing. I cannot imagine that there will be a time where I feel my Ryzen 5600X is too slow. Now, perhaps 20 years from now I might look back on this statement and laugh, but I have my doubts.

i doubt that :
even now 5600x is already starting to show its age in some games , as is mine 5700x ...
when we discuss the past we need to factor in the variables -
OPs 2700K was a big performance jump with great potential for OC .
i5 2500K is to this day perhaps the most legendary CPU of the last 2 decades .
furthermore intel didn´t need to upgrade its performance and architecture
for many many years because AMDs
bulldozers was awfully bad - a flagship 8150 got beaten by i3 in gaming performance ...

game developers also had no options but to optimize games for 2/4 cores for many years
because there simply wasn´t any other viable gaming processors
other than intels i3/i5/i7 on the market for a decade.
thats part of the reason why i5 2500k/i7 2600k/2700k held up for so long .
i doubt 5xxx will hold up for so long .
ryzens 2xxx and 3xxx are already becoming obsolete for gaming and they are not even 10 years old .

todays market is much different and more competitive than it was 15 years ago and intel needs to step up ,
because AMD finally has the lead when it comes to gaming performance with its X3D technology .

 

[ThereAndBackAgain]

bulldozers was awfully bad - a flagship 8150 got beaten by i3 in gaming performance ...

game developers also had no options but to optimize games for 2/4 cores for many years
because there simply wasn´t any other viable gaming processors

To the best of my knowledge, it's really hard to program games to take meaningful advantage of multiple cores. They're by and large by nature single-threaded workloads, and there's only so much you can do to spread the burden among multiple threads, so single core speed is more important for games than number of cores, which is why Intel's processors, for a good while prior to Ryzen, were better than AMD's for gaming, which were good for multi-threaded applications but had poor single thread performance.

Also, my perspective is that of one who games at 60 FPS, not one who pushes for the absolute highest number of frames possible.

 

[dark_globe]

To the best of my knowledge, it's really hard to program games to take meaningful advantage of multiple cores. They're by and large by nature single-threaded workloads, and there's only so much you can do to spread the burden among multiple threads, so single core speed is more important for games than number of cores, which is why Intel's processors, for a good while prior to Ryzen, were better than AMD's for gaming, which were good for multi-threaded applications but had poor single thread performance.

Also, my perspective is that of one who games at 60 FPS, not one who pushes for the absolute highest number of frames possible.

while that is true and for a very long time the fast quad core or even a dual core was all you needed
times do change and things are progressing faster .
for almost 10 years (2008 to 2017) intels flagship gaming processor always had just 4 cores and 8 threads ,
but then in 2017 intels flagship and the best gaming cpu on the market i7 7700K (released in q1/2017)
became outdated by the end of that same year and get surpassed by 8700K (released in q4/2017) ...

furthermore 7700K essentially gets relagated into an i3 processor performance territory
in just a 3 years time (with the release of 4c/8t i3 10100)
7700K was the last flagship quad core cpu and the relic of a dying era
with no real progress in cpu performance .

all it took was a good competition presented by AMDs ryzen processors ...
strong single core performance is still very important today
(fast 6 core will perform better in vast majority of games compared to slower 8 core)
but there are a lot of games that can utilize more than 4 threads these days .
dual core cpus are pretty much obsolete at this point as are older quad cores (with no hyperthreading) .

you can still get away with a modern 4c/8t cpu (i3 13100/14100) for entry level gaming ,
but if you want to have really smooth experience
you need at least 5600x or 7600x which are 6c/12t processors
(13th and 14th gen i5s with locked multiplier are not so great so ideally i5K as an alternative) .

while the best gaming cpus on the market today are 8c/16t X3D amd chips 5800/7800/9800 X3D .

so to sumarize in just 8 years the core/thread count of the flagship gaming cpus doubled
while in the previous decade it remained completely static ...

60fps is no longer a good standard either (if you are going to build a brand new system) ,
even for entry level systems you can buy 120/144Hz full-hd monitor
for a 100 bucks these days , so getting some extra frames and getting closer to 100 average FPS
(here your graphics card play the most important role of course)
and even more importantly also getting decent 1% lows in cpu heavy locations never hurts ...

 

[ThereAndBackAgain]

while that is true and for a very long time the fast quad core or even a dual core was all you needed
times do change and things are progressing faster .
for almost 10 years (2008 to 2017) intels flagship gaming processor always had just 4 cores and 8 threads ,
but then in 2017 intels flagship and the best gaming cpu on the market i7 7700K (released in q1/2017)
became outdated by the end of that same year and get surpassed by 8700K (released in q4/2017) ...

furthermore 7700K essentially gets relagated into an i3 processor performance territory
in just a 3 years time (with the release of 4c/8t i3 10100)
7700K was the last flagship quad core cpu and the relic of a dying era
with no real progress in cpu performance .

all it took was a good competition presented by AMDs ryzen processors ...

It's true, Intel for a while did rest on its laurels, meaning CPU progress was relatively stagnant, until AMD kicked them into gear with serious competition from Ryzen. But as far as I know, the processor transistors can only get so small before you start running up against fundamental laws of matter, and the gains are already diminishing. So eventually we're going to hit a wall in processor improvement unless some breakthrough is achieved. We seem to already be seeing this with GPUs, where there's little difference between NVIDIA's 4000 and 5000 series in raw compute power.

60fps is no longer a good standard either (if you are going to build a brand new system) ,
even for entry level systems you can buy 120/144Hz full-hd monitor
for a 100 bucks these days , so getting some extra frames and getting closer to 100 average FPS
(here your graphics card play the most important role of course)
and even more importantly also getting decent 1% lows in cpu heavy locations never hurts ...

I haven't had the chance to try gaming at high refresh rates (my highest Hz screen is 75 Hz), but my gut instinct is that more pixels will be more noticeable to me than more frames. I quite like how games look on my 4K TV at native resolution and 60 FPS.

 

[helper800]

It's true, Intel for a while did rest on its laurels, meaning CPU progress was relatively stagnant, until AMD kicked them into gear with serious competition from Ryzen. But as far as I know, the processor transistors can only get so small before you start running up against fundamental laws of matter, and the gains are already diminishing. So eventually we're going to hit a wall in processor improvement unless some breakthrough is achieved. We seem to already be seeing this with GPUs, where there's little difference between NVIDIA's 4000 and 5000 series in raw compute power.


I haven't had the chance to try gaming at high refresh rates (my highest Hz screen is 75 Hz), but my gut instinct is that more pixels will be more noticeable to me than more frames. I quite like how games look on my 4K TV at native resolution and 60 FPS.

60z to 120hz, imo, was bigger than 1080p to 4k. 120 hz LCD to 120hz OLED was a similar leap. I am now on a 4k 240hz OLED. No compromises displays have come out like this. I am not sure much better can exist at this point.

 

[ThereAndBackAgain]

60z to 120hz, imo, was bigger than 1080p to 4k. 120 hz LCD to 120hz OLED was a similar leap. I am now on a 4k 240hz OLED. No compromises displays have come out like this. I am not sure much better can exist at this point.

While it would be awesome to have a display like that, regrettably I likely will never be able to afford one. And I wouldn't be able to justify dropping money on, say, a 1080p 144Hz LCD screen when I don't even know if I'd appreciate the increased frame rate and have no way to try it prior to buying it. I'm not one who believes there's no benefit to higher refresh rates, but I can't be sure that I'd feel it's worth the money without being able to experience it beforehand.

 

[helper800]

While it would be awesome to have a display like that, regrettably I likely will never be able to afford one. And I wouldn't be able to justify dropping money on, say, a 1080p 144Hz LCD screen when I don't even know if I'd appreciate the increased frame rate and have no way to try it prior to buying it. I'm not one who believes there's no benefit to higher refresh rates, but I can't be sure that I'd feel it's worth the money without being able to experience it beforehand.

Can you go to a store with higher refresh screens on display? You can nearly instantly see the difference. Its even more obvious when you grab the mouse and feel it in a fast paced game. This tech will only ever get cheaper, you will have opportunity in the future to buy one.

 

[ThereAndBackAgain]

Can you go to a store with higher refresh screens on display? You can nearly instantly see the difference. Its even more obvious when you grab the mouse and feel it in a fast paced game. This tech will only ever get cheaper, you will have opportunity in the future to buy one.

My Best Buy might have some on display, but I'm not sure. I think, if I'm in the market for a new display in the future, I'll try to get one that's at least 120 Hz.

Anyway, I've totally derailed this topic...