Build Advice Bottleneck or overkill with any of these ?

[gabecz]

Hi

My current setup is due for a full upgrade:
Gigabyte Z370P D3
I7-8700K
RTX 3070
2 x 16GB 3600mhz DDR4 RAM


My plan would be:
MSI PRO Z790-S WiFi Pro Series
I7-12700K
RTX 5070 (if i'm lucky enough to get one)
2 x 16GB 6000mhz DDR5

My question is if it's a balanced quartet or i'm having something out of balance?
4K gaming (on 65" QN90D) on ultra settings, but must add, i'm not an fps junkie.

without the RTX 50 series i wouldn't get much improvement upgrading mobo-ram-cpu though right? i mean i can do the upgrade but the vga then wait for a good deal on it.

Current PSU: I have a Corsair TX850 80 Plus Bronze. and a spare RM750x

 

[Lutfij]

The GPU is going to be available in February, I'd wait to see the car din reviewers hands before you decide on pulling the trigger for a purchase and by that, hold off your entire upgrade path for now.

 

[gabecz]

yeah that's probably a good idea, however... and i'm not. trying to forcefully burn money here, but it'd maybe better to do one part of the upgrade (spending $400) now and the other part of $500+ a month or two later instead of dropping a grand at once. I know same amount of money etc but psychologically probably would be a less painful move.
but logically yes what if the RTX50 series will deliver garbage and to deliver significantly better quality i have to buy a $1000+ GPU because of that, i must consider waiting.

anyhow the supporting hardware (mobo-cpu-ram) has to be upgraded at some time this year and i don't really see the point of going higher than 12th gen as of today. for my needs.

i sit n wait a month though. that won't hurt.

 

[Why_Me]

yeah that's probably a good idea, however... and i'm not. trying to forcefully burn money here, but it'd maybe better to do one part of the upgrade (spending $400) now and the other part of $500+ a month or two later instead of dropping a grand at once. I know same amount of money etc but psychologically probably would be a less painful move.
but logically yes what if the RTX50 series will deliver garbage and to deliver significantly better quality i have to buy a $1000+ GPU because of that, i must consider waiting.

anyhow the supporting hardware (mobo-cpu-ram) has to be upgraded at some time this year and i don't really see the point of going higher than 12th gen as of today. for my needs.

i sit n wait a month though. that won't hurt.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: *Intel Core i5-12600KF 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor ($139.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: *ID-COOLING FROZN A620 PRO SE 58 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: *ASRock Z690 Steel Legend ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($135.00 @ Amazon)
Total: $304.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-01-30 02:36 EST-0500

 

[geofelt]

No question, the i7-8700 part needs the first upgrade. RTX3070 is still a competent card.
Z790 is a good platform upgrade, and 12700k is a fair cpu upgrade.
You might find a good deal on a new 13700k. Because of 13/14 gen fears, those processors are under pressure.
If one updates motherboard bios to currency and does not play with voltages you are safe.

Then, you will have a good idea of what the graphics capability may need to be.
If you are not into fast action gaming, you may not even need a new card at all.

 

[gabecz]

i'm not a fan of amd but is RX 7800 XT standing up against RTX 5070? probably not but their price is the same. but i won't be able to get a nvidia for a while. even the used market price will stay higher than the original price which is ridiculous as it is already... in some numbers the amd is even better than the latter. i'm getting confused mixing in amd into the pool

 

[gabecz]

how about ASUS PRIME Z790-V WIFI supports 14th gen, ddr5 up to 7200mhz oc, pcie5.0 x16, has 3x m.2 so... i don't see no flaw for my use case.
i pop in 2x16 of the 6000 which seems like the most popular one.
and will see if i can get a good deal on a 14th gen but i probably stick to 12th for now. maybe just maybe a 13th. i7 with K in it.. just saying that i'm semi-ok with my 8700k 32gb of 3600 ddr4 and rtx 3070 so i'll be happy with the new setup no matter what so spending 450 on a cpu instead of 150... why?

 

[bill001g]

When you are running 4k even if you were running a 5090 it is hard to see much difference between cpus. This is why they test at 1080. Not sure that would be true in extreme cases like if you were to keep your 8700k rather than buy a 12th-14th gen cpu.

If GPU prices were not as nuts as they currently are you might consider throwing a couple extra dollars at the cpu just because. With the price of GPU you buy the best you can afford and then use whatever is left over to buy a cpu.

 

[gabecz]

thanks yeah i ordered the asus board.. it's as good as it gets i guess.
i can borrow a 12700t from my office for as long as i want so i'll probably just spread out my expenses and will use this dumbed down cpu for the time being.
i just found kingston fury renegade ddr5 7200 (!!) for 87 bucks. that price is not going to get any better..

 

[gabecz]

(dick move of the seller who made a mistake listing the ram for 87 dollars. canceled right away and re listed it for 120.)
correction there i ordered it to my old address and asked him to ship it to my correct address and that's apparently a common scam attempt. i didn't know that.
he said he'll wait a few days and reduce the price. i don't believe him i think the price was accidental bc it was so low.

 

[gabecz]

i'll probably go for the 13700k to utilize a 7200mhz ram... hoping they'll work well together.

 

[jammes]

Hi
my current setup is due to a full upgrade. Gigabyte Z370P D3, I7-8700k and an rtx3070 with 2x16gb 3600mhz ddr4 ram.
my plan would be MSI PRO Z790-S WiFi ProSeries, I7-12700K, 2x16gb 6000mhz ddr5, and rtx5070 (if i'm lucky enough to get one of those)
My question is if it's a balanced quartett or i'm having something out of balance?
4K gaming (on 65" QN90D) on ultra settings, but must add, i'm not an fps junkie.

without the RTX50 series i wouldn't get much improvement upgrading mobo-ram-cpu though right? i mean i can do the upgrade but the vga then wait for a good deal on it.

i have aTX850 80 plus bronze. and a spare RM750x

Your planned upgrade is well-balanced, especially with the RTX 5070 for 4K gaming on ultra settings. However, without upgrading the GPU, you won’t see a major performance boost in gaming since the RTX 3070 will still be the main limiting factor. Upgrading the motherboard, CPU, and RAM now is fine, but waiting for a good GPU deal makes sense. Your TX850 PSU is sufficient, but consider upgrading to a higher-efficiency model for better stability. If budget allows, prioritize the GPU upgrade for the most noticeable improvement.

 

[bill001g]

i'll probably go for the 13700k to utilize a 7200mhz ram... hoping they'll work well together.

Just be very sure to check that the brand of memory you buy is on the QVL list on the motherboard site. Lately 6000 memory from any brand seems to run fine 7200 still can be hit and miss if you are not careful. Note the memory clock speed is far down the list when it comes to any performance gain you see in a game. The example they give of app that does benefit from memory clock speed is things like ZIP files processing. It also helps if you are using a IGPU but we hope you only do that for troubleshooting in your case.

Memory speed is one of the cheaper things to upgrade but it is also one of the least likely to show any performance difference other than in a memory benchmark program.

 

[gabecz]

ouch good to know that at this speed qvl actually needs to be checked, whenever i blindly bought standard anything they all fit.
thanks i'm almost happy i didn't get the ram above, for it's cl is 38 where as patriot viper venom has cl 34 (which is not on the qvl)
even though i'm sure i wouldn't feel the difference.
thanks for all the help

 

[gabecz]

what does it mean when the ram module box says "intel xmp ready" but the qvl doesn't say "yes" in the xmp column? it's just... ready and it may or may not but most likely will not support xmp?
scratch that it must be a marketing catch.
the website only lists expo not xmp
https://www.gskill.com/specification/165/390/1723430566/F5-7200J3445G16GX2-TZ5NR-Specification
too bad. good price.
but i may misread the use case of xmp. do i "NEED" xmp if i don't want to switch profiles but have only one setting that is working well?
i power on my pc, start a game, exit the game and power it off. i don't even browse tbh. i have a work mac m3 for all the 'anything else but gaming'

 

[bill001g]

EXPO is AMD version of XMP. Lately a lot of memory supports both.

XMP is memory overclocking if you want to run the memory at more than the base ddr5 speed of 4800 you have to overclock it. XMP are preset overclock setting for the memory that placed on the memory in the factory. You must choose which of the xmp profiles on the chip you wish to load.

You can if you really want set all the memory setting yourself. Few people do that anymore but that is what you would do to get the absolute maximum performance out the particular memory modules you have. There is a lot of variation between memory modules which is why you have issues using 2 memory sticks even of the exact model rather than buying kits of 2 that the factory tested to work together.

All this is done in the bios including picking the XMP profile you want to use.

Best when you build a new system is let memtest86+ run overnight. You want to boot it from a USB rather than run it from windows because it does a better job of testing. If passes this test nothing you do in normal use will cause a memory crash.

 

[gabecz]

beats me at this point.. website only mentions expo not xmp, but the sticker on the ram says this.
https://ibb.co/JjJdfT93
and why does the asus board's qvl not saying XMP then?
https://ibb.co/qYj7vNpz

also. another one: if the ram is not in the qvl it won't work or it may or may not and it won't be overclock well / crash / etc?
so F5-7200J3445G16GX2-TZ5NR is not in the qvl list, where as F5-7200J3445G16GX2-TZ5RK is.


OOOOH one is only expo the other is only xmp. d'oh.