So, I thought since there are some decent sales on PC hardware, I figured I'd bite the bullet and upgrade my ageing PC (it's still running a Phenom II X4 😂) and it's a quad-core that's showing it's age. There are other parts I want to upgrade (new case, PSU is a 7 year old ThermalTake one, nvme storage, etc) but they're low priority right now and I can wait until the new year for them. My GTX 1060 is still good enough for the games I play. I also plan on using my Noctua D14, though I know I also need to get the upgrade kit from them assuming they still offer it, otherwise I don't mind persisting with the Wraith it comes with.
Anyway, I had originally hoped to upgrade to a 3600/3700X but the latter is hard to get hold of in the UK and the former comes with a £70 price increase over a 2700, (Amazon does have the 3700X listed at £298), that right now I'd prefer not to budget for (though I can stretch it if it is worth it), so I figured I may skip this gen and hope B450 still has support for Zen 3 when it comes out.
I'm aware RAM is a huge factor on the performance of Ryzen CPUs (less so on Zen 2 but still to a degree). I know some people have had RAM be a bit fiddly to deal with, so I plan no getting this (seems to be Micron E-Die and it plays nicely with Ryzen iirc, so I plan to test around with the timings/speeds to find the sweet spot).
The parts I've picked out are:
It's primary use may be gaming (hence why I was originally hoping for a Zen 2 CPU) but it does a bit of multitasking as well. It doesn't stream but it runs programs that sometimes will take advantage of 8-cores. At this stage any CPU is an upgrade though...
Anyway, I had originally hoped to upgrade to a 3600/3700X but the latter is hard to get hold of in the UK and the former comes with a £70 price increase over a 2700, (Amazon does have the 3700X listed at £298), that right now I'd prefer not to budget for (though I can stretch it if it is worth it), so I figured I may skip this gen and hope B450 still has support for Zen 3 when it comes out.
I'm aware RAM is a huge factor on the performance of Ryzen CPUs (less so on Zen 2 but still to a degree). I know some people have had RAM be a bit fiddly to deal with, so I plan no getting this (seems to be Micron E-Die and it plays nicely with Ryzen iirc, so I plan to test around with the timings/speeds to find the sweet spot).
The parts I've picked out are:
- Ryzen 7 2700 £139.97
- MSI B450 Tomahawk Max £99.93 (I know Amazon themselves are selling it a tenner cheaper but it's not gonna be in stock for 2-4 weeks and I won't be at mine to receive it)
- Crucial Ballistix Elite BLE2K8G4D36BEEAK 3600 MHz, DDR4, DRAM, Desktop Gaming Memory Kit, 16 GB (8 GB x 2), CL16 £119.99
It's primary use may be gaming (hence why I was originally hoping for a Zen 2 CPU) but it does a bit of multitasking as well. It doesn't stream but it runs programs that sometimes will take advantage of 8-cores. At this stage any CPU is an upgrade though...