[SOLVED] CPU Upgrade Time Ryzen vs. Intel

[OxBox]

Hi all-first time posting long time lurker. Rarely much time for non work/family time but time for an upgrade. I'm currently running a i5-4690K @ 4.3Ghz with Corsair AIO/16GB RAM/GTX 970/Samsun 960 Pro. My desktop is more productivity (Office/browsing/VM/Containers/Basic 3D design work and rendering/slicing for my Prusa Printers) as my gaming time with work and a family is left to teaching my son Forza on the Xbox (proud dad).

I'm debating my CPU options as they will dictate motherboard (recommendations appreciated )and later on GPU. I'm debating between the 5600X and i7-11700K as they are both $250 at my local microcenter. I'm fine with a "budget" aka $150ish motherboard and using my GTX970 for now (though I may still have a newer AMD card around from my mining fun). My only requirements would be gigabit lan and PCIE support for the 980 Pro I'm picking up.

My gut says go with Intel but torn between them.

Thanks in advance!

Ox

 

[punkncat]

Given your choices, I would personally look at the 11600K and a better mobo, against the 5600X and mobo. The RAM for the Intel can be slower without the penalty on AMD, which likes fast RAM.
Consider good cooling and good VRM on either of those 11th gen Intel. They are power hungry and hot.

AMD can be a quagmire of BIOS nonsense, so make sure to do your homework about the various chipset to CPU compatibility.

I would not suggest "cheaping out" on a motherboard for any of those choices. At this point they are all dead end, so to speak, as the new chipsets and socket leave these as a finished platform. In many regards and reviews the 11th gen Intel weren't all that and a bag of chips outside the i5.

no Not to say they weren't any good, and particularly the i7 is attractive at that sale price along with the additional $20 towards a mobo at Microcenter.

note- I have the 11600K and am quite happy with its performance.

 

[OxBox]

Thanks! Hadn't delved into the RAM yet but definitely good info. I've also debated the 5700G to have better graphics integrated vs. even having to deal with a GPU later on. But as you said comes down to fast enough ram and motherboard-always a trade off.

 

[geofelt]

Are you budget constrained?
My guess is that a $200 i5-11600K would be about as good for you as a
ryzen 5600x, they are comparable in performance.

But at microcenter, they have a i5-12600K for $250 which blows away either.
You will need a Z690 based motherboard, and I would opt for DDR4 variant.
You can reuse your old ddr4 ram .

 

[OxBox]

Are you budget constrained?
My guess is that a $200 i5-11600K would be about as good for you as a
ryzen 5600x, they are comparable in performance.

But at microcenter, they have a i5-12600K for $250 which blows away either.
You will need a Z690 based motherboard, and I would opt for DDR4 variant.
You can reuse your old ddr4 ram .

I saw that one but didn’t get time to research it. I’m not budget constrained per se-just tend to keep upgrades around $600 for cpu/mb/ram every few years.

Storage I will get the 980 Pro hands down.

 

[geofelt]

On the 980 PRO....
The big advantage is that it performs higher doing sequential work. About 2x faster.
With a budget for it, go for it.
If you do not, you will always wonder if you should have.
I did, and do not regret it.

But, the real world does not do all that much sequential processing.
It is mostly random, and random performance is very similar across all ssd devices.
It turns out that most ANY ssd will appear to a user to be equally fast.
Here is an amusing video:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLA7w9eeA

 

[OxBox]

On the 980 PRO....
The big advantage is that it performs higher doing sequential work. About 2x faster.
With a budget for it, go for it.
If you do not, you will always wonder if you should have.
I did, and do not regret it.

But, the real world does not do all that much sequential processing.
It is mostly random, and random performance is very similar across all ssd devices.
It turns out that most ANY ssd will appear to a user to be equally fast.
Here is an amusing video:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLA7w9eeA

100% agree-in a past role I managed a datacenter for customer performance testing so I/O is an area that is cheap to do from a SOTP perspective. Wouldn’t recommend a 980 Pro to most but it’s one area I won’t skimp on for my own uses it only to be able to say as you eloquently put will still be thinking about it. But that comes to the motherboard scenario I’m at-power handling etc are much more involved than in my youth when I was hand lapping Celerons for my BP6 dual cpu setup (sadly I got no geek points for this work from my fraternity brothers though they appreciated me fixing their PCs often well before malware). Ah the joys of youth. I digress though,

 

[OxBox]

Are you budget constrained?
My guess is that a $200 i5-11600K would be about as good for you as a
ryzen 5600x, they are comparable in performance.

But at microcenter, they have a i5-12600K for $250 which blows away either.
You will need a Z690 based motherboard, and I would opt for DDR4 variant.
You can reuse your old ddr4 ram .

I’m rocking DDR3. . But happy to get recommendations on a 2x16 pair.

 

[geofelt]

On power handling, yes, enthusiast motherboards have more robust power and vrm cooling. (read expensive)
Good if you are an overclocking enthusiast.
But, overclocking is no longer what it used to be.
Chips are binned and the better ones are used in stronger(and pricier) processors.
As a result current processors are designed to turbo up a few cores past what an all core oc will do.
It is usually best to let the stock mechanism's do their thing.
These chips are so crazy fast that it really matters little.
You DO want a good cpu cooler and a well ventilated case to allow the best turbo performance.
That does not automatically mean liquid cooling.
If you are the enthusiast you can look into a 360 aio or expensive custom loop.
It turns out that a good air cooler like the noctua NH-D15s will cool about as well as a 280 aio in a good case.
Noctua maintains an extensive set of compatibility and suitability data for it's processors.
Here is the one for the 12600K:
https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/Intel-Core-i5-12600K-1581

On ram, speed counts, but not all that much, with exceptions.
I would look for a 2 x 16gb DDR4 3600 cas 16 kit, or the equivalent DDR4 4000 cas 18 kit.
They perform on a par with ddr5 5600 speed.

 

[Karadjgne]

If productivity is the game, a 10900 surpasses or equals any. Without the need for excessive cooling the K squ cpus require, without the 'bios or ram melarky' generally associated with Ryzens. A decent B or H mobo will be plenty without the price tag of the Z boards.

And it'll still game fine, a hairs breadth slower than a stock 11900k. Give or take a few fps. Microcenter in-stock $329, so not that much more than the 11600k/5600x, but savings can be had in mobo choices and cooling options.

 

[OxBox]

If productivity is the game, a 10900 surpasses or equals any. Without the need for excessive cooling the K squ cpus require, without the 'bios or ram melarky' generally associated with Ryzens. A decent B or H mobo will be plenty without the price tag of the Z boards.

And it'll still game fine, a hairs breadth slower than a stock 11900k. Give or take a few fps. Microcenter in-stock $329, so not that much more than the 11600k/5600x, but savings can be had in mobo choices and cooling options.

Thanks! Productivity over gaming for me.

Did see that the 10700K just dropped to $200 but 125w tsp Vs 65 plus more cores may still send me to the 10900 ($330). For cooling I plan to reuse my h100i water cooling setup.

Mobo wise I’m planning either the GB z590 around elite ($220) or Asus Z590-A Prime ($279) or MSI Z590 MPG Gaming Force.

I could go with the 10700 and spend the $130 on a 980pro or similar nvme upgrade.

Not being cheap as much as value.

 

[OxBox]

Thanks! Productivity over gaming for me.

Did see that the 10700K just dropped to $200 but 125w tsp Vs 65 plus more cores may still send me to the 10900 ($330). For cooling I plan to reuse my h100i water cooling setup.

Mobo wise I’m planning either the GB z590 around elite ($220) or Asus Z590-A Prime ($279) or MSI Z590 MPG Gaming Force.

I could go with the 10700 and spend the $130 on a 980pro or similar nvme upgrade.

Not being cheap as much as value.

One other thought-similar 12h gen chips and motherboards (ddr4) around the same price point.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Hi all-first time posting long time lurker. Rarely much time for non work/family time but time for an upgrade. I'm currently running a i5-4690K @ 4.3Ghz with Corsair AIO/16GB RAM/GTX 970/Samsun 960 Pro. My desktop is more productivity (Office/browsing/VM/Containers/Basic 3D design work and rendering/slicing for my Prusa Printers) as my gaming time with work and a family is left to teaching my son Forza on the Xbox (proud dad).

I'm debating my CPU options as they will dictate motherboard (recommendations appreciated )and later on GPU. I'm debating between the 5600X and i7-11700K as they are both $250 at my local microcenter. I'm fine with a "budget" aka $150ish motherboard and using my GTX970 for now (though I may still have a newer AMD card around from my mining fun). My only requirements would be gigabit lan and PCIE support for the 980 Pro I'm picking up.

My gut says go with Intel but torn between them.

Thanks in advance!

Ox

In performance terms the 11700K is better as it has 8 cores with similar IPC to the 5600X so your looking at roughly 33% faster in heavily threaded workloads. The problem with the 11700K is it needs a very good cooler, with the 5600X you can get away with something much more modest. Both will support your 980 Pro SSD at full speed and plenty of boards have 1 Gbit Lan or more. If it were me I'd get the 11700K because the 5600X just doesn't have enough graphs on the Task Manager for my use case.

You should also consider the 12600K as I wouldn't thought it to be that dissimilar in price, it will however need a more expensive board than $150.

 

[Karadjgne]

I guess cpu choice comes down to actual software use. There is a difference, not all productivity is the same. Some software thrives on high core counts, some on IPC and heavy single thread workloads. For the former, a 10900 or 5800x will be plenty, for the later the 12600k or 5600x etc. Any modern processor can easily handle gaming, but when time is money then tailoring your choices to favor what is the most time consuming is a benefit.

 

[Nighthawk117]

The 12600K is faster in both single threaded and multithreaded workloads vs all of those other CPU's.

 

[Karadjgne]

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/intel-core-i5-12600k

Is it really? According to pc mag, a 4k handbrake render 1.4 the 12600k took 7:54 minutes, the 10900k took 4:50 minutes. Stretch that to a really large render, one that'd take the 12600k an hour and the 10900k would be done in closer to 35-40 minutes. I'd not say the cpu is faster in multi-threaded workloads, but is only faster is specific workloads.

And that's not to mention the difference between DDR5 and DDR4 and the astronomically stupid pricing, motherboard costs, availability etc. DDR4 boards might be cheaper and perform similarly right now, but in 2 years when DDR5 matures and gets considerably faster in everything?

 

[Nighthawk117]

That's very interesting, the reason I said it was faster is because most of the reviews seemed to have it winning in almost all benchmarks. The only one I think where it wasn't was file decompression. It does still seem like it is faster in most multi-threaded workloads just not all.

 

[Karadjgne]

It's a hair faster in the Adobe CC, which done by Pugetsystems is basically the goto from the experts and pretty widely used. But many reviews only cover the basics, one here one there and certain games etc. Pretty much the 2 cpus are equal in ability overall, trading blows. Which honestly is the best thing Intel has done in many years, an i5 trading blows with an i9.

What's sad is the new i9 isn't all that much better except in workouts where thread count and Lcache is king.

Either way, anything modern is going to be a step up in performance and ability, and whichever route Op takes won't be an issue. He has options.