[SOLVED] H Board or Z Board?

[Odballl]

So I'm investigating upgrade options for my ageing i5 2500 (non k ) build.

Looking to get myself an i5 10600 (I know everyone loves ryzen, but it's not that much cheaper here in oz)

I wasn't looking to overclock my CPU, so while I could cheap out on the board and get a bare-bones H-chip, dumping more of my budget into a new GPU, I am worried about being limited to 2666 ram on the i5.

Do you think it's worth getting a Z-chip board so I can get 3600 RAM? Or is there a decent H or B chip board that can OC ram? A lot of them claim to run XMP profiles, but to 3600?

 

[Isokolon]

high speed RAM on Intel platforms has way less impact than on Ryzen platforms. 3600 MHz RAM is only the gold standard because of AMD's infinity fabric that gets OC'd with the RAM frequency (simplified), Intel's chip and RAM controller design is different so you won't profit off it the same way.

going for a Z-board for faster RAM only is usually a waste of money. which doesn't mean you should get the cheapest H-board you can find.

 

[Odballl]

I was looking at the H410M H because it has an m.2 SSD (type M) slot. I want to stick a 1T A2000 NVMe in there.

 

[sizzling]

What will the pc be used for? I’ve seen gaming benchmarks where RAM speed is just as big of on an impact on Intel but for specific games. With Ryzen the impact seems to apply to more games.

 

[Odballl]

Mid tier gaming. Would bump my GTX 970 up to maybe a 2070 Super? A 2060 Super could do the trick though. I currently play at 1080p on a 60hz 4k monitor (the 4k is for documents and web browsing). 1440p would become more viable though, obviously.

 

[Isokolon]

What will the pc be used for? I’ve seen gaming benchmarks where RAM speed is just as big of on an impact on Intel but for specific games. With Ryzen the impact seems to apply to more games.

even then the extra money for board+RAM can be spent on a better GPU or CPU which usually makes a bigger difference

 

[sizzling]

even then the extra money for board+RAM can be spent on a better GPU or CPU which usually makes a bigger difference

I generally agree but it does depend. If you can go up in gpu then most likely this is a better investment. However for cpu if you are already at i5 10600 level going up in cpu yields smaller gains and faster RAM will have a bigger benefit especially at resolutions above 1080p.