[SOLVED] Is it dumb to build now?

belo

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I'm not an avid PC gamer, I have a PS5 that I lean on heavily, but I do occasionally game and recently I've had some issues transcoding from plex to my shield and research shows my i5 wont cut it and I really need an i7. My current build is now 5 years old and I have money to burn an itch to build what would be my 4th PC instead of just swapping 1151 intel chips.

I did some light research the other day as I normally "check out" of the latest greatest between builds.

I would like to build in prep for the rtx30's even if I can't obtain one now and the 20's seem way to expensive.
In order to prep for an rtx30 I need a new pci4e board
My current memory wont work for a new board, so new RAM
I need a new chip anyhow to handle the transcoding from plex, but I couldn't use my 1151 in a newer board anyhow
My case is 2 builds old and I could use a new one
I'd like a new monitor that is at least 144 (current is 60)
my nvme should also swap

TLDR:

Nothing seems to be on sale except maybe the monitor, and everything seems to be out of stock or marked up. For a guy like me who doesn't have a pressing need, should I wait to build or do we anticipate the current state to drag on for some time?
 
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Transcoding is mostly cpu, but some aspects do use the gpu to a significant degree, so a well balanced pc is a preference over the standard gpu heavy gamer.

But that said, there's got to be an estimated time line for the build, if it's not going to be accomplished in the near future, not much point in only going halfway since DDR5 is slated for next gen (ehh) for maybe both Amd and Intel platforms with probable socket changes. With that, first round DDR is always worse than the best of the prior gen. DDR5 4800 looks to be the starting point, but with Cas40 timings, expect 3800 Cas18 to be somewhat better.

I'd not build for future thoughts right now, too close to being a dead end, but building for 'now' needs is somewhat different. If...

belo

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Will you get a significant gain in what you do without the new GPU? If not, there's no purpose in "preparing" for a future GPU.

Probably not significant, but noticeable and I'd hate to not be able to upgrade if and when the time comes... so it's kind of like, do i wait for the gpus and build then or just do it now?
 

Karadjgne

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Transcoding is mostly cpu, but some aspects do use the gpu to a significant degree, so a well balanced pc is a preference over the standard gpu heavy gamer.

But that said, there's got to be an estimated time line for the build, if it's not going to be accomplished in the near future, not much point in only going halfway since DDR5 is slated for next gen (ehh) for maybe both Amd and Intel platforms with probable socket changes. With that, first round DDR is always worse than the best of the prior gen. DDR5 4800 looks to be the starting point, but with Cas40 timings, expect 3800 Cas18 to be somewhat better.

I'd not build for future thoughts right now, too close to being a dead end, but building for 'now' needs is somewhat different. If you are going to build, I'd go all out, best you can get.

Otherwise, I'd hold off for a couple years on a build and just swap cpus for what will work for now.
 
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If you can get by with integrated graphics for a bit (or reuse an old discrete GPU) and can find good deals on non-GPU parts, there's no harm in building now.

One of my buddies did just that, relying on integrated graphics for 3 months until he got lucky with an RTX3080 restock. He used those 3 months as an incentive to clear out his Steam/Epic backlog of non-demanding indie titles.
 

Karadjgne

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Extremely dumb yes. Wait until cards are back to normal prices. So maybe 2023 lol.

Op is transcoding. That's work and in work, time is money. The only 'dumb' part would be a minor upgrade, like using a 3600x or 10400 etc. If going to build, go all out with a 5800x/5900x or 10700/10900, something that's going to show significant gains over the prior build and last longer than a year or two. Really got nothing to do with gpu prices as such, and everything to do with need and worthwhile investment, regardless of actual price.

You don't use a band-aid to fix something that needs stitches. You may not like the price the doctor charges for the stitches, but it's a matter of need vs convenience.
 

punkncat

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TBH, the only two items that are priced well above worth this moment are GPU and large size storage options. Both of these are due to mining of various "coins". 10th gen Intel is a super good buy right now. 11th gen is "meh" but worth a look. Ryzen new series are becoming more and more available, but the hitch there is you have to have a GPU or pay marked up prices for the G series.

For us, I feel like we could offer more helpful advice if you posted what your current rig is. If you have I missed it.
 

belo

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If you can get by with integrated graphics for a bit (or reuse an old discrete GPU) and can find good deals on non-GPU parts, there's no harm in building now.
One of my buddies did just that, relying on integrated graphics for 3 months until he got lucky with an RTX3080 restock. He used those 3 months as an incentive to clear out his Steam/Epic backlog of non-demanding indie titles.

so I do still have a 1050ti, while nothing fancy even at it's time and sub $200, it's not a slouch and better than onboard. It's just crazy that the 1050 equivalent gen isn't available and the 20 series are so expensive right now.

Op is transcoding. That's work and in work, time is money. The only 'dumb' part would be a minor upgrade, like using a 3600x or 10400 etc. If going to build, go all out with a 5800x/5900x or 10700/10900, something that's going to show significant gains over the prior build and last longer than a year or two. Really got nothing to do with gpu prices as such, and everything to do with need and worthwhile investment, regardless of actual price.

You don't use a band-aid to fix something that needs stitches. You may not like the price the doctor charges for the stitches, but it's a matter of need vs convenience.

my thought, if upgraded mobo would be to go from a Intel Core i5-7500 Kaby Lake Quad-Core 3.4 to a Intel Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake 8-Core 3.6 GHz

I still am not 100% sure what the bottleneck is with plex either, been doing all sorts of research trying to figure out if it's network or transcode. plex states i'm direct streaming to my shield but I know subtitles change that. The only titles I ever have issues with are remux's. Even a decent 40gb 4khdr10 DTHDatmos file plays well.

TBH, the only two items that are priced well above worth this moment are GPU and large size storage options. Both of these are due to mining of various "coins". 10th gen Intel is a super good buy right now. 11th gen is "meh" but worth a look. Ryzen new series are becoming more and more available, but the hitch there is you have to have a GPU or pay marked up prices for the G series.

For us, I feel like we could offer more helpful advice if you posted what your current rig is. If you have I missed it.

That's kind of why my thought was to build everything else and just get the gpu when I can. My current rig is in my sig below. It's 5 years old and the last game I played on it was fallout 4 for reference haha.
 

punkncat

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If you were going to stick with Intel, buy the best items for what you are doing, now, along with savings from recycling parts from your old build:

i9 10850K*
a good Z590
A good quality and new PSU
Good cooling option

To explain. Bring everything over from the old build and retire it for resale. The RAM you have will work with the Intel and won't hit performance hard. Use the current SSD and other storage option.

The reason I say Z590 is that even though the 11th gen CPU aren't super attractive right now, later down the road if you choose to go with Gen 4 PCI drive or GPU the option would be available. If you are for sure going to do so I would probably budget it in place of the 10850K.
You can get a faster RAM kit later, and obviously would be looking out to the GPU as you stated.

Don't forget to budget OS.

And, of course there is Ryzen.....
 

TommyTwoTone66

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If you need to transcode for work you aren’t doing it on your own hardware. My friend works in TV and does a lot of transcoding for streaming and they give them dedicated encoding boxes to do the work on. Nobody transcodes video freelance on their own hardware, this is just nonsense.

The PC will be used for what every self build PC is used for, games. The existing CPU is fine for some light YouTube video editing or whatever and an i5 7500 should rip through any transcoding task on Plex, even 4K video. If streaming on Plex is not working right, it’s not because the i5 7500 is not up for the task, it definitely is.

you absolutely do not need pci4.0 for any graphics card or NVMe drive available today. Maybe one day, but not now. Even a 3090 performs at 100% on pci3.0 and will not benefit from faster pci-e lanes. This is just an empty feature for Intel to use as a benefit for the new gen, because there’s no compelling need to update CPU these days, they have to keep inventing them.
 

Karadjgne

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Nobody transcodes video freelance on their own hardware, this is just nonsense.

The PC will be used for what every self build PC is used for, games.
Dude, seriously, stop. Please.
The last 3 pc's I built for my wife have never seen a single game played, ever. Not even the windows default games. Same for my daughter's pc. There's a ton of ppl who do not work for TV stations and do work at home, sometimes across country from where the main office is, and must use their own equipment as such. Not everybody gets company supplied equipment. Not everybody plays games.
you absolutely do not need pci4.0 for any graphics card or NVMe drive available today.
You do understand the concept of NVMe, it was built for Large file transfers. Lawyers, real-estate, production, renderers, graphic designers, game developers can all benefit from pcie 4.0 and faster transfer times. Just because gamers do not doesn't mean Everybody does not.
This is just an empty feature for Intel to use as a benefit for the new gen, because there’s no compelling need to update CPU these days, they have to keep inventing them.
Funny, AMD had pcie4.0 as a FULL architecture on X570 mobo's almost 2 years ago, whereas Intel has just now with 11th Gen actually opened up 20 lanes on the cpu allowing for gpu and a single NVMe Gen4 to be used simultaneously. 10th Gen was stuck with only 16x Gen4 lanes so if using a pcie4.0 card, you get stuck with Gen3 NVMe at best from cpu, or using chipset lanes for storage. Intel is behind the times by a good margin, they didn't invent Anything.
 
If you have a need now, buy now.
If not you can wait.

But, if you have the itch, Go ahead and scratch it.

You can buy a very significant upgrade using most of what you have now.
Your i5-7500 is quite decent.
It has 4 threads and a passmark rating of 6059. That is when all 4 threads are fully utilized.
The single thread rating is 2278
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-7500+@+3.40GHz&id=2910

You can buy a 11th gen i5-11400F for about $175.
12 threads and a rating of 17261/3052.
Any LGA 1200 motherboard will do, starting at about $80.
Your ddr4 ram will work fine.

If you are looking to fast action games, the graphics card is all important, but nowhere to be found reasonably today.
the 11400f is a good budget gamer.
Here is a review:
 
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InvalidError

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My "should I upgrade" test is simple: "if you have to ask, you don't need to yet."

Conversely: "If you actually need an upgrade, you won't let anyone convince you otherwise."

Me, I might be upgrading my i5-3470 to an i5-11400 this summer. Currently waiting for motherboard prices and availability to settle down since there are no models in stock with the minimum IOs I want under $200.

As for how long the current GPU situation might drag on, there are no guarantees things will get any better until at least 2023 - that's when many of Intel, TSMC, Samsung and others' new fabs are coming online. Intel joining the 5-7nm club should help things quite a bit.
 
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belo

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If you were going to stick with Intel, buy the best items for what you are doing, now, along with savings from recycling parts from your old build:

i9 10850K*
a good Z590
A good quality and new PSU
Good cooling option

To explain. Bring everything over from the old build and retire it for resale. The RAM you have will work with the Intel and won't hit performance hard. Use the current SSD and other storage option.

The reason I say Z590 is that even though the 11th gen CPU aren't super attractive right now, later down the road if you choose to go with Gen 4 PCI drive or GPU the option would be available. If you are for sure going to do so I would probably budget it in place of the 10850K.
You can get a faster RAM kit later, and obviously would be looking out to the GPU as you stated.

Don't forget to budget OS.

And, of course there is Ryzen.....

Don't have to sell me on the z590, there's already one in my cart haha. Maybe I'm neglecting my older dated psu... but why wouldn't I be able to use that? I'll admit I haven't done the calculations like I would before actually checking anything out, but I wouldn't be really changing anything from my current build as far as quantity, just newer gen.

Not planning on overclocking so not sure I need anything other than some decent fans...

As far as OS, I believe my windows 10 pro transfers over? I know it did last time, unless something changed.

also as far as ryzen... I've always built intel/nvidia. I'm not saying that is good or bad, but it might be hard to break that habbit after 15+ years of builds.

If you need to transcode for work you aren’t doing it on your own hardware. My friend works in TV and does a lot of transcoding for streaming and they give them dedicated encoding boxes to do the work on. Nobody transcodes video freelance on their own hardware, this is just nonsense.

The PC will be used for what every self build PC is used for, games. The existing CPU is fine for some light YouTube video editing or whatever and an i5 7500 should rip through any transcoding task on Plex, even 4K video. If streaming on Plex is not working right, it’s not because the i5 7500 is not up for the task, it definitely is.

you absolutely do not need pci4.0 for any graphics card or NVMe drive available today. Maybe one day, but not now. Even a 3090 performs at 100% on pci3.0 and will not benefit from faster pci-e lanes. This is just an empty feature for Intel to use as a benefit for the new gen, because there’s no compelling need to update CPU these days, they have to keep inventing them.

I don't transcode for work. My PC is my plex server and occasionally I have issues when sending a remux UHD rip to my shield pro. While I'm not positive it's cpu related, my current system is below the plex requirements and all of my lan network testing shows I shouldn't have any issue at all with network.

I do zero editing, but might someday as my 8 year old says he wants to be a movie maker lol.

I do light PC gaming, but like to be able to play at the better settings.

My "should I upgrade" test is simple: "if you have to ask, you don't need to yet."

Conversely: "If you actually need an upgrade, you won't let anyone convince you otherwise."

Me, I might be upgrading my i5-3470 to an i5-11400 this summer. Currently waiting for motherboard prices and availability to settle down since there are no models in stock with the minimum IOs I want under $200.

As for how long the current GPU situation might drag on, there are no guarantees things will get any better until at least 2023 - that's when many of Intel, TSMC, Samsung and others' new fabs are coming online. Intel joining the 5-7nm club should help things quite a bit.

This post is spot on for me. I don't really need an upgrade no. If I did, like I did in 2017 because my 2009 build was crashing and really struggling then I wouldn't have even asked. But, I am a bit of a tech nerd. I don't always need the latest greatest, but I don't like to be left behind either. I am in a good financial position, but also don't want to just piss away money.

I appreciate all the responses here and will keep reading some more before I make any big purchases.