[SOLVED] Is the Ryzen 7 7800X3D the best choice for my new RTX 4070 ?

[VIIIJustice]

Good morning everyone, I'm writing because I recently purchased an ASUS Dual GeForce® RTX 4070 OC Edition 12GB GDDR6X.

I would like to complete the setup, but I'm undecided on the processor.

At the moment, my choice is between: i7-13700K and Ryzen 7 7800x3d, or i5-13600K or Ryzen 7 5800x3d.

I would like to understand if there is a significant difference between the first two listed and the second two.

Additionally, I would like to know which of these CPUs would be better suited for a 4070. I think in any case I wouldn't have bottlenecking issues, but I'm concerned that i7-13700K and Ryzen 7 7800x3d might be overkill for this GPU.

Perhaps there's another good CPU that I'm not considering; please point it out if that's the case (my maximum budget is $399, the current price of the Ryzen 7 7800x3d, so I couldn't consider something more expensive. However, if there's a great alternative at a lower price, I'm all for it

Of course, I would primarily use the PC for gaming at 1440p, with a switch to 1080p to maintain 240fps on some competitive titles.

Thanks in advance.

 

[hotaru.hino]

If you want the fastest CPU for gaming, get a Ryzen X3D processor.

Also if you can afford the components in question, don't worry about it being overkill or not. Just worry about if it gets the performance you want at a price you're fine with.

 

[Darkbreeze]

If you are looking to do 240 fps or higher then I'd highly recommend that you go with one of the first two choices. The simple fact that they have more cores, more onboard Smart and level 2 cache (For the Intel models at least, but also likely for the AMD models as well.) and a higher max clock frequency will prove out in relative performance for anything that can leverage the additional cores and the cache and clock frequency will mean higher single core performance as well regardless of whether the game is well optimized for high thread count performance or not.

While you are right that a "bottleneck" isn't going to be likely regardless of which CPU model you choose, among those you listed, for very high frame rate performance and for the sake of extending the CPUs useful lifespan as long as possible, it would be a lot wiser to go with one of the higher tiered models. But again, it's not going to be a disaster if you choose from one of the other two either. If your budget allows for it, I'd recommend the 13700k as it seems to have much higher single and multi core performance than the 7800x3d based on the Passmark benchmark scores but some games apparently benefit from the architecture of the x3d models in strictly gaming environments, but not necessarily for EVERY game.

 

[bill001g]

The best CPUs for RTX 4070 are:
Intel Core i9-13900K: The most powerful and expensive option, with 12 cores, 24 threads, and up to 5.3 GHz boost clock speed.
Intel Core i7-13700K: The best value for money option, with 8 cores, 16 threads, and up to 5.0 GHz boost clock speed.
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D: The best AMD option, with 12 cores, 24 threads, and up to 4.9 GHz boost clock speed.
Said by Google and Bing AI

Shows the AI is as bad as reddit posters just repeating random garbage they heard someplace else with no idea what they are talking about.

In most games you will be gpu bound when you run at 1440 in most cases.

A 7900x3d is generally a bad choice overall, you still have the messy issue of only 1/2 the cores having the 3d cache memory. The 7800x3d is a much better choice.

Except for a tiny number of game the 13900k provides no advantage over a 13700k, again very few games are cpu bound.

Hard to say between a 13700k and a 7800x3d. In general the 7800x3d will be better for games but if you do other things with the machine then maybe the 13700k is a option.

 

[turtletarget111]

Part List

For CPU cooling, I prefer air coolers because they are cheaper, more reliable, and can outperform AIO's. The Thermalright Peerless Assassin is an outstanding air cooler, especially for the low price.

For your motherboard, I went with the MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk. It's affordable and functional; it's got plenty of USB ports, supports up to 128 gigs of memory, and has plenty of on-board expansion. Pretty solid for the price.

High capacity DDR4 kits are fairly affordable nowadays with DDR5 released, so I went with a G.Skill Trident Z 3600 CL16 2x16 kit. It's very fast at 3600 and has low First Word latency to ensure you've got the highest performance.

Samsung has always been the king of SSD's, so I chose the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB for Windows with an additional 2TB hard drive from seagate for your games. You could easily swap out the hard drive for something like a Samsung 870 Evo if you wanted something faster for your game library. The same applies to the 970 Evo Plus. The 980 Pro is about 30 dollars more, so if you wanted the absolute fastest SSD available, it wouldn't cost much more.

PC cases can be subjective, so I went with a basic Corsiar iCUE 4000D Airflow. If you don't like the perforation and mesh, you can swap it for the Corsair iCue 4000X, which has glass. Corsair makes great cases with lots of interior space.

For the power supply, the Corsair RM 1000x will be just fine. The 4070 can run off an 850 watt PSU, but with your choice of Intel, I would not recommend cutting it that close. That leaves you with roughly 100 dollars left over for a monitor. There are outstanding monitors available for around 200 dollars from Acer, assuming you are okay with purchasing a refurbished product. I'll leave a link here if you're curious. Hope this helped, take care.

 

[Darkbreeze]

And I agree with that, mostly. It IS pretty much a "tossup" as to which offers better performance because for practically every piece of hardware, especially for CPUs and GPUs, it varies from game to game. Some games incorporate specific instruction sets or APs that simply work better with one CPU or one GPU than they do with something from the other camp.

But in general, the Passmark scores are PRETTY legit when it comes to overall GENERAL performance, since they leverage so many different criteria in order to determine a score. What it doesn't do well, or much at all, is measure strictly "gaming" performance, but generally speaking if it does everything measurable in general terms, well, or better than a competing product, then it generally games well too. Comparatively speaking, most cases, not all.

Keep in mind that what you see in terms of "gaming" scores from reviews of specific CPUs are also almost certainly on machines that are "lab clean". Meaning they have literally nothing installed that does not absolutely NEED to be in order to run the tests or benchmarks against a certain title or application, so it doesn't usually reflect real world type results because rarely does anybody ONLY have Windows and whatever is absolutely necessary to run THAT specific title, installed, and nothing else.

So for everything that ISN'T "gaming", even with the assumption that on a lab clean machine it gets whatever level of "better" that it gets in that determination, probably it isn't applicable or relevant when we are talking about a machine that WILL most likely have a bunch of other stuff installed and running either in the background or alongside the game engine. In that case, the Intel CPU probably still wins out because it will simply do THOSE things better, leaving more free resources for the game engine to utilize.

But again, we're likely splitting hairs here in reality, because the performance is MOSTLY so similar as to really not be that big of a deal. Whichever is less expensive at the time, is probably the better, and palatable, choice.

 

[VIIIJustice]

Part List

For CPU cooling, I prefer air coolers because they are cheaper, more reliable, and can outperform AIO's. The Thermalright Peerless Assassin is an outstanding air cooler, especially for the low price.

For your motherboard, I went with the MSI MAG B660 Tomahawk. It's affordable and functional; it's got plenty of USB ports, supports up to 128 gigs of memory, and has plenty of on-board expansion. Pretty solid for the price.

High capacity DDR4 kits are fairly affordable nowadays with DDR5 released, so I went with a G.Skill Trident Z 3600 CL16 2x16 kit. It's very fast at 3600 and has low First Word latency to ensure you've got the highest performance.

Samsung has always been the king of SSD's, so I chose the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB for Windows with an additional 2TB hard drive from seagate for your games. You could easily swap out the hard drive for something like a Samsung 870 Evo if you wanted something faster for your game library. The same applies to the 970 Evo Plus. The 980 Pro is about 30 dollars more, so if you wanted the absolute fastest SSD available, it wouldn't cost much more.

PC cases can be subjective, so I went with a basic Corsiar iCUE 4000D Airflow. If you don't like the perforation and mesh, you can swap it for the Corsair iCue 4000X, which has glass. Corsair makes great cases with lots of interior space.

For the power supply, the Corsair RM 1000x will be just fine. The 4090 can run off an 850 watt PSU, but with your choice of Intel, I would not recommend cutting it that close. That leaves you with roughly 100 dollars left over for a monitor. There are outstanding monitors available for around 200 dollars from Acer, assuming you are okay with purchasing a refurbished product. I'll leave a link here if you're curious. Hope this helped, take care.

Thank you for responding. Since I've changed my mind about the processor and decided to purchase a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, I wanted to ask what I could change within the build. I've noticed that the processor only supports DDR5, but it has a lower power consumption than the i7-13700. 1) Could I go with a slightly lower wattage PSU? 2) Also, which DDR5 RAM would you recommend? 3) Additionally, I've read that it runs hotter than the i7-13700k. Would the cooling system you recommended still be suitable? Thank you very much in advance.

 

[turtletarget111]

Yes, you will need a different motherboard and a DDR5 kit. For the motherboard, MSI makes a Tomahawk for AMD system as well, the MSI MAG Tomahawk B660. It supports DDR5, WiFi 6E, and PCIe Gen 5. An excellent choice.

Your RAM kit is very important, far more important than on an Intel platform. Ryzen performance can be severely kneecapped by poor memory transfer speeds and, most importantly, high latency. You will want a kit that has a First Word latency of no more than ten to achieve maximum performance on Ryzen 7000. This G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 6000 CL30 2x16 kit will be perfect for your needs. It has a blistering speed of 6000 with a nice and low CAS latency of 30. It also meets the ten milisecond requirement. On top of that, it's AMD Expo certified, meaning the kit has been configured and constructed specifically for AMD systems to achieve maximum performance and compatibility.

To answer your other questions, I would still stick with the 1000 watt PSU. Could you get away with something lower? Yes, especially because AMD chips take a lot less juice to operate compared to Intel. I have an RTX 2080 which recommends a 650 watt unit at the bare minimum. I have been running an original 650 watt Corsair PSU for the past five years wit zero problems. But should you use something lower? I would recommend against that. As power supplies age, their efficiency goes down, meaning it will be unable to deliver the advertised wattage over time. Using a 1000 watt unit leaves you expansion for more SSD's, fans, RGB, and ensures it will run for a long time. The RTX 4090 is also known for random power spikes when under load, and you dont want your system to shut off in the middle of a game or render.

The Peerless Assassin is a very good cooler and should do you just fine, even with a hot chip like the 7800X3D. If you want to squeeze the maximum lifespan out of your CPU, you could upgrade and get something to keep the chip as cool as possible. In that case, I would look at the Noctua NH-D15 Black. This is pretty much as good as it gets for cooling, setting aside custom loops. It does, however, takes the total build price up to the 800 dollar limit, but I'll list it here for your reference.

Here's the updated listing with the new CPU, motherboard and RAM. Hope this helped, take care.

 

[bill001g]

That would be silly if a cpu that uses less power runs hotter. All the electricity is converted to heat as it is used to run the cpu.

I think the 7800x3d is about 100 watt difference so it is pretty significant. Not sure the 13700k can run very hot and use lots of power if you use the option to eliminate the power cap. The 7800x3d like almost all amd with the x3d feature can not really be overclocked very much if at all.

This might let you run a different cooler. There are massive amounts of aircoolers that they have tested on this site and they use 13700k in most cases. I would check those article out for guidance. Your choice of cooler is not as much about how much it actually cools but things like how loud the fans are and does it fit in your case.

I think you will find most aircoolers on the list will have no issues with a 7800x3d and more your choice is going to be based on what color fans and led you like the best.

I would not drop your PSU size. You might need it when you upgrade the video card in the future. You likely will be able to replace it with some new "50" series card in a year or two and your CPU will still be more than good enough.

 

[VIIIJustice]

Yes, you will need a different motherboard and a DDR5 kit. For the motherboard, MSI makes a Tomahawk for AMD system as well, the MSI MAG Tomahawk B660. It supports DDR5, WiFi 6E, and PCIe Gen 5. An excellent choice.

Your RAM kit is very important, far more important than on an Intel platform. Ryzen performance can be severely kneecapped by poor memory transfer speeds and, most importantly, high latency. You will want a kit that has a First Word latency of no more than ten to achieve maximum performance on Ryzen 7000. This G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 6000 CL30 2x16 kit will be perfect for your needs. It has a blistering speed of 6000 with a nice and low CAS latency of 30. It also meets the ten milisecond requirement. On top of that, it's AMD Expo certified, meaning the kit has been configured and constructed specifically for AMD systems to achieve maximum performance and compatibility.

To answer your other questions, I would still stick with the 1000 watt PSU. Could you get away with something lower? Yes, especially because AMD chips take a lot less juice to operate compared to Intel. I have an RTX 2080 which recommends a 650 watt unit at the bare minimum. I have been running an original 650 watt Corsair PSU for the past five years wit zero problems. But should you use something lower? I would recommend against that. As power supplies age, their efficiency goes down, meaning it will be unable to deliver the advertised wattage over time. Using a 1000 watt unit leaves you expansion for more SSD's, fans, RGB, and ensures it will run for a long time. The RTX 4090 is also known for random power spikes when under load, and you dont want your system to shut off in the middle of a game or render.

The Peerless Assassin is a very good cooler and should do you just fine, even with a hot chip like the 7800X3D. If you want to squeeze the maximum lifespan out of your CPU, you could upgrade and get something to keep the chip as cool as possible. In that case, I would look at the Noctua NH-D15 Black. This is pretty much as good as it gets for cooling, setting aside custom loops. It does, however, takes the total build price up to the 800 dollar limit, but I'll list it here for your reference.

Here's the updated listing with the new CPU, motherboard and RAM. Hope this helped, take care.

Ok thank you, could I replace the RAM that you suggested with Corsair Vengeance? They seem the same to me, I just like Vengeance a little bit more because of the aesthetic but idk anything about RAM.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ryzen platforms tend to not play nice with the majority of Vengeance memory kits. You would be a lot wiser to stick with a G.Skill Trident Z Neos or Ripjaws kit, or if you go with Corsair then something from their Dominator platinum line. Of course, you can use any brand or model you desire but it would be VERY wise to first make sure that the model of memory kit you go with is either listed on the motherboard QVL list as compatible, or listed on the compatibility list (G.Skill memory configurator, Corsair memory finder, Crucial memory advisor) of the memory manufacturer. Unfortunately, that basically limits you to either choosing G.Skill, Corsair or Crucial, or just rolling the dice on another brand being compatible if it's not a model listed on the motherboard QVL list.

And yes, it IS important that you select a kit that has been validated for a specific motherboard because even if it's the right TYPE of memory, not every kit will work with every board, or might "work" but have "problems". For any Ryzen platform I'd simply stay away from the Vengeance kits unless it's a model that is specifically listed as compatible by Corsair on it's memory finder compatibility utility on it's website OR is listed on the motherboard QVL list.

 

[VIIIJustice]

Yes, you will need a different motherboard and a DDR5 kit. For the motherboard, MSI makes a Tomahawk for AMD system as well, the MSI MAG Tomahawk B660. It supports DDR5, WiFi 6E, and PCIe Gen 5. An excellent choice.

Your RAM kit is very important, far more important than on an Intel platform. Ryzen performance can be severely kneecapped by poor memory transfer speeds and, most importantly, high latency. You will want a kit that has a First Word latency of no more than ten to achieve maximum performance on Ryzen 7000. This G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 6000 CL30 2x16 kit will be perfect for your needs. It has a blistering speed of 6000 with a nice and low CAS latency of 30. It also meets the ten milisecond requirement. On top of that, it's AMD Expo certified, meaning the kit has been configured and constructed specifically for AMD systems to achieve maximum performance and compatibility.

To answer your other questions, I would still stick with the 1000 watt PSU. Could you get away with something lower? Yes, especially because AMD chips take a lot less juice to operate compared to Intel. I have an RTX 2080 which recommends a 650 watt unit at the bare minimum. I have been running an original 650 watt Corsair PSU for the past five years wit zero problems. But should you use something lower? I would recommend against that. As power supplies age, their efficiency goes down, meaning it will be unable to deliver the advertised wattage over time. Using a 1000 watt unit leaves you expansion for more SSD's, fans, RGB, and ensures it will run for a long time. The RTX 4090 is also known for random power spikes when under load, and you dont want your system to shut off in the middle of a game or render.

The Peerless Assassin is a very good cooler and should do you just fine, even with a hot chip like the 7800X3D. If you want to squeeze the maximum lifespan out of your CPU, you could upgrade and get something to keep the chip as cool as possible. In that case, I would look at the Noctua NH-D15 Black. This is pretty much as good as it gets for cooling, setting aside custom loops. It does, however, takes the total build price up to the 800 dollar limit, but I'll list it here for your reference.

Here's the updated listing with the new CPU, motherboard and RAM. Hope this helped, take care.

Thanks again for all the tips. If I would like to get a Liquid Cooler, what would you suggest me? Is there anything affordable (around 80/100$) that is good? Considering the motherboard that you’ve suggested me. I ask for it because I really like the design of the liquid coolers.

PS: I’m about to change my mind on the GPU, maybe send it back and buying a 6950xt, what ya’ll think about it? And if i do so, should I change any other components from the ones suggested?

 

[Order 66]

I would definitely send it back and get a 6950xt because the 16GB of VRAM will last far longer than 12 GB.

 

[turtletarget111]

First off, with computer hardware, avoid brands you do not recognize. If you go on Amazon and search for water coolers, you will find many brands with random letters and phrases as their brand names. Immediate red flag. Anyway, if you are bent on getting an AIO, the Cooler Master Liquid 360 is a solid choice. It's an amazing water cooler for the price. Now, it is over budget at 120 dollars, and Cooler Master makes a 240 version that will fit. However, for twenty dollars more, I strongly recommend paying it to get the larger radiator size. A larger radiator will allow more efficient transfer of heat from the hardware. If your budget is tight, go ahead and grab the Master Liquid 240 instead. I have personally run this cooler in my system for nearly six years and it hasn't skipped a beat.

Now your GPU. You will need to ask yourself some questions to determine which card you will be better off with. Do you care about any of Nvidia's proprietary features, i.e, Ray Tracing, Nvidia Reflex, DLSS, etc. Do you stream, or frequently record your games? If you answered "Yes" to these questions, you will want to stick with the 4070. If you are unsure, and play games casually, then I can tell you will be better off with the 6950XT. Most games do not support any of the features I listed, and if all you are after is maximum performance with rasterized games, then the 6950XT will beat the 4070 more often than it loses.

I would also like to mention I responded to your questions at three in the morning, and somehow understood you had a 4090, not a 4070, which is my mistake. As such, you would be just fine with an 850 watt power supply. Here's the new part list with your 7800X3D, AIO liquid cooler, and 6950XT. Hope this helped, take care.

 

[VIIIJustice]

First off, with computer hardware, avoid brands you do not recognize. If you go on Amazon and search for water coolers, you will find many brands with random letters and phrases as their brand names. Immediate red flag. Anyway, if you are bent on getting an AIO, the Cooler Master Liquid 360 is a solid choice. It's an amazing water cooler for the price. Now, it is over budget at 120 dollars, and Cooler Master makes a 240 version that will fit. However, for twenty dollars more, I strongly recommend paying it to get the larger radiator size. A larger radiator will allow more efficient transfer of heat from the hardware. If your budget is tight, go ahead and grab the Master Liquid 240 instead. I have personally run this cooler in my system for nearly six years and it hasn't skipped a beat.

Now your GPU. You will need to ask yourself some questions to determine which card you will be better off with. Do you care about any of Nvidia's proprietary features, i.e, Ray Tracing, Nvidia Reflex, DLSS, etc. Do you stream, or frequently record your games? If you answered "Yes" to these questions, you will want to stick with the 4070. If you are unsure, and play games casually, then I can tell you will be better off with the 6950XT. Most games do not support any of the features I listed, and if all you are after is maximum performance with rasterized games, then the 6950XT will beat the 4070 more often than it loses.

I would also like to mention I responded to your questions at three in the morning, and somehow understood you had a 4090, not a 4070, which is my mistake. As such, you would be just fine with an 850 watt power supply. Here's the new part list with your 7800X3D, AIO liquid cooler, and 6950XT. Hope this helped, take care.

Absolutely, thanks so much for all the help and the time you spend answering me, you helped me a lot!!!

 

[turtletarget111]

Absolutely, thanks so much for all the help and the time you spend answering me, you helped me a lot!!!

No worries, it was my pleasure to help you. Take it easy.