[SOLVED] Looking to Upgrade from a 10100 to another LGA 1200 Socket CPU! (11700k, 10900k or 11600k)

[pearsondka]

Morning everyone!

Just recently picked up a custom prebuilt to get back into the PC life after owning a Mac Mini for a few months (Never again)
Specs are i3 10100, 1660 super, msi z490 and while I thought the i3 would be enough, I feel the limits of during gaming, browsing, editing videos etc.

I was wondering what would be a great upgrade to go to from the i3 while staying within the 1200 socket family?
(Prices are in CAD)
Current options are:

• 11600k - $300 + taxes brand new
• 11700k - $350 - $400 used or $420 + taxes new
• 10900k - $450 - $500 used or $550 + taxes new

I really don't plan on changing sockets any time soon and will most likely be running for the next 2 years at least and would pair one of them with a newer 40xx GPU in the future.

I love great all "aroundness" mid range of the 11600k, but I feel like I'd be happy with the extra power from the i7 or i9 as I'm trying to get into editing photos/videos/gameplay more.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Eximo]

Well, you will need a CPU cooler along with any of those. Really depends on what you want to spend.

i9-10850k/10900 are also options for a 10 core. The extra cores help a little, but the 11th gen cores are faster, so for most tasks the 11700k and the 10th gen 10 cores are roughly similar.

 

[Eximo]

Cost wise, the 11700KF is looking pretty good. 11700F is also not badly priced.

 

[pearsondka]

Well, you will need a CPU cooler along with any of those. Really depends on what you want to spend.

i9-10850k/10900 are also options for a 10 core. The extra cores help a little, but the 11th gen cores are faster, so for most tasks the 11700k and the 10th gen 10 cores are roughly similar.

Oh yea definitely. Was going to pair with a AIO as I've never really experienced/used one before. If I can't find anything like, would just do a Dark Rock 4.

It's funny cause I started doing all this research about a week ago and most of the reviews I'm seeing online are basically saying the 11700k is a waste of time or money. Granted that was at the time of release, have things change since then?

 

[Eximo]

Yes and no. So there were games where the larger cache size of the 10 cores has it winning, and obviously some multithreaded tasks were faster with 20 threads vs 16. Then you have the i9-11900k, which is basically just a faster version of the 11700k, it often was the top gaming CPU, but only just and some titles didn't respond well to them.

On top of that, this was then Ryzen 5000 was available, so a 5800X was basically better all around, the biggest factor being requiring expensive cooling and a high end motherboard to get the most out of it. PCIe 4.0 only to one M.2 slot and PCIe 16x slots, whereas AMD had PCIe 4.0 available from the entire chipset as well.

So from a cost perspective, made little sense. You, who already has a Z490 board, is basically stuck. So the cost/performance doesn't really matter, just what the CPU can do you for when dropped in.

I bought my i9-10900F AFTER the 11th gen launch, because it was on sale. Just like the 10850K, boosts by default to 5.2Ghz, so didn't really see the need for overclocking. My CPU cooler isn't AM4 or LGA1700 compatible (specs for the LGA17xx/1800 socket were available a long time ago), so from my cost perspective it was the cheapest option . Z490 boards were a little cheaper than Z590 boards as well, and DDR4 was at an all time low. Made sense to me.

Ryzen 7000 is looking good, but we will see how DDR5 pans out on it. Alder Lake and Raptor Lake are just power hogs. Remains to be seen if that trend will reverse on the next process node or not.

 

[shady28]

Oh yea definitely. Was going to pair with a AIO as I've never really experienced/used one before. If I can't find anything like, would just do a Dark Rock 4.

It's funny cause I started doing all this research about a week ago and most of the reviews I'm seeing online are basically saying the 11700k is a waste of time or money. Granted that was at the time of release, have things change since then?

Honestly you are better off just looking at the charts and not reading the reviewers opinions. I will say I think the 11900K was a waste of silicon, but the 11700K /11600K were very viable alternatives to the 5800X and below.

The problem with Rocket Lake was that in order to compete against the 5900X and higher, they had to ramp the power consumption bigtime on the 11900K. That seemed to overshadow everything good about the 11600K and 11700K.

With that said, I'd rec the 11700K, especially to keep 2+ years. Six cores like the 11600K is okay, but I think you'll notice having the more cores - especially if, like most gamers these days, you don't just run the game itself but have a browser + discord + iTunes and so on all running.

The 11700K here is paired with DDR4-3600 C14, same as the Zen 3 rigs. Also the 4.9Ghz OC setting - you can easily OC these to 5Ghz or more with a good 240mm AIO cooler and a -1 AVX offset. The green bars here are totally stock - 125W - if you want stock performance.

From almost any perspective, the 11700K is still one of the best performing chips you can have in your rig today.

 

[pearsondka]

Yes and no. So there were games where the larger cache size of the 10 cores has it winning, and obviously some multithreaded tasks were faster with 20 threads vs 16. Then you have the i9-11900k, which is basically just a faster version of the 11700k, it often was the top gaming CPU, but only just and some titles didn't respond well to them.

On top of that, this was then Ryzen 5000 was available, so a 5800X was basically better all around, the biggest factor being requiring expensive cooling and a high end motherboard to get the most out of it. PCIe 4.0 only to one M.2 slot and PCIe 16x slots, whereas AMD had PCIe 4.0 available from the entire chipset as well.

So from a cost perspective, made little sense. You, who already has a Z490 board, is basically stuck. So the cost/performance doesn't really matter, just what the CPU can do you for when dropped in.

I bought my i9-10900F AFTER the 11th gen launch, because it was on sale. Just like the 10850K, boosts by default to 5.2Ghz, so didn't really see the need for overclocking. My CPU cooler isn't AM4 or LGA1700 compatible (specs for the LGA17xx/1800 socket were available a long time ago), so from my cost perspective it was the cheapest option . Z490 boards were a little cheaper than Z590 boards as well, and DDR4 was at an all time low. Made sense to me.

Ryzen 7000 is looking good, but we will see how DDR5 pans out on it. Alder Lake and Raptor Lake are just power hogs. Remains to be seen if that trend will reverse on the next process node or not.

Thanks for insight! I'd love to find a 10900F or even 10850k deal pop up from the right seller too.

I wouldn't mind waiting to see what Raptor Lake has in store but I'm okay with using tech that's a couple of years old. I look at it being more mature and stable than it would've been at launch.

 

[pearsondka]

Honestly you are better off just looking at the charts and not reading the reviewers opinions. I will say I think the 11900K was a waste of silicon, but the 11700K /11600K were very viable alternatives to the 5800X and below.

The problem with Rocket Lake was that in order to compete against the 5900X and higher, they had to ramp the power consumption bigtime on the 11900K. That seemed to overshadow everything good about the 11600K and 11700K.

With that said, I'd rec the 11700K, especially to keep 2+ years. Six cores like the 11600K is okay, but I think you'll notice having the more cores - especially if, like most gamers these days, you don't just run the game itself but have a browser + discord + iTunes and so on all running.

The 11700K here is paired with DDR4-3600 C14, same as the Zen 3 rigs. Also the 4.9Ghz OC setting - you can easily OC these to 5Ghz or more with a good 240mm AIO cooler and a -1 AVX offset. The green bars here are totally stock - 125W - if you want stock performance.

From almost any perspective, the 11700K is still one of the best performing chips you can have in your rig today.

Yea I frequented a few sites for reviews and I saw that it did fairly well. A buddy of mine is actually tossing me his old Kraken X42 for free that I'd like to do a push/pull setup with to see if it cools a little better. I don't plan on doing any crazy OCs on the CPU for the start as this would be my first K series chip from Intel to play with!

Looks like Amazon also has a 11700KF going for $400 + taxes brand new which I might go for.

Appreciate the advice as well!

 

[pearsondka]

Honestly you are better off just looking at the charts and not reading the reviewers opinions. I will say I think the 11900K was a waste of silicon, but the 11700K /11600K were very viable alternatives to the 5800X and below.

The problem with Rocket Lake was that in order to compete against the 5900X and higher, they had to ramp the power consumption bigtime on the 11900K. That seemed to overshadow everything good about the 11600K and 11700K.

With that said, I'd rec the 11700K, especially to keep 2+ years. Six cores like the 11600K is okay, but I think you'll notice having the more cores - especially if, like most gamers these days, you don't just run the game itself but have a browser + discord + iTunes and so on all running.

The 11700K here is paired with DDR4-3600 C14, same as the Zen 3 rigs. Also the 4.9Ghz OC setting - you can easily OC these to 5Ghz or more with a good 240mm AIO cooler and a -1 AVX offset. The green bars here are totally stock - 125W - if you want stock performance.

From almost any perspective, the 11700K is still one of the best performing chips you can have in your rig today.

After looking at these results a bit more, I ended up doing some more research and saw that the 10700K wasn't far off from what I was looking for and found one used for $230 CAD. Been working like a champ and have it paired with the X42 I traded a Wendy's Chicken Sandwich for from a buddy its working nice and cool!

Thanks for the help!