[SOLVED] New i7? -- or whole new board?

P_Synthesis

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Hi and thanks for reading.

I built a PC a couple of years back, really just for general use, but now I'd like to do a bit of video editing (just YouTube stuff on Sony Vegas, not huge quality) and I want maybe a boost in speed as I go to Windows 10 for the first time as well.

The board is an ASRock H170M PRO4S. Currently there is an i3 in it, and I'm operating only at 32 bit. I have an NVidia GTX950 in it.

My question: I think with 16 GB of DDR4 plus an i7 (eg. 6700), I can go to 64bit and should be golden for a couple of years in editing short videos, surfing web, some GIMP, not much else.

Does that sound like a plan to the experts here, or should I get a new graphics card, or even a whole new board right now and rebuild?

I'm not too up on what's out there as I tend to drift out of tech zones for years at a time and wasn't planning to do this yet. I figured I would swing by for the expert opinions before I start the investigations.. thanks for your help!
 
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Ah, many thanks for these useful replies.

cdrkf, yes indeed I should upgrade Windows immediately, see how smoothly I can get Vegas to run at 64 bit with extra RAM, before I make any major changes.

Titan, wow, I had no idea what AMD was doing. As I said I've been out of the loop! At that price it seems far less hassle to upgrade the board as well. Indeed 6700s and 7700s begin to look very overpriced for what they will do. You have me thinking.

What would (either of) you recommend as a board if I went AMD 2600 and did my next build early, middle of this year say?

Now here's the thing, I actually have 16GB of DDR4 sitting in the machine already, criminally non-used right now (long story let's skip it) it's old, 2017 era. But...
Hi and thanks for reading.

I built a PC a couple of years back, really just for general use, but now I'd like to do a bit of video editing (just YouTube stuff on Sony Vegas, not huge quality) and I want maybe a boost in speed as I go to Windows 10 for the first time as well.

The board is an ASRock H170M PRO4S. Currently there is an i3 in it, and I'm operating only at 32 bit. I have an NVidia GTX950 in it.

My question: I think with 16 GB of DDR4 plus an i7 (eg. 6700), I can go to 64bit and should be golden for a couple of years in editing short videos, surfing web, some GIMP, not much else.

Does that sound like a plan to the experts here, or should I get a new graphics card, or even a whole new board right now and rebuild?

I'm not too up on what's out there as I tend to drift out of tech zones for years at a time and wasn't planning to do this yet. I figured I would swing by for the expert opinions before I start the investigations.. thanks for your help!

Hi,

So you have lots of upgrade options- what makes most sense does depend on budget and how much video work you are doing (and how long you are prepared to wait). To be honest even that i3 can handle light duties fine, the main issue for you is the limit to 4gb of memory when using 32 bit windows.

So your cheapest upgrade option is get a 16gb DDR4 memory kit and upgrade to 64 bit Windows 10-in fact I would suggest trying that to start with it you don't want to spend too much and see how you get on.

The i7 6700 would be a decent upgrade over the i3, but it's also fairly limited compared to the latest tech as it's only 4 core / 8 thread part. Intel now offer up to 8 cores / 16 threads on their current mainstream platform and you can go all the way up to 16 cores / 32 threads with AMD- however both of those options would require you to buy a new motherboard so makes the upgrade quite a bit more expensive.
 
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4745454b

Titan
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What is the budget? If you need to do this as cheap as you can then I'd update the bios on your board to support new CPUs and get an i7 7xxx something. You'll need to buy new ram of course.

But considering you'll be buying a new CPU and more ram anyways, you might as well get a new board too. Many people are getting AMD setups right now due to the extra cores they provide. A 2600 is cheap, around $110, and you'll spend more than that on your i7 CPU. (I'm seeing used 7700K with board online for ~$300.) You'll get a 6C/12T CPU instead of the 4C/8T i7 which will help on video edits. Really depends on how much you want to spend on this.
 

P_Synthesis

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Feb 27, 2016
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Ah, many thanks for these useful replies.

cdrkf, yes indeed I should upgrade Windows immediately, see how smoothly I can get Vegas to run at 64 bit with extra RAM, before I make any major changes.

47454554b, wow, I had no idea what AMD was doing. As I said I've been out of the loop! At that price it seems far less hassle to upgrade the board as well. Indeed 6700s and 7700s begin to look very overpriced for what they will do. You have me thinking.

What would (either of) you recommend as a board if I went AMD 2600 and did my next build early, middle of this year say?

Now here's the thing, I actually have 16GB of DDR4 sitting in the machine already, criminally non-used right now (long story let's skip it) it's old, 2017 era. But definitely DDR4.

Suppose I use that + same graph card, and I want an AMD plus a board.
And I had $400?
OK what about $600?

Just musing... thanks for your patience! Because I'm potentially quite flexible in budget. Assume a little bit less or more than the above if you like, and just basically tell me what you think is nice. Cheers. :)

PS BTW I have to install about 3 or 4 hard drives so must be sure board can handle.
 
Last edited:
Ah, many thanks for these useful replies.

cdrkf, yes indeed I should upgrade Windows immediately, see how smoothly I can get Vegas to run at 64 bit with extra RAM, before I make any major changes.

Titan, wow, I had no idea what AMD was doing. As I said I've been out of the loop! At that price it seems far less hassle to upgrade the board as well. Indeed 6700s and 7700s begin to look very overpriced for what they will do. You have me thinking.

What would (either of) you recommend as a board if I went AMD 2600 and did my next build early, middle of this year say?

Now here's the thing, I actually have 16GB of DDR4 sitting in the machine already, criminally non-used right now (long story let's skip it) it's old, 2017 era. But definitely DDR4.

Suppose I use that + same graph card, and I want an AMD plus a board.
And I had $400?
OK what about $600?

Just musing... thanks for your patience! Because I'm potentially quite flexible in budget. Assume a little bit less or more than the above if you like, and just basically tell me what you think is nice. Cheers. :)

PS BTW I have to install about 3 or 4 hard drives so must be sure board can handle.

For that kind of budget you have the option to go with something a bit faster than the 2600.... the newer Ryzen 5 3600 features a much faster core (it's up to about 30% faster than the 2600 with same number of cores / threads)- that only costs $200 new.

Motherboard wise, the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max is a really good all rounder... doesn't costs too much (~ $100) and has a decent VRM that can handle any of the cpu's in AMD's range all the way up to the 16 core (should you want to upgrade in the future). The board also features plenty of sata ports and an M.2 NVME interface (really worth looking at for fast boat and programme load times).
 
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P_Synthesis

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Thankyou so much cdrkf I am feeling these. Will allow me to feel more future-proof and go stronger on editing if needed later.

Last question I can think of now (although any other thoughts still gratefully received) -- any reason to wait 3, 6 or 9 months? I'm not under much time pressure if the 64bit windows works out. The machine isn't bad now.

Anything about to go obsolete, anything new coming, will things be substantially cheaper later on this year?

really worth looking at for fast boat times

Now that's the upgrade I want.(y)
 
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Thankyou so much cdrkf I am feeling these. Will allow me to feel more future-proof and go stronger on editing if needed later.

Last question I can think of now (although any other thoughts still gratefully received) -- any reason to wait 3, 6 or 9 months? I'm not under much time pressure if the 64bit windows works out. The machine isn't bad now.

Anything about to go obsolete, anything new coming, will things be substantially cheaper later on this year?



Now that's the upgrade I want.(y)

Haha... only just noticed that... sadly no boats included :( Those new drives speed up boot up times though :p

In terms of waiting- there are always new things around the corner... on the cpu side though I'm not sure there is anything that exciting coming up. Intel are releasing a new range of cpu's on the desktop later this year, but they are based on the same tech as the existing parts (the top end 'Core i9 is being bumped up to a 10 core, but it's still not going to be able to compete with the AMD 12 and 16 core parts that are already out). AMD have a new update for Ryzen in the works which is reported to have a nice ~10 - 15% performance bump to the core (the core counts are said to be staying the same) however no date has been set for that, maybe the end of the year or early 2021? The good thing about the AMD side of things is they have been very good at updating their motherboards to support new cpu's.... I have a first gen Ryzen 5 1600 on a B350 motherboard, and they have released bios updates that allow me to drop in a 2nd or 3rd gen Ryzen cpu into it if I want to. I think the chances are good that they will maintain support for the AM4 socket to the next generation Ryzen 4000 series as well (although that isn't confirmed at the moment).
 
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P_Synthesis

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You are a prince cdrkf, I think this covers me.

Will not sniff at anyone who wants to add something to the thread etc., but I think I see a good way ahead.

Can I award you some thread prize or whatever? How does that work I forget.

sadly no boats included :( Those new drives speed up boot up times though

That's great but it's just not the same. :(
 
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4745454b

Titan
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16GBs on 32bit windows? Ok, moving on.

I'm not a fan of the 3xxx chips yet. They are good and faster than the Ryzen 2xxx series, but the 2xxx series is discounted in price so much that it doesn't make sense to buy the newer chips. When you can buy the 8C/16T 2700 for less than the 6C/12T 3600X it doesn't make a lot of sense to get the 3600X. It might in some cases where you need better single core speed, but the extra two cores on the 2700 will matter more, I would look at current prices and what tasks you do before deciding on the 3xxx chips.

Can I award you some thread prize or whatever? How does that work I forget.

Find the answer that you feel solves your thread the best and select the little trophy icon in the upper left of the post. It's next to the icon of their name, above the up/down vote icons.
 
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16GBs on 32bit windows? Ok, moving on.

I'm not a fan of the 3xxx chips yet. They are good and faster than the Ryzen 2xxx series, but the 2xxx series is discounted in price so much that it doesn't make sense to buy the newer chips. When you can buy the 8C/16T 2700 for less than the 6C/12T 3600X it doesn't make a lot of sense to get the 3600X. It might in some cases where you need better single core speed, but the extra two cores on the 2700 will matter more, I would look at current prices and what tasks you do before deciding on the 3xxx chips.



Find the answer that you feel solves your thread the best and select the little trophy icon in the upper left of the post. It's next to the icon of their name, above the up/down vote icons.

I disagree with the 2700 vs 3600, on the basis that in most rendering tasks the 6 core / 12 thread 3600 is faster than the 2700 (and for any lower thread count task the 2700 gets slaughtered).....
 
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4745454b

Titan
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There is a ~10-15% boost from Ryzen one, which includes the 2xxx chips, to Ryzen 2. That's not enough to overcome the extra two cores that the 2700 has over the 3600. The 3600 is a good chip and if PCIe 4 matters that much to you then it should be bought. Otherwise at the low prices the 2700 and 2700x are being sold for they are the better chip at the moment.

https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_5_3600_review,9.html

We lock all processor cores at 3500 MHz. That way you can see the architecture performance of the processor clocked at exactly the same frequency. This is a single thread measurement. For many people, this is the holy grail of CPU measurements in terms of how fast an architecture per core really is. I, however, tend to say there's more to it than that, and that would be higher frequency allowances, caches and memory latency defining that per core performance.

You'll notice a 10 to 12% IPC increase over the original ZEN architecture depending on what model you compare with.


According to this you'll need the 2700X to beat the 3600 in something that uses multi core. If you go to the CPUz page you'll see the same thing. Single core the 3600 is great. Once you look at multi core however the 2700 is now faster and the 2700x is much faster. There are times where the 3600 is faster. And don't get me wrong, it's a great chip. But price also plays a part. On newegg right now it's $198. The 2700x is $180. And as long as you get two more cores for less money, the 2700x, at least for me, is the better buy.
 
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P_Synthesis

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Interesting further convo here. Thanks.

474545b is not unpersuasive; I expect more cores are the priority for video editing/rendering.

OTOH my budget is flexible like I said. I could happily stretch to a 3700X. Which might be silly but then again it might not if my task list later expands. Which it might.

Will ponder and appreciate your thoughts.