[SOLVED] Upgrading my PC for Cyberpunk 2077!

[gabizinha]

Hello everyone!
I'm aiming to build and upgrading my PC for the next-gen games, specially for Cyberpunk 2077

My rig:
i5 4690 (non-k)
GTX 1070 EVGA
2 x 8 GB @ 1600Mhz
CoolerMaster MasterWatt 750w

My upgrade:
i7 8700k
Gigabyte Z370M Aorus
Any DDR4 Ram

What do you guys think? That's enough?
Since I have a GTX1070 I'm not looking for a new GPU.

Also, since I'm not expert, Z370M is good enough to this build? What's the main difference between the non-M and M one?
Thank you!

 

[Darkbreeze]

It would help to know WHICH Aorus board you are talking about, since there are many of them. Also, unless you are in a region where the 9th gen parts are not available, it is generally LESS expensive to get the more current and better performing Coffee lake refresh parts rather than the 8th gen parts.

What country are you in?

What is your budget for the upgrade?

Are you SET firmly on an Intel upgrade or can you entertain the idea of a better upgrade for less using AMD?

 

[gabizinha]

It would help to know WHICH Aorus board you are talking about, since there are many of them. Also, unless you are in a region where the 9th gen parts are not available, it is generally LESS expensive to get the more current and better performing Coffee lake refresh parts rather than the 8th gen parts.

What country are you in?

What is your budget for the upgrade?

Are you SET firmly on an Intel upgrade or can you entertain the idea of a better upgrade for less using AMD?

That would be the
Gigabyte Z370M Aorus Gaming, Intel LGA 1151, mATX, DDR4

I'm from Brazil, the 9th is very, very expensive. That's why I was browsing some 8th gen cpus.

To be honest, I never had any AMD processors, I always used the Intel ones. Do you think a Ryzen build would be better?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Let me ask you this, which will tell the tale so to speak in terms of whether an AMD build has anything to offer as far as being "better" in your case.

Do you record, stream, encode, browse the web or run any other applications WHILE gaming that would be considered heavy multitasking? Do you PLAN to do any of those things? Open browser with many tabs? Streaming or recording your game content? Anything like that or even other multitasking considerations that I have not mentioned?

Or do you ONLY game, while gaming, with nothing else aside from Windows processes, going on?

 

[gabizinha]

Let me ask you this, which will tell the tale so to speak in terms of whether an AMD build has anything to offer as far as being "better" in your case.

Do you record, stream, encode, browse the web or run any other applications WHILE gaming that would be considered heavy multitasking? Do you PLAN to do any of those things? Open browser with many tabs? Streaming or recording your game content? Anything like that or even other multitasking considerations that I have not mentioned?

Or do you ONLY game, while gaming, with nothing else aside from Windows processes, going on?

Just gaming, pure and simple. Ofc I had some other apps running on the background but nothing heavy as much mentioned

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, you should be good with the 8700k then, or with a Ryzen 3600, whichever is less expensive and is readily available. They have pretty similar performance but the R5 3600 tends to be much cheaper in most markets. Same number of cores and hyperthreads. The Ryzen actually has faster single core and multicore performance than the 8700k at it's stock configuration.

The main issue with most microATX boards, compared to the standard ATX versions, is that they often lack some things. The don't usually have AS good of power delivery components, but sometimes they do if it is a high end board. They tend to usually have fewer fan headers, fewer SATA headers, some boards might only have two DIMM slots instead of four. Fewer PCI slots for add in cards. They are just generally pared down versions of the same, larger model. Some of them, at the upper end of the scale, are actually very high end but it depends on the model. Obviously, to some degree at least, you get what you pay for when it comes to motherboards but at some point that stops being necessarily true and starts changing to you are paying for strictly high end features like water cooling integration, gaming or overclocking features that might not even be useful to many users or unnecessary high end features like 10GBe networking that very few people can even use at all.

For most people these days, any mid tier board in the 125-200 dollar range is plenty good and has everything you could really want or need unless you are a higher end user with very specific overclocking or productivity requirements.

For gamers, any of the recent generation 8 core or 6/6 or higher model CPUs, 16GB or higher of memory, an SSD of some kind and at least a moderately capable graphics card along with a high quality power supply and sufficient cooling, is pretty much optimal.

It really does become a matter of "what can you afford" and what is available to you, when it comes to "what should I get". I tend to recommend targeting hardware that could reasonably remain viable for about five years, because beyond that some hardware or other is likely to fail and not be worth trying to replace once it does, anyhow.

 

[gabizinha]

So, you should be good with the 8700k then, or with a Ryzen 3600, whichever is less expensive and is readily available. They have pretty similar performance but the R5 3600 tends to be much cheaper in most markets. Same number of cores and hyperthreads. The Ryzen actually has faster single core and multicore performance than the 8700k at it's stock configuration.

The main issue with most microATX boards, compared to the standard ATX versions, is that they often lack some things. The don't usually have AS good of power delivery components, but sometimes they do if it is a high end board. They tend to usually have fewer fan headers, fewer SATA headers, some boards might only have two DIMM slots instead of four. Fewer PCI slots for add in cards. They are just generally pared down versions of the same, larger model. Some of them, at the upper end of the scale, are actually very high end but it depends on the model. Obviously, to some degree at least, you get what you pay for when it comes to motherboards but at some point that stops being necessarily true and starts changing to you are paying for strictly high end features like water cooling integration, gaming or overclocking features that might not even be useful to many users or unnecessary high end features like 10GBe networking that very few people can even use at all.

For most people these days, any mid tier board in the 125-200 dollar range is plenty good and has everything you could really want or need unless you are a higher end user with very specific overclocking or productivity requirements.

For gamers, any of the recent generation 8 core or 6/6 or higher model CPUs, 16GB or higher of memory, an SSD of some kind and at least a moderately capable graphics card along with a high quality power supply and sufficient cooling, is pretty much optimal.

It really does become a matter of "what can you afford" and what is available to you, when it comes to "what should I get". I tend to recommend targeting hardware that could reasonably remain viable for about five years, because beyond that some hardware or other is likely to fail and not be worth trying to replace once it does, anyhow.

Tbh, I want to be pretty much safe and comfort with my new upgrade. I don't want to worry about buying new specs soon.

Which ryzen and mobo you would recommend instead?

And thank you so much for your time and your detailed response

 

[Darkbreeze]

Personally, I because of the expense of X570, and because using B450 is pretty much just as good but there are issues with having to have BIOS flashback in order to update the BIOS which is mostly only found on a few MSI boards, I'd recommend the MSI Tomahawk, Tomahawk max or Gaming Pro carbon boards. There are a few others as well. Any MSI B450 board that DOES have BIOS flashback, should be good enough for the Ryzen 5 3600.

 

[gabizinha]

Personally, I because of the expense of X570, and because using B450 is pretty much just as good but there are issues with having to have BIOS flashback in order to update the BIOS which is mostly only found on a few MSI boards, I'd recommend the MSI Tomahawk, Tomahawk max or Gaming Pro carbon boards. There are a few others as well. Any MSI B450 board that DOES have BIOS flashback, should be good enough for the Ryzen 5 3600.

Since I'm bulding a PC specific to play Cyberpunk, I read that the specs belows were the running the demo at E3.
Which ryzen / mobo would be equivalent?

 

[Darkbreeze]

There are no final recommended hardware requirements yet, and everything that's out there is based on the demo which is unlikely to be accurate since at that time it's doubtful anything had yet been optimized or was even close to final code.

I assure you that there will be a much lower minimum spec than that.

 

[gabizinha]

Personally, I because of the expense of X570, and because using B450 is pretty much just as good but there are issues with having to have BIOS flashback in order to update the BIOS which is mostly only found on a few MSI boards, I'd recommend the MSI Tomahawk, Tomahawk max or Gaming Pro carbon boards. There are a few others as well. Any MSI B450 board that DOES have BIOS flashback, should be good enough for the Ryzen 5 3600.

So a Ryzen 3600 + MSI B450 would be good?

If I wanted a more powerful Ryzen, to last longer without upgrading for like 5 years?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ryzen 3600 or 3600x plus an MSI B450 Tomahawk, Tomahawk max or Gaming Pro carbon, would be a good choice. A 3700x would be even better, but obviously, that's more expensive than a 3600 as well. Still, it's probably cheaper than an 8700k depending on the region.

 

[gabizinha]

Ryzen 3600 or 3600x plus an MSI B450 Tomahawk, Tomahawk max or Gaming Pro carbon, would be a good choice. A 3700x would be even better, but obviously, that's more expensive than a 3600 as well. Still, it's probably cheaper than an 8700k depending on the region.

Thanks for the advice!

At the end of the day, I want to play Cyberpunk and other games of this generation at 60 fps on 1080p. I watched some videos of benchmarking and I don't feel so confident with the specs... Idk, maybe it's relative.

 

[Darkbreeze]

It goes back and forth. Some games favor the 8700k and get better FPS with that, others favor the 3600 and other Ryzen 3000 series CPUs and get more FPS with those. It is very much a matter of how many threads the game is able to use and right now we simply do not know, for this game.

 

[gabizinha]

It goes back and forth. Some games favor the 8700k and get better FPS with that, others favor the 3600 and other Ryzen 3000 series CPUs and get more FPS with those. It is very much a matter of how many threads the game is able to use and right now we simply do not know, for this game.

Hmmm I see...
Jesus, building a PC is surely a nightmare xD

I'm waiting for black friday deals to see what I can afford... I'm a little afraid that if I get the ryzen combo the perfomance won't be thaaat great, you know what I mean?

Thanks one more time

 

[Darkbreeze]

Honestly, here's my advice. If you are going to build specifically for Cyberpunk 2077, then wait. Wait for the damn game to be released and for a couple of places to do their reviews of it. Wait for the community consensus to come out. See what the results ARE. Then you will know if you need one thing or another.

Truthfully, if you just get the 3700x or 8700k, either one, I'm pretty sure you'll do just fine. They are both highly capable processors and will likely exceed the requirements of the game by a fair margin. If you have to have the best thing available right now that will last for as many years as possible while still remaining pretty relevant, then simply get a 3900x or 9900k. Otherwise, there really isn't any other choices besides the 3700x and 8700k or 9700k. Like I said, even the 3600/3600x might be good enough but it's impossible to say for sure until there is something to look at and there won't be anything to look at until the game has been released and reviewed.

There's really no way to know which camp this game favors until then.

 

[gabizinha]

Hey sire!
I got this deal, which one do you think its better?
Some people said tha the B450M ASUS doesn't have the heatsink. The B450-F ROG has one.
I'm not so much OC experienced, however I'd like to tweak in the future.

Obviously, the Strix is much more expensive. But I do like to see using this in the long run.

Do you think it's a good kit upgrade?

OR

 

[Darkbreeze]

Neither of those boards is particularly good, but the B450-F is definitely better than the B450m gaming, but a long shot. However, you do not want that 2666mhz memory paired up with a 2nd or 3rd Gen Ryzen CPU. It's too slow, and will take a chunk out of your performance. The minimum memory speed you should be looking at for use with 3rd gen Ryzen is 3200mhz. 3600mhz would be a lot better.

 

[gabizinha]

Neither of those boards is particularly good, but the B450-F is definitely better than the B450m gaming, but a long shot. However, you do not want that 2666mhz memory paired up with a 2nd or 3rd Gen Ryzen CPU. It's too slow, and will take a chunk out of your performance. The minimum memory speed you should be looking at for use with 3rd gen Ryzen is 3200mhz. 3600mhz would be a lot better.

Oh I see. The main problem is that the 3600 mhz memory sticks is so damn expensive. I was going to buy the Prime mobo, but the abscence of the heatskin worried me a lot. I'd like to OC it in the future. I'm overreatcing by this, or the Strix is by far the better option, considering the price difference.

Thanks

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, but 3200mhz sticks are NOT that expensive. Not like the 3600mhz sticks. And 3200mhz is going to be a lot better for you with that CPU than those 2666mhz sticks that come in those bundles. Unless you know somebody you can immediately sell those 2666mhz sticks to in order to make up some of the difference, and then get the memory separately, I'd keep looking for other deals. Using 2666mhz memory with that platform is like putting on one tire that is 14" when the rest are all 16", and trying to drive that way.

 

[gabizinha]

Yes, but 3200mhz sticks are NOT that expensive. Not like the 3600mhz sticks. And 3200mhz is going to be a lot better for you with that CPU than those 2666mhz sticks that come in those bundles. Unless you know somebody you can immediately sell those 2666mhz sticks to in order to make up some of the difference, and then get the memory separately, I'd keep looking for other deals. Using 2666mhz memory with that platform is like putting on one tire that is 14" when the rest are all 16", and trying to drive that way.

I got this one
G.Skill Trident Z Royal 16GB (2x8) DDR4 3000Mhz Prata, F4-3000C16D-16GTRS

What do you think?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yeah, that's good memory. Very good memory. I don't know if it's compatible with your system, but most likely it is. The Trident Z sticks seem to have really good compatibility with most platforms.

 

[gabizinha]

Yeah, that's good memory. Very good memory. I don't know if it's compatible with your system, but most likely it is. The Trident Z sticks seem to have really good compatibility with most platforms.

Where can I find if they are compatible? All DDR4 arent compatible?

 

[Darkbreeze]

All DDR4 is "compatible", but it will not all run in a Ryzen platform. AMD and Intel based platforms have different preferences when it comes to compatible timings and even in some cases to whether or not their memory controllers "like" certain IC's (memory chips) used on specific modules.

The best way to know for sure is to look at both the memory manufacturers website, for G.Skill they have the G.Skill memory configurator, and the motherboard QVL list. If either of them shows a specific memory kit being compatible with a specific motherboard, then it is. If they don't, then it still MIGHT be, but it's a lot more sure if the memory manufacturer shows it being compatible or if it is on the QVL list, although the QVL list doesn't always mean it's compatible AND will run at the advertised speed. Sometimes it only means they tested it at the default speed of 2133mhz, which doesn't mean it won't run at the faster speed but it is not verified.

 

[gabizinha]

All DDR4 is "compatible", but it will not all run in a Ryzen platform. AMD and Intel based platforms have different preferences when it comes to compatible timings and even in some cases to whether or not their memory controllers "like" certain IC's (memory chips) used on specific modules.

The best way to know for sure is to look at both the memory manufacturers website, for G.Skill they have the G.Skill memory configurator, and the motherboard QVL list. If either of them shows a specific memory kit being compatible with a specific motherboard, then it is. If they don't, then it still MIGHT be, but it's a lot more sure if the memory manufacturer shows it being compatible or if it is on the QVL list, although the QVL list doesn't always mean it's compatible AND will run at the advertised speed. Sometimes it only means they tested it at the default speed of 2133mhz, which doesn't mean it won't run at the faster speed but it is not verified.

Thank you! I'll look into that.
Anyway, I find other deal: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 8GB DDR4 3200MHz CL16 Vermelha - BLS8G4D32AESEK .

I read that Crucial sticks are very good.

Motheboard, I think I'll buy the Strix one, I want to have some time before any upgrade