[SOLVED] Wanting to upgrade

[DocVoc]

At the moment I am working with a Gigabyte z370 hd3p (rev. 1.0) board with an i3 8350k, 4 sticks of 3200mhz DDR4 G.Skill ram paired with an RTX 2070. I also have a 512GB M.2 sata drive that I use for my Windows 10 Home OS along with a couple 7200RPM drives for storage.
I just sold my 1070 Ti for 200 so I have a little extra to throw with my next check, Im really feeling like I should upgrade the CPU since I got such a newer card. Maybe a i7 9700K or a i9 9900K, what do you guys think I should be working on upgrading?

 

[Darkbreeze]

WHICH Gigabyte Z370 board do you have?

 

[DocVoc]

WHICH Gigabyte Z370 board do you have?

z370 hd3p (rev. 1.0)

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok, so I can tell you right now you don't want to try running the 9900k on that board. VRMs are just not good enough.

The 9700k on the other hand should probably be ok so long as you don't plan to do any overclocking.

That is the CPU that I would most likely recommend as an upgrade. The 9600k is nice, but honestly it doesn't have much better performance than the much older i7-6700k.

The 8 cores of the 9700k would be a very good upgrade and right now you can pick one up for a lot less than they were going for six months ago.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700KF 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor ($329.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $329.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-26 01:48 EST-0500

 

[DocVoc]

Ok, so I can tell you right now you don't want to try running the 9900k on that board. VRMs are just not good enough.

The 9700k on the other hand should probably be ok so long as you don't plan to do any overclocking.

That is the CPU that I would most likely recommend as an upgrade. The 9600k is nice, but honestly it doesn't have much better performance than the much older i7-6700k.

The 8 cores of the 9700k would be a very good upgrade and right now you can pick one up for a lot less than they were going for six months ago.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700KF 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor ($329.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $329.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-26 01:48 EST-0500

Thank you good sir, that's actually the listing i've been looking at! Is there anything else that you could think of that would give me a noticeable boost in performance? I'm using an HP Omen monitor by the way.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Rather than an additional boost in performance, the more important thing I'd look at is making the system highly reliable.

What is the exact model of your current power supply?

Since that is the most commonly overlooked component, sadly, since it's also the MOST important component, having a rock solid reliable quality power supply to protect the costly investment of all your other hardware (And yes, a poor quality power supply can definitely put your hardware at immediate and cumulative long term risk) only makes sense. It just makes me want to slap the hell out of people who purchase 1200.00-2000.00 systems and then stick a 45.00 power supply in there. It's unnecessarily senseless and is usually the reason why those same people end up having to chase down problems with their other hardware later once that cheap PSU has beat up the capacitors on their motherboard or graphics card for a year or so.

 

[DocVoc]

Rather than an additional boost in performance, the more important thing I'd look at is making the system highly reliable.

What is the exact model of your current power supply?

Since that is the most commonly overlooked component, sadly, since it's also the MOST important component, having a rock solid reliable quality power supply to protect the costly investment of all your other hardware (And yes, a poor quality power supply can definitely put your hardware at immediate and cumulative long term risk) only makes sense. It just makes me want to slap the hell out of people who purchase 1200.00-2000.00 systems and then stick a 45.00 power supply in there. It's unnecessarily senseless and is usually the reason why those same people end up having to chase down problems with their other hardware later once that cheap PSU has beat up the capacitors on their motherboard or graphics card for a year or so.

I was actually thinking of that this morning! I'm currently using a Corsair AX760. I've also never overclocked anything other than enabling XMP mode for my RAM.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, the AX760 is a phenomenal unit, but how old is that? How long has it been in use?

 

[DocVoc]

Well, the AX760 is a phenomenal unit, but how old is that? How long has it been in use?

Exactly a year old today haha, I hardly ever leave my computer on overnight or anything like that 😱

 

[Darkbreeze]

Then there should be no need to change the PSU. That unit has a ten year warranty doesn't it? It's an excellent unit. One of the very best you could have.

Maybe a 1 or 2TB SSD for your game files to live on?

 

[DocVoc]

Then there should be no need to change the PSU. That unit has a ten year warranty doesn't it? It's an excellent unit. One of the very best you could have.

Maybe a 1 or 2TB SSD for your game files to live on?

Good idea! What do you think of the Ryzen 3600?

 

[Darkbreeze]

I think it's a terrific option for somebody needing to do a whole platform upgrade, but you don't need to, and that R5 3600 is definitely not as good, or as cheap, of an option as the 9700k would be since you would need both a CPU and a motherboard.. And you would not have as good of performance as with the 9700k. If you had an older platform and you already needed to get a new CPU and motherboard, then yes, it would be well worth considering because it's a very good all around CPU for the price, but one of those and a motherboard is going to cost you more than the 9700k will by itself.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($194.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.99 @ B&H)
Total: $308.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-28 03:55 EST-0500



or


PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor ($299.99 @ Best Buy)
Total: $299.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-28 03:56 EST-0500


And the 9700k is going to give you much better performance, especially in gaming. If the Ryzen was the better choice, I'd say so, because I have no preference against AMD. The Ryzen 3000 series is a game changer when it comes to them being competitive or even in some cases better, than Intel, but in this case it's just not the best option.

If you look at the gaming benchmarks at the following link you will see that the 8700k beats the 3600 and 3700x in most of them, and the 9700k is better than the 8700k 90% of the time. There are only a few games, which are highly optimized for multithreaded performance, where the 8700k's extra hyperthreads wins out over the 9700k, and in those kinds of games the 3600, 3600x and 3700x are likely going to have a better showing as well but for most games, any CPU with 6-8 strong cores is going to do better than one with a bunch of hyperthreads.

Now if you were talking about doing the 3700x and a new board, that might be a different story. Then, selling your current board and CPU might look like a good option and moving up to those parts instead of just adding a CPU.