[SOLVED] What would you say to this person?

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pr0t0typ3

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Nov 10, 2014
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My not-tech-savvy friend asked me to help building him a new PC for streaming and gaming. I told him that he is just in time, Ryzen 3000 is coming. He thought about it and said he refuses to build a Ryzen-based PC and also refuses to wait for 2 weeks for the reviews, he wants to build and Intel-based system right now. Mind you, Intel prices still haven't changed, the 9900K is still 500+ usd, while its (at least) equivalent has been announced at 320 usd, not to mention the upgrade path and the option to step up later up to 16 cores, as opposed to buying into a platform which is a dead end already.

I tried everything but his decision is final, his reason being "I had Intel+Nvidia for the past 10+ years and it has been working fine."

I have 2 questions for you guys:

1: what is your message to this person?
2: how hard should I flame him in 3 weeks when Ryzen 3000 goes up for purchase and he will be sitting there with a brand new intel 9th gen system?

EDIT
Sorry, I was not clear on what is happening exactly. He is on a set budget and a 9900k does not fit in it, but a 3700x does, easily. Also, he is my friend so some flaming is always in order :D

EDIT 2
His budget is about $1500. Keep in mind that in our country, everything is about 10-15% more expensive than the international MSRP, sometimes more. For reference, a 9900k is currently $565 here.
 
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I would tell him the same thing as I told a friend of mine years ago when he was in the market for a PC.

"Don't go for the absolute best of the best. Spend 50% of that money to get 80-90% of that performance. I'll make sure to squeeze every penny so hard for price/performance that Abe Lincoln will start screaming."(fyi: In the US, Abraham Lincoln is on the penny)

That said, because he was my friend, and because he knew that I wouldn't just casually insult him for no reason, if he were doing something like what your friend is doing, stubbornly insisting on spending more than he needed to, ESPECIALLY when money is tight, I would tell him he is an idiot, and tell him WHY he's an idiot, and explain to him the whole price/performance...

DMAN999

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I personally do think that Ryzen 3000 series CPU will benefit me IF they perform as well as the leaks imply.
As for Price to Performance (as well as longevity/reliability) being King I absolutely agree with that.
I have NO brand loyalty when it comes to any PC component.
I buy whatever component performs best for the price I am willing to pay and reviews well as far as quality is concerned.

I have had many intel rigs over the years but only 2 AMD based rigs.
I have used GPUs/Motherboards/PSUs/etc. made by many different manufaturers and I have been happy with them all at the time I had them.
 
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I think Ryzen 3000 will bring a lot for content creators and gamers alike.
The value of the new chips will be amazing if they perform as AMD said. The problem is the high cost of x570, but cheaper B450 and X470 motherboards with BIOS updates are available.
I don't think you should look at a component by a brand name, rather look at its pros and cons compared to other similarly priced products.

Yea, after getting tired of being called an AMD fanboy I added to my signature.
I have only ever owned 1 AMD pc but owned many Intel pc. In fact, I still own more Intel pcs than Intel. I even contemplated a Ryzen laptop with an HDD and Igpu, but a laptop that was $100 more came with a comparable I5, higher resolution screen, 660p NVME drive, and dedicated 1050ti graphics. I'll buy whatever offers the best value.
 
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Karadjgne

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Make the build, minus the cpu/mobo. Get good case, good gpu, good psu, good storage, good ram etc. Then see how much is left over for cpu/mobo. Pretty much guarantee all that'll be left is a i5-9400f or Ryzen 2700x/3600 etc. Show the friend a couple of benchmarks with heavy cpu usage games, like Battlefield 5 or Witcher 3 etc and when the Ryzens are that far ahead in fps and ability, walk away. When your friend wants to waste $1500 on a pc that's not much different to my i7-3770K, it's no longer your problem.
 
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pr0t0typ3

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Ryzen 3000? Wait until it is actually out in the wild, and then see.

Are you saying that ignoring rumors, based on only what we know for a fact so far "wait and see" is all that's warranted here? Especially in the context of this thread which is about whether it makes sense to build a new system 2 weeks before the embargo lift and 3 weeks before zen 2 becomes available, I deeply disagree. If nothing else, prices of current cpus will be impacted significantly. And solely based on what we know for a fact at this point in time, I stand by my earlier statement: this is going to be by far the biggest shake-up in the mainstream processor space since the q6600 back in 2006, bar: none. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but unless we've been lied to to an extreme degree by AMD, I don't see how this is not the case.

I personally do think that Ryzen 3000 series CPU will benefit us IF they perform as well as the leaks imply.

I was really skeptical with the early leaks back in December by Jim at Adoredtv. I'm still skeptical, as one should always be with leaks and rumors. However, based on previous experience, post-announcement pre-embargo lift leaks tend to be quite accurate. People now have the actual cpus, test results leaking is inevitable. For the very first time since I've been into technology, I'm hyped for a product release. I wish this thread did more to tell my friend he is about to make a mistake :D
 
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DMAN999

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All I can say is that if I was building a system Now, I would wait a month or so and see what the Ryzen 3000 series release does to pricing.
And it should be obvious BUT I will say it anyways.
I chose a Ryzen Build over an Intel Build (in November 2018) because the price to performance difference heavily favored my choice and it still does today.
 
All I can say is that if I was building a system Now, I would wait a month or so and see what the Ryzen 3000 series release does to pricing.
And it should be obvious BUT I will say it anyways.
I chose a Ryzen Build over an Intel Build 9in November 2018) because the price to performance difference heavily favored my choice and it still does today.
At the time (2017) I purchased a R7 1700/B350M/16gb 3200mhz combo for less than an i7 8700k.
 

pr0t0typ3

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Have your friend check out this video:
Thanks, it's a great one and I didn't know the channel! Subbed :)

At the time (2017) I purchased a R7 1700/B350M/16gb 3200mhz combo for less than an i7 8700k.
Dayum, some crazy perspective :O

When your friend wants to waste $1500 on a pc that's not much different to my i7-3770K, it's no longer your problem.
Fun fact: he is upgrading from just that, an i7-3770k :D
 
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RCFProd

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What happened to ''Wait for benchmarks''? As good as Ryzen 3000 sounds on paper, only actual benchmarks done by reviewers will give you a proper image of the improvements for the money you're paying. It's honestly really easy though, just wait for Non-AMD numbers to be out before you make a decision.

Due to the price increase compared to the estimated performance increase of Ryzen 3000 I think the Ryzen 2600/2700 will remain to be good options for the price. But we will know soon.
 

pr0t0typ3

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What happened to ''Wait for benchmarks''? As good as Ryzen 3000 sounds on paper, only actual benchmarks done by reviewers will give you a proper image of the improvements for the money you're paying. It's honestly really easy though, just wait for Non-AMD numbers to be out before you make a decision.

Due to the price increase compared to the estimated performance increase of Ryzen 3000 I think the Ryzen 2600/2700 will remain to be good options for the price. But we will know soon.
This is exactly the point of this thread, that he is not willing to wait for the benchmarks, he wants to build an Intel system this week, due to mostly brand loyalty. And IMHO my statements about how big this release will be are reasonable, just purely based on the fact that mainstream is now up to 16 physical cores. And this happened in 3 years, after being stuck with 4 cores for literally 10 years due to lack of competition. Even with 0% performance gains over Zen+, this is huge. IPC improves and core clocks go up though, so even before seeing the reviews, it is safe to say that you should at least wait, isn't it?

EDIT
I almost forgot, I also expect the 2600/2700 to be great options. I am actually planning to upgrade from my 1650v2 to a 2700 once the release of Zen2 pushes prices down :)
 
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pr0t0typ3

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Not just gaming, streaming. Purchasing anything less than an 8 core 16 thread processor when streaming triple A titles is a mistake. As far as i'm concerned that should be a minimum requirement.
Agreed, kind of. I would go for at least 8 physical cores, SMT doesn't matter much. 6 cores are mostly OK for now, but may not be next year. Just take a look at what happened to the 7600k vs Ryzen 1800. Ouch. As higher core counts become mainstream, game devs make use of them. This was a debated topic when Ryzen first launched, but seems to be more or less confirmed at this point. Watch this video:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97sDKvMHd8c
 

USAFRet

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Constraints:

Budget
Local market
Strong desire for Intel
Timeline = Now

The new shiny Ryzen breaks two of those constraints. 'Now', and 'Intel'.
It may be/probably will be 'better'.
But sometimes people are hardheaded.

Design out 2 or 3 systems, both Intel nd AMD
List out the pros and cons of each.
Let him decide.

6 months from now, when his choice turns out to be the wrong one...then you can say "I told you so".

However...with parts chosen wisely, it would be hard to make a $1500 system that sucks.
Something else may be better, but it won't suck.
 

pr0t0typ3

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Nov 10, 2014
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Constraints:

Budget
Local market
Strong desire for Intel
Timeline = Now

The new shiny Ryzen breaks two of those constraints. 'Now', and 'Intel'.
It may be/probably will be 'better'.
But sometimes people are hardheaded.

Design out 2 or 3 systems, both Intel nd AMD
List out the pros and cons of each.
Let him decide.

6 months from now, when his choice turns out to be the wrong one...then you can say "I told you so".

However...with parts chosen wisely, it would be hard to make a $1500 system that sucks.
Something else may be better, but it won't suck.

This, agreed 100%.

And you are raising an important point, I'd have to be a complete idiot to build something from 1500 that sucks. Whatever he gets, it will be a good system. Ultimately, he is going to decide but I am doing my best to bring out the best of it.
 
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King_V

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I would tell him the same thing as I told a friend of mine years ago when he was in the market for a PC.

"Don't go for the absolute best of the best. Spend 50% of that money to get 80-90% of that performance. I'll make sure to squeeze every penny so hard for price/performance that Abe Lincoln will start screaming."(fyi: In the US, Abraham Lincoln is on the penny)

That said, because he was my friend, and because he knew that I wouldn't just casually insult him for no reason, if he were doing something like what your friend is doing, stubbornly insisting on spending more than he needed to, ESPECIALLY when money is tight, I would tell him he is an idiot, and tell him WHY he's an idiot, and explain to him the whole price/performance thing, and that "Intel/Nvidia worked for me in the past" does NOT mean that AMD doesn't work. All parts come with warranties, all the parts you're looking for for him perform well, etc.


Long and short: if he doesn't trust your judgment, why is he asking for your help?


BUT - he has to be made aware that the release of Ryzen 3000 series and the Navi video cards have a good chance of having a downward price effect on everything else.

That the 9900k is out of his budget should be a stark wake-up call already.
 
Solution

fagetti

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Mar 1, 2018
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If everyone would just think best performance for value, everybody would buy xeons. You get 75% of performance of best cpu:s around with half of the money, but so much time for searching parts and getting a good deal
 
I'm really glad to see and read this question has Not gone to a typical Amd vs Intel back and forth feud that has gone on and on for years.

Yes setting back and waiting for bugs or kinks to get worked out is good and lets the market restabilize.

You and your friend are going to have to sit down and go through the component jungle to figue out what exactly fits in that $1500.00 budget.
He may not know the tech but you evidently have some knowledge.
If this system is from ground 0 case and components to win 10 build you know that a decision has to be made onboard video or video card which could be a good portion of his budget and maybe not get him to his High End Expectations.

Make up some builds on pcpartspicker intel and amd based then use say userbench build and comparing each to give him some kind of an (Idea) what he can get for his budget.
Let him see for himself the numbers and the graphs for the builds.

I know Userbench IS NOT THE ALL MIGHTY but in this case it may help a little.
Good Luck.
Good Building