I think it's finally time...

[ajtupman]

Ok, I think it's finally time to upgrade my i7 4970k. Now, I've always been a bit of an Intel fanboy but for obvious reasons I've been looking at AMD lately with rather jealous eyes. So what would be my best choice for AMD CPU, Motherboard and 32gb ram for a purely gaming PC and a budget of £1000-£1300?

I don't need a GPU, I'm sticking with my 1080ti for the time being and I've got a EVGA G2 750w Gold PSU.

Thanks

AJ

 

[VonScar]

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Corsair Hydro Series iCUE H150i PRO XT RGB Performance Liquid Cooler - 360mm (CW-9060045-WW)= £159.95
• 1 x Corsair 5000D Airflow Tempered Glass Mid-Tower - Black CC-9011210-WW= £139.99
• 1 x MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WiFi (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 ATX Motherboard= £209.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Eight Core 4.7GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £419.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO Black 32GB (2x16GB) 3600MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Dual Kit= £209.99

Total: £1,153.11 (includes shipping: £13.20)​

​

 

[ajtupman]

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk WiFi (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 ATX Motherboard= £209.99
• Total: £1,153.11 (includes shipping: £13.20)

​

Thanks for the reply and recommendations. Is there an Asus board than can replace the MSI one? I've had some really bad experiences with MSI boards in the past and swore I'd never use them again. Conversely, I've never had a problem with anything I've bought from Asus.

 

[VonScar]

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 Chipset ATX Motherboard= £249.95

Total: £260.45 (includes shipping: £10.50)​

​

 

[mickyflinn]

B550 is good for most unless upu want to run 2x m2 at pcie4

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming (Wi-Fi) (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard= £189.95

Total: £200.45 (includes shipping: £10.50)​

​

 

[dfour]

More subtle version with only rgb on the motherboard

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Lian-Li Lancool II Mesh performance Midi-Tower Case - Black= £96.95
• 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer II High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 360mm= £99.95
• 1 x Patriot Viper Steel 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C18 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS432G360C8K)= £149.99
• 1 x Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 Chipset ATX Motherboard= £249.95
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Eight Core 4.7GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £419.99

Total: £1,031.53 (includes shipping: £14.70)​

​

 

[ajtupman]

Thanks guys, those rec's are just what I needed. Is there anything I need to know about building AMD systems that differ from Intel ones?

 

[mickyflinn]

One thing is that the motherboard may need bios update for the cpu to work this can be done with thd bios flashback feature on the motherboard . Both the Asus b550 and x570 above has this feature

No need for another cpu to update thd bios.

 

[VonScar]

Thanks guys, those rec's are just what I needed. Is there anything I need to know about building AMD systems that differ from Intel ones?

The pins are on CPU, be careful fitting it. They can bend if forced.

 

[Quartz]

Ok, I think it's finally time to upgrade my i7 4970k.

Wait for the reviews of the Intel 11400 on B-series motherboards. The 11600 is apparently a cracker - much cheaper than the Ryzen 5600 - but the 11700 and 11900 are duds. Go AMD if you need 8+ cores.

 

[ajtupman]

Wait for the reviews of the Intel 11400 on B-series motherboards. The 11600 is apparently a cracker - much cheaper than the Ryzen 5600 - but the 11700 and 11900 are duds. Go AMD if you need 8+ cores.

Thanks, I'll take that on board.

 

[ajtupman]

One thing is that the motherboard may need bios update for the cpu to work this can be done with thd bios flashback feature on the motherboard . Both the Asus b550 and x570 above has this feature

No need for another cpu to update thd bios.

The pins are on CPU, be careful fitting it. They can bend if forced.

Thanks guys.

 

[EsaT]

Thanks for the reply and recommendations. Is there an Asus board than can replace the MSI one? I've had some really bad experiences with MSI boards in the past and swore I'd never use them again. Conversely, I've never had a problem with anything I've bought from Asus.

X570 Tomahawk beats the snot out of most Asus X570 boards.
While Asus corrected VRMs from B450 scams, their X570 chipset coolers are straight from rear hole of brand hype marketroids:

Actual heatsinks under marketing excrements are from small to tiny.
And hence rely on constant airflow from fan (constricted by more marketing BS in most boards) to really do its job.
With whole crud in the worst position directly under graphics card to be bathed in its heat.​

That's no good design, but more like failure timer.

While MSI's X570 chipset cooler with proper size heatsink farther from heat of GPU is unlikely to ever have fan running, if you just have good case cooling.
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite's chipset cooler is similarly also lot better design than in Asus boards.

Alternatively also cheaper B550 boards would be without active chipset cooler making Asus unable to screw up in that.


AMD's TDPs are quite honest and for cooler already Alpenfohn Brocken 3 would be very good for the price.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpenfohn-brocken-3-cpu-cooler-140mm-hs-05a-al.html

That would leave budget for good size SSD, unless you already have one.
With the size of modern games 1TB is pretty much minimum.

 

[ajtupman]

X570 Tomahawk beats the snot out of most Asus X570 boards.

AMD's TDPs are quite honest and for cooler already Alpenfohn Brocken 3 would be very good for the price.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpenfohn-brocken-3-cpu-cooler-140mm-hs-05a-al.html

That would leave budget for good size SSD, unless you already have one.
With the size of modern games 1TB is pretty much minimum.

I appreciate the advice, really I do but as I said in the above comment, too many bad experiences with MSI boards and crappy customer services leaves a real bad taste. I might take a look at the Gigabyte board & the cooler though so thanks for the recommendation. I've already got a bunch of various SSD's and storage drives but I might up the size of my NVME boot drive to 1TB.

Thanks again

 

[V F]

Funny the mass drop in prices when there is no RGB on it.

 

[dfour]

Funny the mass drop in prices when there is no RGB on it.

Yup £120 for RGB alone!!

 

[EsaT]

but I might up the size of my NVME boot drive to 1TB.

1TB NVMes start from £87
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-b...-solid-state-drive-wds100t2b0c-hd-56l-wd.html
£110 is next level.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/teamgroup-mp34-1tb-nvme-pcie-m.2-solid-state-drive-hd-00b-tg.html

With SSD prices there's little sense in dragging every old small drive along and filling case with them.
Heck, 2TB is down to £180
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-b...-solid-state-drive-wds200t2b0c-hd-57n-wd.html

 

[ajtupman]

1TB NVMes start from £87
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-b...-solid-state-drive-wds100t2b0c-hd-56l-wd.html
£110 is next level.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/teamgroup-mp34-1tb-nvme-pcie-m.2-solid-state-drive-hd-00b-tg.html

With SSD prices there's little sense in dragging every old small drive along and filling case with them.
Heck, 2TB is down to £180
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-b...-solid-state-drive-wds200t2b0c-hd-57n-wd.html

I've got 2 4TB HDD's full of music and I want to put them in a NAS with another couple of 4TB drives. But you're right about the SSD's. If I can afford it I might get that 2TB, I had no idea NVME's had come down so much. How do those WD Blue's compare to the Samsung and Intel NVME's?

 

[EsaT]

I've got 2 4TB HDD's full of music and I want to put them in a NAS with another couple of 4TB drives. But you're right about the SSD's. If I can afford it I might get that 2TB, I had no idea NVME's had come down so much. How do those WD Blue's compare to the Samsung and Intel NVME's?

Intel 660p is brand overpriced QLC Flash drive at the price of TLC.
QLC is race to the bottom crap tech with worser than HDD sequential write speed after cache filling.
Yes, SSD can be slower than HDD!
Hence instead of being clearly more expensive than SN550, Intels should be cheaper.

Also Samsung's SSDs have basically been brand overpriced for years. Basically this way:
QLC SATA drive at price of TLC SATA, TLC SATA drive at price of TLC NVMes, TLC PCIe v3 at price of PCIe v4 drive...
Though Samsung's latest NVMe, PCIe v4 980 Pro is finally competitively priced even without specially high discounts.

But price jumps in general quite a lot when going to PCIe v4.
Phison E16 based ~5GB/s drives are that starting price:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/patriot-viper-vpn4100-gen4-2tb-ssd-vp4100-2tbm28h-hd-017-pa.html
And newer full PCIe v4 speed controller drives are basically £100 more.


As for actual performance in real use, most games are limited by processing speed in loading times and usually there's little difference even between SATA and NVMe.
TechPowerUp has loading times of half dozen games in their drive reviews.

Though in not processing limited games NVMes can pull quite a lead to SATA SSDs.
But after that differences between NVMes get smaller in real world time:
https://www.realhardwarereviews.com/silicon-power-us70-1tb-review/11/
Firecuda 520 and that US70 are Phison E16 based.
Crucial P1 and UD70 are QLC drives, with the latter using same Phison E12 controller as in TLC Flash using Barracuda 510 and P34A80.

 

[ajtupman]

Thank you very much with that reply, you've probably saved me a couple of hundred quid on NVME prices.