New build advice (replacing an aging 3700k build)

Poolybit

Poolybit

Poolybit

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Hey all,

Been a long time since I did a full build (2013) so massively out of date with current trends and recommendations so would really appreciate some advice and direction. I usually do a refresh after about 5 years but well past that now (was planning to do it before the GPU / COVID situation hit), build hasn't been touched bar upgrading the graphics card midway through the refresh cycle for this one!

Current build:

i7 3770k @ stock 3.5
32gb RAM
GTX 1080
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H
Corsair 750W PSU

I'm not planning on using anything from the existing build (I'll pass it on to my missus to replace her weaker one) but just showing the level of build I usually aim for (good high performance vs reasonable cost). It is still holding up fairly well for most of what I throw at it bar some modern games but want to get some more performance out of my build. Usage will be programming, general heavy PC use and 1440, 144hz gaming. 90% of my usage will be linux based, I think that drivers between AMD / nVidia are fairly even now but thought it worth mentioning that windows will definitely be the secondary OS. Will obviously want fast storage for the operating system and probably a secondary which can be a normal SSD (got some spinning metal in my current one which will need to be replaced!). Case-wise, I'm a fan of fairly plain classic black tower cases (got a corsair 300R currently) and it'll be stored under desk so fairly boring on that side but something with good airflow to keep noise down would be great! Budget is around £2k but can stretch higher if it makes sense!

Hopefully that should help with any recommendations people might help but let me know if I missed something! Thanks very much!
 
AM5 ATX build:

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Six Core 5.30GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail - £299.99
Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard - £229.99
TeamGroup Vulcan 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C36 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FLBD532G5600HC36BDC01) - £139.99

Powercolor Radeon RX 7900 XT HellHound 20GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £929.99

Phanteks Eclipse P600S Silent Midi Tower Case - Black - £139.99
Phanteks AMP 1000W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply - £149.99
Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite 240 AIO CPU Cooler - 240mm - £56.99

WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E) - £159.94
WD Black SN850X 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2X0E) - £110.00

Grand Total: £2,232.77

AM5 M-ATX build (same as above, but swapped case, PSU & board with):

Lian Li Lancool 205M Mesh Micro-ATX PC Case Black - £69.94
Phanteks AMP 750W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply - £110.00
Asrock B650M PG Riptide (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard - £179.98

Grand Total: £2,070.02

If the programming and heavy PC use is more important than gaming and eats up all the cores/threads available, then I'd suggest either switching to a 13600K * (or the newly out 13500/13600, if they perform well), or a 7700X/7900X * and downgrading the graphics card. The release of B760 boards (some of which are pretty cheap, compared to B650), together with the 13500/13600/13700 non-K CPUs might well offer more value than AM5, at the cost of longevity.

* Linux benches for 7900X here and 13600K here (13600K was later so includes 7900X).
 
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Thank you very much, I will have a good absorb of what is suggested and come back if I have any questions (if that's OK!). I might be able to push to the 7900X and keep the graphics card if it will me a bit of longevity as I'll be looking at keeping it going for another 5 years or so!
 
Poolybit said:
Thank you very much, I will have a good absorb of what is suggested and come back if I have any questions (if that's OK!).
Click to expand...

Of course.

Poolybit said:
I might be able to push to the 7900X and keep the graphics card if it will me a bit of longevity as I'll be looking at keeping it going for another 5 years or so!
Click to expand...

If you spend a lot of time waiting around, then I think it would be a good investment, the 7900X is a great CPU for workstation use, but if you're mainly using single core/thread software, or rarely do tasks that last minutes & hours, then it's perhaps a waste to spend so much and you'd be better off getting a 7600X & then waiting a generation or two and buying a 9600X.
 
Had some family stuff come up so this dropped off of the radar for a bit! Hoping to get this finalised and ordered sometime soon so would appreciate any further advice (if anything has moved on the spec recommended above etc.) I'm happy going with an AM5 build given that it might give me a bit of a future proofing at the cost of having a more pricey board. Having gone through the recommendations above, some additional bits:
  • From a form factor point of view, I'm happy with standard ATX rather than needing anything smaller. Always had full size cases in the past and it sits on the floor out of the way anyway!
  • On the case front, happy with plain stylings and the P600S looks good. Only concern would be dust performance as this is something that I struggle with. Looks like mixed reviews on that front for the P600S.
  • For the motherboard, I am hardwired throughout the property so don't need wifi built in if that has any impact on suggestions, no real other main requirements other than a good set of USB ports.
  • Happy with AIO, always used generic air coolers in the past but think I can cope with the change so long as rads fit in the case
Most of my use (aside from gaming) won't be hitting multiple cores hard to be fair but I do want to make sure that I get some longevity from it (similar to what I've had from the i7 3770k which has been pretty good). Most of the programming I do tends to have fairly short compile times so it would only really be the times where I transcode or 3d design but that is fairly rare.

Thanks again, really appreciate the adivce given how out of touch I am! My last AMD based build that I did would probably have been an athlon xp 3200+ one!
 
New things since my original spec:
- 4070 Ti
- i5-13500 & B760
- AM5 non-X CPUs

AM5 option:

AMD Ryzen 7 7700 Eight Core 5.30GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail - £338.99
Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard - £219.95
TeamGroup Vulcan 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C36 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FLBD532G5600HC36BDC01) - £139.99

Zotac GeForce RTX 4070Ti Trinity 12GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card - £818.99

Phanteks Eclipse P600S Silent Midi Tower Case - Black - £139.99
Thermaltake Toughpower GEN5 GF3 1000W Fully Modular ATX 3.0 80 Plus Gold Power Supply - £199.99

WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E) - £149.99
WD Black SN850X 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive with Heatsink (WDS100T2XHE) - £109.99

Grand Total: £2,132.58 (includes delivery charge of £14.70)

With this cooler, which is available for £40 offsite.

Intel option:

same graphics, case, PSU & SSDs

* Intel Core i5-12600K 3.70GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - OEM - £259.99 (* swap for i5-13500)
Gigabyte B760 GAMING X AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard - £200.00
Kingston FURY Beast 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C40 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - £169.99

Arctic Liquid Freezer II High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 360mm - £119.99

Grand Total: £2,183.62 (includes delivery charge of £14.70)

I think those CPUs (Ryzen 7 7700 and i5-13500) give a good balance of gaming, single-thread and multi-threaded performance. Review for i5-13500 (here) and 7700 non-X (here or here).

A decent air cooler would be fine for the i5-13500, but the case will fit that AIO if you want it.
 
Thanks very much for the follow up reply. Is the recommended swap over to the 4070Ti mainly over the DLSS3 and reduction in cost? Most of the reviews I've checked out have them running quite close or running _slightly_ behind, otherwise pretty close. The review for the 7700 linked was interesting reading (or listening), wasn't overly positive at its positioning in the market, the i5-13500 seems like a great CPU for the money though. As it has been another month or so since the original, I can push budget up to 2.5k if that makes much difference (given that one of the reviews says about the 7700 being only slightly cheaper than better AMD offerings). I am really not fussed either way from a 'brand' point of view (intel vs amd or nvidia vs..amd). Was the cooler switch on the AM5 build because I said about not using AIO before? I am more than happy to get an AIO if they offer better noise vs. cooling! Thanks again.
 
Poolybit said:
Is the recommended swap over to the 4070Ti mainly over the DLSS3 and reduction in cost?
Click to expand...

Yes. From my understanding, the 4070 Ti is a strong (enough) 1440p card * and it is generally better to have nvidia in semi-workstation builds anyway, because of superior driver support.

The reduction in cost enabled an upgrade to an 8 core CPU and I see the 7700 or 7700X as a good all-rounder (strong single-thread, multi-thread & gaming, just like the i5-13500). The 7600 or 7600X, on the other hand, have weak multi-thread performance (especially compared to the i5-13500 or i5-13600K) and given your usage, I didn't think this was ideal. GN seemed to like the 7900 non-X a lot and I agree is a great CPU for a workstation, but I think it would be overkill for your needs and is £100 more expensive. If you think you'll actually use the cores, then it could be £100 well spent, it just sounded like you won't be needing them very often.

If you have the budget for it, then with the Intel build I'd consider going for a 13700 non-K, mainly to move away from only having 6 P-cores (for the longer-term), haven't seen any reviews on it yet though.

The cooler: yeah, just to make a suggestion if you prefer not to have one, but that cooler reviews very well and I'm confident it can handle a 7600 or 7700 non-X.

* "RTX 4070 Ti is an amazing choice for gaming at 1440p, at maxed out details. With RT disabled you'll be able to drive high-refresh-rate monitors easily with 120 FPS and more. If you turn on ray tracing you're still getting 60+ frames per second, even without DLSS. Turn on DLSS, and optionally DLSS 3 frame generation, and you'll hit your 120+ FPS targets with ease. At 4K the card works well enough to give you a solid gaming experience, but you'll have to dial down the details in some of the most demanding games to hit 60 FPS. While Radeon RX 7900 XT and RTX 3090 Ti are roughly the same perf as 4070 Ti at 1440p, they do scale considerably better at 4K, so they will get you those extra 10 FPS that make it easier to hit 4K60 everywhere."
Click to expand...
www.techpowerup.com

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming OC Review

The Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti comes with a dual BIOS feature, which lets you switch to a "silent" mode BIOS that runs the cards at low fan speed, resulting in a quiet experience. The card could also be interesting for overclockers, because it offers one of the highest manual power limit...
www.techpowerup.com www.techpowerup.com
 
Poolybit said:
i7 3770k @ stock 3.5
32gb RAM
Click to expand...

Poolybit said:
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H
Click to expand...

I had pretty much that build, though with a 3770S. It failed a couple of years ago. I would be wary about passing it on to your wife as it's of an age when capacitors and other components fail.

With regards to running Windows, I suggest you look into running Windows as a VM inside Linux or a hypervisor as Nvidia's Geforce GPUs at least now support virtualisation.
 
Tetras said:
Yes. From my understanding, the 4070 Ti is a strong (enough) 1440p card * and it is generally better to have nvidia in semi-workstation builds anyway, because of superior driver support.

The reduction in cost enabled an upgrade to an 8 core CPU and I see the 7700 or 7700X as a good all-rounder (strong single-thread, multi-thread & gaming, just like the i5-13500). The 7600 or 7600X, on the other hand, have weak multi-thread performance (especially compared to the i5-13500 or i5-13600K) and given your usage, I didn't think this was ideal. GN seemed to like the 7900 non-X a lot and I agree is a great CPU for a workstation, but I think it would be overkill for your needs and is £100 more expensive. If you think you'll actually use the cores, then it could be £100 well spent, it just sounded like you won't be needing them very often.

If you have the budget for it, then with the Intel build I'd consider going for a 13700 non-K, mainly to move away from only having 6 P-cores (for the longer-term), haven't seen any reviews on it yet though.

The cooler: yeah, just to make a suggestion if you prefer not to have one, but that cooler reviews very well and I'm confident it can handle a 7600 or 7700 non-X.


www.techpowerup.com

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming OC Review

The Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti comes with a dual BIOS feature, which lets you switch to a "silent" mode BIOS that runs the cards at low fan speed, resulting in a quiet experience. The card could also be interesting for overclockers, because it offers one of the highest manual power limit...
www.techpowerup.com www.techpowerup.com
Click to expand...
Ok, thank you very much. I will have a research through on the comparison between the two options. Really appreciate all the advice.

Quartz said:
I had pretty much that build, though with a 3770S. It failed a couple of years ago. I would be wary about passing it on to your wife as it's of an age when capacitors and other components fail.

With regards to running Windows, I suggest you look into running Windows as a VM inside Linux or a hypervisor as Nvidia's Geforce GPUs at least now support virtualisation.
Click to expand...
Yeah, always a bit of a risk but it will be replacing an even older build (bar the 1660 super in there) so might just roll with it! I'll make sure backup solutions are in place in case anything funky happens if something fails! Is virtualisation working that well for GPUs now? I've always had a windows partition for the occasional heavier need (something that wine etc. can't cope with) and the occasional windows native game that doesn't play nice with proton!
 
I've been doing some research into everything suggested and I think I have come down on the AM5 route rather than sticking with intel, mainly for the longevity side of thing rather than committing to an older chipset. Focusing down on the last few bits before pulling the trigger on things...just the CPU, motherboard and GPU - nothing important..!

- So on the CPU front, the main selling point of the 7700 seems to be reduced power consumption (vs. the X) at a slight hit to performance. The cost is basically the same so if I was going for performance, I guess 7700X would be the choice unless I have missed something there? I must admit the almost half power consumption is a fair selling point though. On the 7900/X, these are almost too close in price to the 7700/X to completely rule it out of picture. Whilst I might not have immediate need for the extra multi-core performance, if I am planning on having this around for a while, maybe it might be worth pushing that out?
- On the motherboard front, I think that I have ruled out any need for a x670 so I am happy with a B650 board. I have seen the Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus recommended quite a lot on this forum for the AM5 chipset but not much talk about other boards that seem to come up elsewhere (like the MSI Tomahawk / Gigabyte Elite AX / ASRock Lightning). Admitidly they all seem to be fairly similar in offering and price (bar the Gigabyte which is the highest priced of them all). I have seen comments which essentially say "pick whichever one is cheapest, it will be fine", is that the main driver behind the recommendation for the Asus TUF board?
- Finally, on the GPU front, I think the general feeling from the reviews I have read is that the 4070Ti isn't cheap enough to recommend it over the 7900XT, is this kinda agreed on this forum too? Is it silly for me to be considering the 7900XTX over the 7900XT too? Whilst I am not pushing to 4K at the minute, is it a fair future choice to make? Then there have been comments about concerns with the 7900XTX which haven't affected the 7900XT as much (if at all) which is another consideration point.

Apologies for the additional questions, I do really appreciate all of the advice so far but want to make sure that I don't end up with too much buyer's remorse! My 2.5k budget does mean that I could go for the higher options in most/all cases and fall in just about on budget.
 
Poolybit said:
- So on the CPU front, the main selling point of the 7700 seems to be reduced power consumption (vs. the X) at a slight hit to performance. The cost is basically the same so if I was going for performance, I guess 7700X would be the choice unless I have missed something there? I must admit the almost half power consumption is a fair selling point though. On the 7900/X, these are almost too close in price to the 7700/X to completely rule it out of picture. Whilst I might not have immediate need for the extra multi-core performance, if I am planning on having this around for a while, maybe it might be worth pushing that out?
Click to expand...

If you're going AM5 for the longevity then I suspect there will be a newer, faster CPU available before you make decent use of the 7900, but it is a very nice CPU for productivity-builds, maybe the best AM5 CPU right now overall, though the 7700/X is still great for gaming and mixed workloads.

Poolybit said:
- On the motherboard front, I think that I have ruled out any need for a x670 so I am happy with a B650 board. I have seen the Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus recommended quite a lot on this forum for the AM5 chipset but not much talk about other boards that seem to come up elsewhere (like the MSI Tomahawk / Gigabyte Elite AX / ASRock Lightning). Admitidly they all seem to be fairly similar in offering and price (bar the Gigabyte which is the highest priced of them all). I have seen comments which essentially say "pick whichever one is cheapest, it will be fine", is that the main driver behind the recommendation for the Asus TUF board?
Click to expand...

I can't speak for anyone else, but I choose it because I like the price and the board's PCI-E/M.2 config and in the absence of thermal testing, I'm confident the VRM will hold up. I'd have no concern with any of those other boards either. I haven't seen anything yet that contradicts the consensus (on their release) that AM5 boards are over-engineered for the CPUs that are available right now.

Poolybit said:
- Finally, on the GPU front, I think the general feeling from the reviews I have read is that the 4070Ti isn't cheap enough to recommend it over the 7900XT, is this kinda agreed on this forum too? Is it silly for me to be considering the 7900XTX over the 7900XT too? Whilst I am not pushing to 4K at the minute, is it a fair future choice to make? Then there have been comments about concerns with the 7900XTX which haven't affected the 7900XT as much (if at all) which is another consideration point.
Click to expand...

The concerns about the 7900 XTX (at least, that I have read) are based on the reference (MBA) models, I don't think there's anything wrong with the 'true' AIB cards with custom coolers.
 
Poolybit said:
I've been doing some research into everything suggested and I think I have come down on the AM5 route rather than sticking with intel, mainly for the longevity side of thing rather than committing to an older chipset. Focusing down on the last few bits before pulling the trigger on things...just the CPU, motherboard and GPU - nothing important..!

- So on the CPU front, the main selling point of the 7700 seems to be reduced power consumption (vs. the X) at a slight hit to performance. The cost is basically the same so if I was going for performance, I guess 7700X would be the choice unless I have missed something there? I must admit the almost half power consumption is a fair selling point though. On the 7900/X, these are almost too close in price to the 7700/X to completely rule it out of picture. Whilst I might not have immediate need for the extra multi-core performance, if I am planning on having this around for a while, maybe it might be worth pushing that out?
- On the motherboard front, I think that I have ruled out any need for a x670 so I am happy with a B650 board. I have seen the Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus recommended quite a lot on this forum for the AM5 chipset but not much talk about other boards that seem to come up elsewhere (like the MSI Tomahawk / Gigabyte Elite AX / ASRock Lightning). Admitidly they all seem to be fairly similar in offering and price (bar the Gigabyte which is the highest priced of them all). I have seen comments which essentially say "pick whichever one is cheapest, it will be fine", is that the main driver behind the recommendation for the Asus TUF board?
- Finally, on the GPU front, I think the general feeling from the reviews I have read is that the 4070Ti isn't cheap enough to recommend it over the 7900XT, is this kinda agreed on this forum too? Is it silly for me to be considering the 7900XTX over the 7900XT too? Whilst I am not pushing to 4K at the minute, is it a fair future choice to make? Then there have been comments about concerns with the 7900XTX which haven't affected the 7900XT as much (if at all) which is another consideration point.

Apologies for the additional questions, I do really appreciate all of the advice so far but want to make sure that I don't end up with too much buyer's remorse! My 2.5k budget does mean that I could go for the higher options in most/all cases and fall in just about on budget.
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There are a lot of questions in here so I will try to go through them in order. As always Tetras has given excellent advice , he is a force of nature and hopefully karma delivers roses and vodka to him to balance the scales.

I agree AM5 is a good choice to go for in your situation. Do not get too mixed up over the 7600 non X vs X or 7700 non X vs X, you can just go into the bios and turn one into the other and vice versa. Each non X and X cpus are identical silicon that has different core logic (think of it like a dual bios situation) and you can alter bios settings to change the core logic. Buy the cheapest is my advice and alter bios settings to make it do what you want it to. The X3D chips are released very soon so you may want to wait for reviews of those before you press buy.

Motherboards - As it currently stands some mobos have less than optimal settings in regard to memory but they will be fixed in future bios updates. If you go for the Asus TUF make sure you update the bios in the future or set the really complex memory timings manually.

GPU - Nothing is agreed and everything is argued to death and the battle will never end. 7900xt is faster in raster performance but slower in RT , take your pick. 4070ti is more power efficient. The concerns over the 7900xtx is only with the reference MBA (made by AMD) models and all the aib cards are unaffected. If you did get a dodgy 7900xtx mba you would be covered by the warranty because if you know what you are looking for it is an obvious error to spot so just rma the card.

With you hiding the tower away the Thermaltake peerless assasin 120 is the cheapest best choice.
 
Once again, life got in the way of me pulling the trigger on this and I got fully diverted but I have some time off coming up and would like to get this ordered in time for the long weekend (hopefully anyway!). Thanks again for all the comments from everyone involved, as it has happened, I have unintentionally sat on things until some of the X3D chips are out and I have seen that Tetras has recommended the 7900 X3D a few times recently, especially for the power usage which looks nice (especially given the price of ... everything nowadays!). Thanks Haz123 for the comments on the parts too, and as always, there is a lot of comments out there about graphics card which is really difficult to try and read between the lines of the fanboyism vs. cold, hard facts! Given the build I am coming from, I am not going to be having an buyer's remorse from a performance point of view and, for sake of mental health, I'll probably promptly drop out of the monitoring of current parts being released so shouldn't have any concerns there too.

My original budget of £2k is now easily £2.5k with wriggle room on top if something pushes towards it. I have had a read through a lot of the recent recommended spec threads and there has been a move away in opinion from Tetras on the 850, to the 770 (but I have seen some special offers on the 850s which might make it a bit more desireable for the cost but I guess that is a fairly minor thing. Motherboards don't seem to have changed much in the past couple of months either but happy to take advice on that. There still seems to be a lot of back and forth on the 650 vs X670 but for my purposes, I really think I'll be fine with a 650 (and as per all of the previous comments, will be OK if I do decide to do a mid-life span upgrade on the CPU (but it will likely be another 10 year upgrade cycle again!) and tech is perfectly fine for things that are out there now. I would like the 3 m2 slots for dual booting (2x for OS and storage for linux and then another for windows but that might come later depending on budget flex) which, again, doesn't seem to be a problem.

I am still perfectly happy with the case (P600S seems well reviewed across the board and a black, RGB-less box with decent thermal and acoustic performance is perfect for living under the desk!) and the PSU will be perfect too I'm sure. On the ram side, th 32gb of decent performing kit seems easily enough to nail down too. Which leaves the spicy components of CPU and GPU; I don't think I have neither the need nor desire to drop nearing £2k on a graphics card which rules out the 4090 (and given I am planning on using a 3440x1440 monitor for the foreseeable, probably not needed at all) but does leave 4080 and 7900XTX in scope (or the 7900XT and save some cash). I doubt I will have any issues with either green or red but any comments on the impact of RT support in real world usage would be appreciated. The recent comments about VRAM usage on GPUs might push towards AMD maybe?

I really wasn't my intention to essentially treble the kind advice that has been given by leaving a month or so inbetween the comments but life threw some curve balls in a couple of times. I have time coming up and the money put aside now though so will be purchased soon if a finalised spec can be agreed upon. Any advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated on getting that nailed down and many thanks again to all of the advice so far (especially Tetras who has been machine like in all the advice on the forum!). I'll then post a final spec before pulling the trigger...just to make sure I haven't misread anything!
 
You can get the type of build you are looking at for your £2.5k but my recommendations put you slightly above.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £2,551.91 (includes delivery: £11.99)​



​

I put the 7900x in as a placeholder for a 7800x3d, that will be the cpu to get.

Mobo - I ummed and ahhed over mobo quite a bit then I reread you wanting this to last 10 years, I personally have had 5 Asus mobos and all 5 failed in under a year so I cannot in good conscience recommend them and if I was buying a mobo to last that long it would be the Msi Carbon , out of stock on OCUK so you may need to shop around. You can save considerable money on the mobo but it is the core component and the one most likely to fail in the 10 year period, if you are ok replacing it if it does fail then go cheap but if you want it to last buy quality. If you did want to go cheaper and get in budget then the Gigabyte X670 Gaming X AX would be the one I would go for.

RAM, EXPO 6000mhz cl30 for £200 what is not to like. Can save £50 but thats for cl40 ram and there is significant performance increase with the non x3d Ryzen 7000 chips when using better timings. The newer X3D chips are not as memory sensitive and the early reviewers have had serious issues getting ram to run well on some of their review sample X3D cpus.

7900xt would be my choice and the cheapest one available will be just fine. Hidden away and will not be too noisy. I have a 7900xtx mba and the cooler was built like an absolute tank, the xt version is not a vapour chamber so nothing to really go wrong with it.

Case , your choice.

PSU , ATX 3 and is very good. Main complaints about this model was it was slightly noiser than its competitors but in the case you have uinder the desk I doubt you will ever hear it.

SSDs - the 770s are crazy cheap at the moment but I would personally use an 850 as OS drives then 770s for storage. YOu have 4 M.2 slots on the mobo so no shortage and may as well just use M.2s.

Cooler - Thermaltake Peerless Assasin , link in post above and is excellent performer for the price.
 
Haz123 said:
[snip]
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Thanks very much for the very detailed reply! Phew, knew that the AM5 boards were expensive but that is pricey! Completely get your point regarding reliability and that is something that I am behind, would I be overspending on that if I am never likely to use advance featurse of the board (thinking overclocking as well as more mundane stuff like wifi which can push price up)? You'd recommend waiting the week or so to get hold of the 7800x3d over the 7900x3d or is that a price thing only? And final question (sorry!), you'd recommend the 7900xt over something like the 4070ti?
 
I would wait for the 7800X3D , it will have all 8 cores on the single ccd and not split over 2 like the 7900x3d. It is a simpler design and less to go wrong with thread scheduling.

For a long term purchase I think the 7900xt will be a far better bet than the 4070ti. Is cheaper and some games are already hitting the 12gb framebuffer. RT performance is better on the Nv card but in software RT like Lumin (unreal 5 engine uses it) then both cards perform equally. I would not purchase a gpu with future RT titles in mind , future games will crush the currently available gpus and at some point the switch to full pathtracing will be made and no current cards are upto that. AMD support their products long term whereas Nv drop them like a stone and often prioritise new features on the new cards. Also arent the linux drivers for AMD better anyway?

Motherboard, all AM5 mobos can overclock but some have weak vrms and poor heatsinks. What you are mainly paying for with the AM5 mobos is extra features and it is honestly confusing , most complicated mobo generation for a long time. If you do keep the mobo for a full 10 years then you will most likely use pcie 5 components at some point so useful to have. You do have a point though , dropping down to B650 does save almost £200.

www.overclockers.co.uk

MSI MPG B650 Edge WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard

Order MSI MPG B650 Edge WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard now online and benefit from fast delivery.
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MSI MPG B650 Carbon WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard

Order MSI MPG B650 Carbon WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard now online and benefit from fast delivery.
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Haz123 said:
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Thanks again for the follow up.

Understood about the 7800X3D, guess the concerns there are the review embargo and potential stock issues on release!

Appreciate the thoughts on the 7900XT, AMD drivers are usually a bit better on linux but haven't had any issues recently with the nvidia ones to be fair but yeah, longevity is probably enough to follow down the 7900XT route.

Good to hear that you think the AM5 mobo offering is confusing / complicated too! PCIE 5 seems to be the only big seller difference between them from what I've read and given my 'slow to upgrade' life cycle, I'm not sure what mid-lifetime upgrade would warrant the extra £200 for that possibilty. Given that I am currently happily enough working away on a 12 / 13 year old machine, I suspect I will be able to eek out 10 years of a fair specced machine without any / many upgrades! No concerns with the MSI w/ 4x m2 on the b650? Most of the reviews are good for it other than it touches on pricing for the x670e boards which is true but I get that you've had a bad experience with the Asus boards which is what seem to be well reviewed for the cheaper side.
 
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