Best economical upgrade for Ryzen 7 3800X and 1080Ti (Watercooled)

JButlerUK

JButlerUK

JButlerUK

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Hi all.

Build this system myself and quite proud of it. Pic below.

I have a Ryzen 7 3800X CPU and a 1080Ti graphics card both in a loop on a AsRock X570 Aqua (Watercooled) Motherboard.

It's been running solid for years now and never seen the need to upgrade, until Starfield. 15-19 frames in a firefight is just not playable.

Question:

1 - What CPU will go in that MoBo and give me a sizable upgrade? Is that chipset sustainable long-term or is it more economical to get a new MoBo and chipset?

2 - What GPU would you pair with this CPU, and it has to be watercooled or have a block I can add.
 
JButlerUK said:
2560 x 1440
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From what you have now, I'd be looking at a 7800 XT and up.

JButlerUK said:
1 - What CPU will go in that MoBo and give me a sizable upgrade?
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5800X3D is the best AM4 gaming CPU.

JButlerUK said:
Is that chipset sustainable long-term or is it more economical to get a new MoBo and chipset?
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What do you mean by sustainable? Is it a dead socket? Yes, we believe so. Does it matter? Not really, the 5800X3D is still very competitive.
 
Thanks, helped made my decision.

How long (year) can you be reasonably confident that the 5800X3D will remain competitive? Best guess etc.

What about a GPU?
 
If I went for a 5800X, the bottleneck calculator on https://pc-builds.com says that the 5800X might be too slow for a 4080 GPU and a 5950X would be a better fit.

Been out of the loop with PC components for years now, is there any stock in this argument?
 
JButlerUK said:
Thanks, helped made my decision.

How long (year) can you be reasonably confident that the 5800X3D will remain competitive? Best guess etc.

What about a GPU?
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At 4K, the gap between the 5800X3D and 7800X3D with a 4090 is pretty small (single digit %), but it is somewhat more substantial at 1440p. Based on that, I would say that the next gen of high-end cards (5080/5090) may require a faster CPU to get the best out of them (I mean, even at 4K). The 6080/6090 would almost certainly be beyond them, but we're talking many years here, so that's hardly a surprise.

If you're planning to buy a 4080, just get the 5800X3D.

JButlerUK said:
If I went for a 5800X, the bottleneck calculator on https://pc-builds.com says that the 5800X might be too slow for a 4080 GPU and a 5950X would be a better fit.

Been out of the loop with PC components for years now, is there any stock in this argument?
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5800X is not the same CPU, don't buy one. The gaming CPU of choice is always the X3D (maybe unless you're playing some giant simulator that needs 16 cores :p ).
 
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Thank you so much!

Assuming I go for 5800X3D, should I pay the extra and get the 4090 or would the 4080 be plenty of upgrade from my 1080ti?
 
JButlerUK said:
Thank you so much!

Assuming I go for 5800X3D, should I pay the extra and get the 4090 or would the 4080 be plenty of upgrade from my 1080ti?
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The faster the graphics the more the potential you have for the 5800X3D to become the bottleneck. I wouldn’t bother pairing an RTX4090 with a 5800X3D as the CPU will be limiting factor and something like a 7800X3D plus a 7900/4080 is potentially a much faster configuration.
 
if you don't have 32gb then upgrade to 2x 16gb sticks
honestly unless needing specific nvidia features, the 7900xtx would provide better value than the 4080 (and also faster in starfield)
 
You have a good motherboard, decent RAM and not terrible CPU. So you can start by upgrading just the GPU to something like Radeon RX 7800 XT, when it becomes available in a few days and checking if the gameplay is good enough. If not get a new CPU, like Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

Alternatively, if you have a budget of around 1K you can go AM5. Something like a B650 motherboard (130 - 150 quid) + Ryzen 7 7700 (under 300 quid) + Radeon RX 7800 XT (460 - 500 quid) + 32GB DDR5 6000MT/s CL36 (under 100 quid) should do the job nicely.
 
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SkyTerran said:
Alternatively, if you have a budget of around 1K you can go AM5. Something like a B650 motherboard (130 - 150 quid) + Ryzen 7 7700 (under 300 quid) + Radeon RX 7800 XT (460 - 500 quid) + 32GB DDR5 6000MT/s CL36 (under 100 quid) should do the job nicely.
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Because I have a water cooled system at the minute and it’s almost silent, I’m not considering anything else.

If I got a new motherboard I would want a water cooled one again. Hence I will stick to this chipset for now, but getting a bigger GPU, I will have to re-plumb the tubes anyway so I might as well replace the CPU too.

For the sake of a small investment, would you upgrade the RAM also?
 
JButlerUK said:
would the 4080 be plenty of upgrade from my 1080ti?
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A 4080 is a big enough upgrade, especially for 1440p. On the other hand, if you have the cash and nothing to spend it on, the 4090 is the most powerful gaming card you can buy and a decent step up from the 4080.
 
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