Potential upgrades advice please

Jasseh · 20 Mar 2024 at 23:46

Hi all, it has been a few years since I upgraded my PC last (December 2020 for GPU, February 2021 for CPU) and I'm getting a backdated pay rise + bonus from work next week. Not sure on the exact amount yet, but will find out on Monday.

I've been getting the urge to upgrade recently and I'm thinking about the following parts:

Current order of preference would be:

Upgrading to AM5 platform
Upgrade GPU
Replace PSU

I've picked parts based on a black and white theme as well as a performance upgrade.

Any advice on alternative parts, ideally sticking to a white theme? Any stupid decisions in the below?
Should I just dump the cash in savings and wait for the new Ryzen release later this year?

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Asus ROG Strix X670E-A Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6J7-AS) = £329.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Sixteen Core 5.70GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DR-AM) = £539.99
1 x G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-GSK-01359) = £248.98
1 x Asus GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER ROG Strix OC White 16GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics (SKU: GRA-ASU-01748) = £1,349.99
1 x Seasonic VERTEX GX-1000 1000W 80+ Gold Modular Power Supply (SKU: CA-088-SS) = £199.99
1 x Kolink PCI-E Gen 4.0 Riser Cable 90 Degrees - 220mm Black (SKU: CA-06U-KK) = £0.00

Total: £2,668.94 (includes delivery: £0.00)

Note: I plan to reuse my existing case, AIO, fans, drives, screens (for now at least) and peripherals.

Current build:
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
MSI MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI
Zotac 3080 AMP HOLO
Lian Li GALAHAD AIO 360 (warranty replaced in August 2023)
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18
Lian Li O11D XL-X
Super Flower Leadex Gold 850W (been using since 2016)
Samsung SM951 256 GB M.2 (current OS drive)
ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 2 TB M.2
Seagate Desktop 8 TB
Seagate BarraCuda 2 TB
9 x Lian Li UNI SL120 (6 x black, 3 x white)

Tetras · 20 Mar 2024 at 23:52

What do you use the PC for?

If only gaming, here is some alternative cheaper parts:

1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DT-AM) = £349.99
1 x Asus ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6JY-AS) = £199.99
1 x (not changed) G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-GSK-01359) = £248.99
1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity OC White 16Gb Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-01495) = £1,049.99
1 x MSI MAG A850GL PCIe 5.0 ATX 3.0 80 Plus Gold Power Supply - White (SKU: POW-MSI-01938) = £129.95

Jasseh · 21 Mar 2024 at 00:56

Tetras said:
What do you use the PC for?

If only gaming, here is some alternative cheaper parts:

1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DT-AM) = £349.99

1 x Asus ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6JY-AS) = £199.99

1 x (not changed) G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-GSK-01359) = £248.99

1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity OC White 16Gb Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-01495) = £1,049.99

1 x MSI MAG A850GL PCIe 5.0 ATX 3.0 80 Plus Gold Power Supply - White (SKU: POW-MSI-01938) = £129.95

Thanks for the suggestions, will look over them properly in the morning.

I use my PC for gaming and coding (mainly C#), as well as occasional VM use. Beyond that it is just general PC use at the moment.

tamzzy · 21 Mar 2024 at 13:48

tbh, i think you're just spending the money for the sake of it...and it's not as if your current setup is a slouch by any means
is there really nothing better to spend your hard earned bonus on (or, even just to save it)?

Jasseh · 21 Mar 2024 at 15:19

tamzzy said:
tbh, i think you're just spending the money for the sake of it...and it's not as if your current setup is a slouch by any means
is there really nothing better to spend your hard earned bonus on (or, even just to save it)?

I did consider a holiday, but my wife left me a few months back and I don't feel like going anywhere alone at the moment. Part of it is "spending for the sake of spending", but also my PC does seem to struggle with some games running at 4k and I feel like treating myself out of the "hard earned bonus"

.

jigger · 21 Mar 2024 at 15:54

Your current system is pretty decent, but for just the price of a RTX 4080 super, you could drop in a 5800X3D and something like a 7900XTX nitro and get very similar performance as the completely overhauled system at 4K.

Move the 5800X and 3080 on and that’s a pretty large jump in performance for not a lot of money.

Jasseh · 22 Mar 2024 at 01:53

Tetras said:
What do you use the PC for?

If only gaming, here is some alternative cheaper parts:

1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DT-AM) = £349.99

1 x Asus ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6JY-AS) = £199.99

1 x (not changed) G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-GSK-01359) = £248.99

1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity OC White 16Gb Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-01495) = £1,049.99

1 x MSI MAG A850GL PCIe 5.0 ATX 3.0 80 Plus Gold Power Supply - White (SKU: POW-MSI-01938) = £129.95

So, I've spent a bit more time looking into the differences between my options and your suggestions:
It sounds like the 7950X3D may just cause me headaches for gaming at times, so the 7800X3D makes more sense.
With the differences between the X670E-A and the B650-A, it definitely seems like I'd be wasting money going for the X670.
As much as I've not been impressed with Zotac for my 3080, it makes sense to save £300 on that too.

I can probably delay replacing the PSU, no signs that this one is likely to give out any time soon. Just need to dig the box out of the attic and make sure I have another PCIe cable.

That shaves a nice £820 off my list (or £690 if I do need to replace the PSU). Thanks very much for the suggestions.

jigger said:
Your current system is pretty decent, but for just the price of a RTX 4080 super, you could drop in a 5800X3D and something like a 7900XTX nitro and get very similar performance as the completely overhauled system at 4K.

Move the 5800X and 3080 on and that’s a pretty large jump in performance for not a lot of money.

Dropping down to the Zotac 4080 Super brings it in line with the 7900 XTX Nitro pricing, based on that I'd rather stick with Nvidia.
If I deal with selling the parts I replace (and don't just pass them down to my son) the upgrade should be fully covered by my bonus (using Tetras' alternate suggestions).

I'll keep an eye out for any other suggestions before I place the order, thanks.

Tetras · 22 Mar 2024 at 02:17

Jasseh said:
As much as I've not been impressed with Zotac for my 3080, it makes sense to save £300 on that too.

MSI have the Gaming X Slim in white, though it is an extra £50.

Jasseh said:
It sounds like the 7950X3D may just cause me headaches for gaming at times, so the 7800X3D makes more sense.

Do you not need the extra cores for your VMs?

Rroff · 22 Mar 2024 at 02:41

Jasseh said:
but also my PC does seem to struggle with some games running at 4k

TBH biggest upgrade for 4K is going to be a 4090 - the 5800X will barely bottleneck a 4080 Super at 4K and only 10-20% for a 4090, by far the biggest bottleneck of your existing system for 4K gaming is the 3080. (EDIT: Though you may find some games bigger or lesser differences).

jigger · 22 Mar 2024 at 10:56

Rroff said:
TBH biggest upgrade for 4K is going to be a 4090 - the 5800X will barely bottleneck a 4080 Super at 4K and only 10-20% for a 4090, by far the biggest bottleneck of your existing system for 4K gaming is the 3080. (EDIT: Though you may find some games bigger or lesser differences).

Have you ever used that combo? Honestly, it’s a choppy experience. You need a really highend CPU for highend Nvidia cards.

Jasseh · 22 Mar 2024 at 11:36

Tetras said:
MSI have the Gaming X Slim in white, though it is an extra £50.

Do you not need the extra cores for your VMs?

I've coped using the 5800X for my VMs so far, it is infrequent enough that it should still be OK after upgrading. I'll check some reviews on the MSI vs Zotac options this weekend.

Rroff said:
TBH biggest upgrade for 4K is going to be a 4090 - the 5800X will barely bottleneck a 4080 Super at 4K and only 10-20% for a 4090, by far the biggest bottleneck of your existing system for 4K gaming is the 3080. (EDIT: Though you may find some games bigger or lesser differences).

I had considered 4090, but ignoring the fact I'd like to go for a white option pushes the minimum spend up by roughly £600, looking at white options adds another £300+ to that. As much as I'd like to have a 4090, I have to put some limits on myself here and I doubt there is any point just upgrading to 4090 without the move to AM5

.

mickyflinn · 22 Mar 2024 at 11:49

Jasseh said:
I had considered 4090, but ignoring the fact I'd like to go for a white option pushes the minimum spend up by roughly £600, looking at white options adds another £300+ to that. As much as I'd like to have a 4090, I have to put some limits on myself here and I doubt there is any point just upgrading to 4090 without the move to AM5 .

You can get the White Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 24GB AERO OC Ada Lovelace Graphics Card for £1849 and if needed a 1000w PSU to bring you around to thee 2k mark.

tamzzy · 22 Mar 2024 at 11:49

Jasseh said:
I did consider a holiday, but my wife left me a few months back and I don't feel like going anywhere alone at the moment. Part of it is "spending for the sake of spending", but also my PC does seem to struggle with some games running at 4k and I feel like treating myself out of the "hard earned bonus" .

ah fair enough. i see you've already given it considerable thought
(it's not uncommon to see people esp newbies wanting to splash out the cash without thinking about how they will afford it...its not my money but at the same time would want to apply some due consideration

)

Jasseh said:
I've coped using the 5800X for my VMs so far, it is infrequent enough that it should still be OK after upgrading. I'll check some reviews on the MSI vs Zotac options this weekend.

I had considered 4090, but ignoring the fact I'd like to go for a white option pushes the minimum spend up by roughly £600, looking at white options adds another £300+ to that. As much as I'd like to have a 4090, I have to put some limits on myself here and I doubt there is any point just upgrading to 4090 without the move to AM5 .

i think the cheapest white 4090 is the gigabyte version for £1850

Jasseh said:
I've coped using the 5800X for my VMs so far, it is infrequent enough that it should still be OK after upgrading. I'll check some reviews on the MSI vs Zotac options this weekend.

depending on how many vm/cpu cores you need the 14700k may not be a bad shout (for now)
has more cores than the 7800x3d so would be better in productivity workloads
loses to the 7800x3d in gaming though

other downsides to the 14700k is the power consumption and the fact it is a dead-end platform

jigger · 22 Mar 2024 at 11:58

What are you running the VM under? How important are they?

Jasseh · 22 Mar 2024 at 14:48

mickyflinn said:
You can get the White Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 24GB AERO OC Ada Lovelace Graphics Card for £1849 and if needed a 1000w PSU to bring you around to thee 2k mark.

But that is still £1849-2000 to replace the 4080 super in the rest of the spec list, not £2000 total (only slightly higher than my original spec list above though).

tamzzy said:
ah fair enough. i see you've already given it considerable thought
(it's not uncommon to see people esp newbies wanting to splash out the cash without thinking about how they will afford it...its not my money but at the same time would want to apply some due consideration )

i think the cheapest white 4090 is the gigabyte version for £1850

depending on how many vm/cpu cores you need the 14700k may not be a bad shout (for now)
has more cores than the 7800x3d so would be better in productivity workloads
loses to the 7800x3d in gaming though

other downsides to the 14700k is the power consumption and the fact it is a dead-end platform

I don't use the VMs enough to warrant switching back to Intel and dealing with the extra power consumption. I should probably review whether I can switch to Azure rather than local VMs as I'm unlikely to go over the monthly credits included in my VS subscription (based on my recent usage).

jigger said:
What are you running the VM under? How important are they?

Running under Hyper-V at the moment. I could probably live without them, useful to have for testing though.

Just got confirmation that the post-tax amount will cover the alternate options suggested by Tetras

. Now I have the weekend to settle on this spec, or talk myself into the 4090...

Thank you all for your input so far

.

jigger · 22 Mar 2024 at 16:16

Jasseh said:
But that is still £1849-2000 to replace the 4080 super in the rest of the spec list, not £2000 total (only slightly higher than my original spec list above though).

I don't use the VMs enough to warrant switching back to Intel and dealing with the extra power consumption. I should probably review whether I can switch to Azure rather than local VMs as I'm unlikely to go over the monthly credits included in my VS subscription (based on my recent usage).

Running under Hyper-V at the moment. I could probably live without them, useful to have for testing though.

Just got confirmation that the post-tax amount will cover the alternate options suggested by Tetras . Now I have the weekend to settle on this spec, or talk myself into the 4090...

Thank you all for your input so far .

Windows really struggles with scheduling Intels big+little cores.

Gray2233 · 22 Mar 2024 at 21:41

I'd grab a 5800X3D and a 4080S or 7900XTX if it were me tbh.

That said, I'm a lazy sod and went a similar route recently mostly because I couldn't be bothered with doing a rebuild with AM5.

Rroff · 23 Mar 2024 at 09:14

jigger said:
Windows really struggles with scheduling Intels big+little cores.

While I've seen issues with 13th gen and Windows 10 including making some games feel slightly stuttery, I've had no problems with it so far with a 14700K and Windows 11 (which has a thread director), apparently there are a couple of games one of them Star Citizen where it is still a problem but I've not played them. For a broad spread of games it has been on par with my heavily tuned X79 setup for responsiveness/smoothness and so far no application issues.

jigger · 23 Mar 2024 at 11:22

Rroff said:
While I've seen issues with 13th gen and Windows 10 including making some games feel slightly stuttery, I've had no problems with it so far with a 14700K and Windows 11 (which has a thread director), apparently there are a couple of games one of them Star Citizen where it is still a problem but I've not played them. For a broad spread of games it has been on par with my heavily tuned X79 setup for responsiveness/smoothness and so far no application issues.

Its Windows kernel that’s the issue, it’s just so half arsed it’s sad.

Jasseh · 24 Mar 2024 at 16:25

Ordered these 3 now, still deciding on the GPU:

1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DT-AM) = £349.99
1 x Asus ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6JY-AS) = £199.99
1 x G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-GSK-01359) = £248.99