i7-2600 / 980ti upgrade - please critique!

Haggisman · 7 Oct 2019 at 21:44

Looking to upgrade in the next few months in preparation for Cyberpunk. Unfortunately I've been a bit out of the loop in terms of upgrades for a few years, so not 100% on what's what these days, but most likely something along the lines of the following:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Powercolor Radeon RX 5700 XT Dual Fan 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £379.99
1 x MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £106.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £199.99
1 x Team Group Dark T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Grey (TDGED4= £82.99

Total: £781.06 (includes shipping: £11.10)

I will be using my current cooler (Alpenfohn Matterhorn), along with PSU (550w), storage etc.

One condition for the motherboard, is it must have at least 5 SATA connections.

Any suggestions for substitutions? (no particular reason for that RAM other than it's the cheapest 3200mhz 16gb kit atm)

Is the 3200mhz RAM worth going for, or is 3000mhz going to be a better match for the CPU/motherboard combo?

Is there any point in spending the extra for an x470 motherboard? Or is the b450 adequate for the lower end Ryzen? (e.g. what does the x470 give me over the b450?)

Aiming to pick up parts over black Friday/boxing day sale periods, hopefully some decent bargains (*hint hint ocuk*

)

Also, in terms of the rx 5700xt cards, is the one I've picked a worthwhile improvement over the blower style? (e.g. cooler/quieter).

Thanks all!

Burnt_Custard · 8 Oct 2019 at 08:18

The mobo you selected only has 4 SATA ports on it, so you may want to select another motherboard. You may want to look at something like the MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC for a little extra money. It doesn't Ryzen 3000 series from the box but you can update the bios using the bios flash feature.

Everthing else looks fine. 3200MHz is marginally better, most people won't notice but if is for same money then go for it. And anything is better than the blower style 5700xt.

Haggisman · 8 Oct 2019 at 08:33

The spec says 6 and I can see 6 in the photos, 2 on the face of the board and 4 on the lower right edge?

pastymuncher · 8 Oct 2019 at 08:34

It has 6 sata ports as it has two upright ones on the bottom left corner like the majority of B450 boards. Stick with the 3200mhz memory or go with the Crucial Ballistix memory that everyone seems to be raving about. If you see faster memory in the sales pick that up instead.

Burnt_Custard · 8 Oct 2019 at 08:44

Haggisman said:
The spec says 6 and I can see 6 in the photos, 2 on the face of the board and 4 on the lower right edge?

Whoops. My bad. Bad eyes in the morning. But the MSI websites does mention "SATA5 and SATA6 ports will be unavailable when installing a M.2 device in M.2 slot." . Whether that applies to you I'm not sure.

Steveocee · 8 Oct 2019 at 08:49

Looks fine but as @pastymuncher has said. If you can get faster/tighter memory then go for that.

spolsh · 9 Oct 2019 at 17:55

You do lose two SATA ports on the Tomahawk Max if you use an m2 drive though, as I found out too late. Always check the manual before settling on products LOL

Haggisman · 9 Oct 2019 at 18:29

That's no problem atm, and if/when I do get an m2 drive it'll most likely be to replace one of the existing ones

orbitalwalsh · 9 Oct 2019 at 20:38

Sure b450 is 4 on the Chipset and 2 via 3rd party controller. Might be worth checking out
X570 they moved everything in-house like intel did with b360 and z390

Want quieter cooler. Then triple fan 2.5 slot designs like Gigabyte Gaming OC on sale £409 or Thicker 2.5 slot sapphire cards

Oh, not on sale anymore.. TUF is

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-43q-as.html

FloppyPoppy · 23 Oct 2019 at 08:31

LuxOne said:
Hello guys, now i have not cool gaming laptop.This is Asus Xl503 and i want to buy Asus 505 Tuf Gaming. What do you say ?

Make your own thread.. Don't hijack others.

Quartz · 23 Oct 2019 at 09:57

Haggisman said:
Powercolor Radeon RX 5700 XT Dual Fan 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £379.99

The 5700 XT is only 20% or so faster than your 980 Ti. I'm not sure that that's a worthwhile upgrade.

snips86x · 23 Oct 2019 at 10:00

FloppyPoppy said:
Make your own thread.. Don't hijack others.

My first thought also lol

snips86x · 23 Oct 2019 at 10:04

Do sata ports really matter though? At most you've got 1-2 M.2 slots and need 1 other sata port.

Haggisman · 23 Oct 2019 at 15:43

snips86x said:
Do sata ports really matter though? At most you've got 1-2 M.2 slots and need 1 other sata port.

I have 2 SSDs, optical drive, and a pair of mechanical drives in Raid 1 for stuff like music & photos. I guess I could get a pci sata controller card for the extra slots, but would be easier to keep it all on the motherboard if possible.

Quartz said:
The 5700 XT is only 20% or so faster than your 980 Ti. I'm not sure that that's a worthwhile upgrade.

I ended up getting this already

It is definitely a good amount faster, I'm getting solid 60fps in pubg now, with higher settings than the 980ti where I was getting 40-55 and occasionally dropping lower, will need to test with some other games for more comparison, but so far can't complain (for ~£250 after selling the 980)

snips86x · 23 Oct 2019 at 15:53

Haggisman said:
I have 2 SSDs, optical drive, and a pair of mechanical drives in Raid 1 for stuff like music & photos. I guess I could get a pci sata controller card for the extra slots, but would be easier to keep it all on the motherboard if possible.

Ahh that's fair enough. I don't have any mech drives in my PC as I moved all that stuff to a Synology NAS

Haggisman · 28 Nov 2019 at 12:54

So, I will probably be jumping on this tomorrow, depending on what the cpu prices are like.

Looking at the 3600mhz patriot viper ram that's reduced atm, how will the tomahawk cope with this? Is it worth a few £ extra to go for a better board if I'm sticking with the ryzen 3600 (maybe x)?