Enforced upgrade - really ;)

ColinD · 10 Jan 2021 at 13:35

So my nephew wants a gaming pc, he's saved over £300 for the year. It's his 10th birthday soon...

I have a i7 6700, GTX1070. I thought easy enough I'll just upgrade & he can have that

Oh boy was I in for a surprise...

Pandemic and supply chain woes I didn't know about! The deal is done over a zoom handshake. I'm giving him my deconstructed setup, for a 'contribution', which will go back into his savings pot mysteriously later.

So I'm looking primarily to knock up a new linux workstation/dev. I'll be heading back to AMD, having left around the Thunderbird/Opteron days...

AMD based 3900x/5800x
B550.
RM650x.

I'm not really a gamer but have put a few more hours in these last few months...homeworld, space engineers, factorio will do me. I do use a 32" 4k, but I play at 1080/1440p.

Work wise, docker, vm's, ruby, elixir, so the 3900 is ott. But I do want to run slack and something else

Graphics is where I'm stuck. I'm primarily thinking something sensible price wise, something comparable to the 1070, but more linux compatibility. Although it all runs fine in Pop_OS atm.

Noting that OCUK have RX 580 (£240) in stock and a RX 5700 XT (£390). The RX580 would give me about the same perf as the 1070 I think... The 5700XT a good bump. I can worry about a major bump; 6800, when supply chains are back. Would dual boot till a single passthru (6800) is an option, or next upgrade.

However a few comments suggest the MSI RX 5700 is loud. If it's quiet on desktop use, I'm happy.

Any other thoughts?

wedrum · 10 Jan 2021 at 13:37

Well your current spec looks fine to me.
Why upgrade?

ColinD · 10 Jan 2021 at 13:53

Because I said yes to my nephew

It's a fine spec as it is for sure. No way he was going to get much for £300.
It owes me nothing, and offers him lots. I just didn't think it through at the time

mickyflinn · 10 Jan 2021 at 14:18

The rx 580 at £240 is a complete rip off though the 5700xt is still overpriced but not as bad. £400 is 3060ti money and a far better performer.

Grimley · 10 Jan 2021 at 14:22

I Feel for you. I have 2 Nephews who are into PC gaming. Thankfully their hardware requirements aren't too demanding. They have a 1st & 2nd gen Ryzen 5 each with an Rx470 & 570 each courtesy of my good self.

I'm running a GTX950 on linux mint mate. I had to tweak the settings a bit to run it with no screen tearing. R5 1600 barely twitches in use, so linux is not that demanding of a 3, almost 4 year old CPU.

Tetras · 10 Jan 2021 at 14:39

ColinD said:
Noting that OCUK have RX 580 (£240) in stock and a RX 5700 XT (£390). The RX580 would give me about the same perf as the 1070 I think... The 5700XT a good bump. I can worry about a major bump; 6800, when supply chains are back. Would dual boot till a single passthru (6800) is an option, or next upgrade.

However a few comments suggest the MSI RX 5700 is loud. If it's quiet on desktop use, I'm happy.

Any other thoughts?

As said above, RX 580 for £240 is outrageous, they were half that a few months ago. It's also much slower than a 1070, so you'd be significantly downgrading.

Many graphics cards have idle fan stop now, but sometimes the lower models in the range don't.

builder22 · 10 Jan 2021 at 15:40

so really no sensible gpu option other than trying to get a 3060/70?

wedrum · 10 Jan 2021 at 16:03

Members market is the best way.

Oh no good, only if it fits for the left finger happy keyboard warriors mods.

No traders allowed yeh whatever.
Full of it on there.

ColinD · 10 Jan 2021 at 16:14

Thanks for the input. My gut felt at £400 for a 2019 card, that something was up. I've not been tracking prices as, I had no need

But enough of my brain recalls supply / demand pricing

Anything 4 or 8 core would do me in reality. Given we've been sat around 3.5/4Ghz for 5+years, an upgrade again in a few years from say 4 to 12cores would be more beneficial, assuming arm does not rule the world then

. But I won't get around to upgrading it, or I'll break a pin removing it...

I might have a rummage in the garage for an old card. Or just go intel for integrated gphx. IDK... maybe do some work rather than play

The 1070 has been flawless on popos with the nvidia install. It of course does almost nothing while rendering a terminal or two.

In a way the 'pc' he's getting is over the top for his needs. I was trying to convince him to have my old ps3. Zero interest