4K Gaming PC

[Arthalen]

Hoping I can get some help with choosing a new PC. I have a budget that goes to £3K max for the just the PC tower. I've already treated myself to an early Christmas present with the Alienware AW3225QF a 32" OLED 4K Monster.

I do a decent amount of Gaming and Virtualisation on my home PC for work learning, running a nested vSphere lab inside VMware Workstation. My current Skylake 7820x / 64GB / 1080 Ti setup at 2K has done me very well on that front, and will be enjoying a retirement to 1080p gaming for my daughter.

So now I need a new PC to properly drive my new monitor to 4K Gaming Goodness. I have a long list of games that I want to play - Space Marine 2, Starfield, Jedi Survivor, Cyberpunk 2077, FFVII Remake - that I've been holding out on playing until I had the setup to do them justice.

I normally go down the Intel/Nvidia route, and was initially thinking the Arrow Lake 265K combined with a RTX 4080 Super would do the job. I would like to invest in having PCI-Ex 5.0 for the long term, as I don't expect the 4080 Super to last too long before I want to upgrade it for more FPS in future games. But then I've encountered a lot of chatter on how poor Arrow Lake has been with gaming performance, and even that the Raptor Lake refresh has had instability issues? So is Intel off the board for this?

Normally I'd sit down and do the research, but time is ticking away, i'll miss the Black Friday deals, and so I could do with some real advice on what direction to take and what to put together!

 

[Tetras]

But then I've encountered a lot of chatter on how poor Arrow Lake has been with gaming performance, and even that the Raptor Lake refresh has had instability issues? So is Intel off the board for this?

Normally I'd sit down and do the research, but time is ticking away, i'll miss the Black Friday deals, and so I could do with some real advice on what direction to take and what to put together!

Long story short: arrow lake has poop gaming performance, but poop is relative, because they are not terrible, they're just not competitive at gaming with AMD's X3D CPUs or with 13th-14th gen.

Intel 13th-14th gen issues are supposed to be fixed (that's what Intel says if you use the latest microcodes), but it'll take a few years before we know if these CPUs survive long-term. I wouldn't buy one unless I was satisfied with the 5 year extended warranty on K CPUs.

If you're content with gaming performance that is somewhere around a 13600K, then the productivity performance of the 265K isn't bad at all, around a 9900X.

There are supposed to be BIOS and software updates coming to address the inconsistent performance.

 

[ben1987]

If it were me I’d not show any loyalty to intel and just buy what’ll give you the best performance.

If the bulk of what you want to do is game, then the 9800X3D is the king.

I’d find it pretty hard to spend the best part of a grand on a 4080 super now with the 50 series rumoured to be out in the new year. I’d either wait on the GPU side or see if I could snag a bargain 4090 as there will be a few people looking to sell them in anticipation of a 5090

 

[Arthalen]

If it were me I’d not show any loyalty to intel and just buy what’ll give you the best performance.

If the bulk of what you want to do is game, then the 9800X3D is the king.

I’d find it pretty hard to spend the best part of a grand on a 4080 super now with the 50 series rumoured to be out in the new year. I’d either wait on the GPU side or see if I could snag a bargain 4090 as there will be a few people looking to sell them in anticipation of a 5090

I'm comfortably with the 4080 Super, for now, to be honest. I'd probably upgrade that when theres a card capable of doing Raytracing at 60+ FPS at 4K.

I need a good balance of cores for my PC, and an uptick to 12c+ would be welcome over what I have with my 7820X, so would probably opt for the Ryzen 9 9900X over the 9800X3D. But this was also why I was looking at the Intel 265K, 8+12 cores seemed like a good idea, for me.

Regardless, both the AMD Processors in this equation are out of stock at OCUK

 

[Tetras]

But this was also why I was looking at the Intel 265K, 8+12 cores seemed like a good idea, for me.

If you went with the 9900X instead, some of the gaming advantage would be diminished anyway, since the Core Ultra CPUs aren't that much slower (the 265K is around a 7700).

 

[Arthalen]

How does the following look? Am I missing anything (Extra Fans?), have I got the right RAM for the CPU/Mobo combo (I think this ok?), SSD ok etc etc?

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Corsair Vengeance RGB 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C32 6400MHz Dual Channel Kit - (SKU: MEM-CRS-03242) = £199.99
• 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer III ARGB High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 360mm (SKU: COO-ARC-01992) = £89.99
• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-03110) = £569.99
• 1 x Intel Holiday Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows + Ubisoft Plus (SKU: DIG-INT-03637) = £0.00
• 1 x Asus Prime Z890-P (LGA 1851) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASU-03415) = £284.99
• 1 x Crucial T700 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen5 M.2 Solid State Drive with Heatsink (CT2000T700SSD5) (SKU: HD-07G-CR) = £222.94
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-01496) = £899.99
• 1 x NVIDIA - Indiana Jones and The Great Circle Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-NVI-03769) = £0.00
• 1 x Antec HCG 1000 Pro Platinum 1000W ATX3.1 Full modular Power Supply (SKU: POW-ATC-02746) = £179.99
• 1 x Antec C8 ARGB Midi Tower - Black (SKU: CAS-ATC-02732) = £129.95

Total: £2,577.83 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

And, I'm not ignoring the advice on getting a 9800X3D, I hear you guys, but I have more to do in mind where a CPU with more cores will give me.

 

[mickyflinn]

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M2 pcie 5 ?

Can you take advantage of the speed otherwise 2 x 2tb pcie4 m2 drives will give you more storage and decent transfer speeds

Why that motherboard?

 

[Arthalen]

M2 pcie 5 ? Can you take advantage of the speed otherwise 2 x 2tb pcie4 mw drives will give you more storage and decent transfer speeds
Why that motherboard?

Yeah the motherboard has a M2 PCIE 5 slot for NVMe drive I've put in the spec. I tend to copy/clone and snapshot a lot of nested VMs all over the place, so I think I can justify the extra speed.

As for the motherboard - I don't overclock (anymore), and I don't need Wifi, so was thinking the base level board would do. I guess I have a fair amount of Brand loyalty to Asus as well, I've been using the boards for years without issues. I'm happy to go to a different/better/more expensive board if there's reason to do so.

 

[Tetras]

How does the following look? Am I missing anything (Extra Fans?)

The C8 seems to have less bundled fans than the C5, odd, but I guess if you're using an AIO in the roof it matters less.

have I got the right RAM for the CPU/Mobo combo (I think this ok?)

I was pretty confident the 265K would be fine with anything, but the 285K uses quite a chunk more power. The spec on their website looks pretty beefy (the VRM), but I'd really hate to recommend a board you might do long-run intensive workloads with a high-end CPU and have no thermal testing that I can check it with.

 

[Arthalen]

The C8 seems to have less bundled fans than the C5, odd, but I guess if you're using an AIO in the roof it matters less.


I was pretty confident the 265K would be fine with anything, but the 285K uses quite a chunk more power. The spec on their website looks pretty beefy (the VRM), but I'd really hate to recommend a board you might do long-run intensive workloads with a high-end CPU and have no thermal testing that I can check it with.

Yeah I like the C8 over the C5 as it just has a bit more room to work with for my large club-like hands, despite the loss of the side mount fans as standard.

As for the motherboard, again, happy to hear on other recommendations to suit the 285K better. Is it a VRM phase concern or more a VRM cooling concern with the model I have at the moment? Or something else?

 

[Craig_d1]

the 9800x3d is equ of 12900k for productivity work I think, and can actually be pushed further.
but putting that aside, it's worth watching the below...what's interesting is that with the 4k gaming, the 9800x3d blows the others out the water. generally the cpu's all are roughly the samer as its the gpu which is the bottleneck, but they they used upscaling also(as how most 4k gamers play) and the x3d littlerally flew. when the next round of gpu's come out, the 5090 will be able to stretch the legs of the 9800x3d which will leave the rest way behind...
thei is a 3rd vid explaining it better..put below

one of the takeaways though is that the 9950X is right up there in productivity, and when the x3d version launches, it'll have both productivity, and smash the rest for gaming....might be worth waiting for...not sure how urgent you want the new pc

oh, and 4th will be the 9800x3d vs the ultra in 45 games...not even a contest...for gaming the 285 is broken...I know you're doing other stuff, but if you're also gaming, got to weigh it up a bit

 

[Tetras]

As for the motherboard, again, happy to hear on other recommendations to suit the 285K better. Is it a VRM phase concern or more a VRM cooling concern with the model I have at the moment? Or something else?

The spec on the VRM sounds fine on their website, but from the videos I watch on buildzoid's channel * he seems to be less than impressed with how trustworthy board ratings are and since the Prime boards tend to arrive at the bottom of HUB's thermal testing it makes me more nervous about buying one without any testing.

If you were ONLY gaming I wouldn't be bothered, but that CPU can use a lot of power when run multithreaded so you don't want a dud.

*

Here's an example with thermal testing (around 32:00), but unfortunately there are none for Z890, there's not much interest in these CPUs right now.

 

[mickyflinn]

Yeah the motherboard has a M2 PCIE 5 slot for NVMe drive I've put in the spec. I tend to copy/clone and snapshot a lot of nested VMs all over the place, so I think I can justify the extra speed.

As for the motherboard - I don't overclock (anymore), and I don't need Wifi, so was thinking the base level board would do. I guess I have a fair amount of Brand loyalty to Asus as well, I've been using the boards for years without issues. I'm happy to go to a different/better/more expensive board if there's reason to do so.

Fair point about the m2.

Motherboard at least get something that matches the astetics of your case

This board reviews well .

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[Arthalen]

** Much awesome feedback **

Firstly, thanks for the info on the 9800X3D. And I totally get what your saying. The only thing I can say about the 285 is that.... Intel want to fix it?

I did watch the following which kind of assured me they would get to the bottom of things with Arrow Lake, but this is the Marketing Guy covering for his company, sooo.....

....might be worth waiting for...not sure how urgent you want the new pc

I'm trying to wait. But it's not everyday that the Wife tells me I can spend £3K on a new PC, nor have something like this sat next to me waiting to be opened and gazed upon lovingly.......

 

[Joxeon]

I’d strongly consider waiting a couple of months for the 9950X3D and Nvidia 50 series especially if you want another 6 year life span out of your pc.

 

[Craig_d1]

Firstly, thanks for the info on the 9800X3D. And I totally get what your saying. The only thing I can say about the 285 is that.... Intel want to fix it?

I couldn't buy something because they 'want to fix it'. Intel want to fix the 13th and 14th gen cpu's as well....if you bought a 13th gen cpu, you've been waiting for a long, long time for a fix. Even now I'm not convinced they have fixed the 13/14th gen problem.
what happens f you buy a 285 ultra and the fix doesn't happen for 6 months or more..you've paid top dollar for something that gets beaten by .....well lets just say the graphs in the vids show a lot...meanwhile in a couple months you could be sitting there watching reviews of the 9950x3d slay everything, being up there with the best productivity wise, and with the 9800x3d gaming wise.

Intel have been arrogant, refusing to answer querstions of late with the the 13/14th gen debacle, relying on the massive sales to corporate sales etc..that's changing as seen with the massive layoffs, share price crater and fact they're now being looked at by qualcomm as a takeover target. Gelsinger has been ceo for close to 4 yrs...time for a replacement I think. i remember watching him laugh saying AMD were finished when they launched 12th gen, saying what they had coming would wipe the floor with AMD, and that they nothing to compete with them....
his attitude is reflected up and down the corporate stack, and it's that arrogance that has led intel to rest on their previous laurels and think they were untouchable...now they're scrambling to catch up while botching current releases, going from one pr disaster to another