And so the journey of a new system begins...

Diddums x

Diddums x

Diddums x

Caporegime
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My current system (5930k, 32gb DDR4, 980sli) has finally given up. I’ve posted in the wanted section of the MM to see if I can bag a cheap board as I suspect that’s what’s died, but I need to prepare for the worst.

The DDR4 I have is this Samsung stuff, came out of an Alienware. I think it’s 2133mhz. I think it all works fine.

Last time I built a pc it contained a 2500k to give you an idea of how far out the loop I am.

I’m leaning towards AMD, their new chips are stonkers apparently.

I’ll be looking at buying a case, mobo & cpu. Obviously the RAM will be replaced at some point but what sort of bottleneck am I looking at with this existing stuff?

I assume SLI is long dead and I’ll be leaning on a single 980 for now, or will SLI still work?

I will be playing mainly WoW, Star Citizen and Sea of Thieves at 1440p, some browsing and the usual desktop stuff. I’ll be getting one hell of a monitor at some point.

I was going to buy myself a monster PC for my birthday next March but as these things go, my PC clearly heard my train of thought and decided to have a tantrum.

Budget isn’t that much of an issue, I was going to go for fairly high end stuff anyway but this just means I need to space it out a bit.

Whatcha think?
 
Well you'll probably be going the AMD route, not sure if you need a 3900X but if you can find a use for all cores then it's a great chip.
Don't bother with SLI, a 2070 Super will do you very well for 1440p.
Your memory is too slow now so I would just sell that on and get some ~3600Mhz CL16 stuff.
 
I would try overclocking your current ram if you go with a Ryzen cpu. Pretty easy to do with the Ryzen DRAM calculator and Thaiphoon burner. See what you can get out of it first.

 
PSU make/model and do you need WiFi?

If you're not enticed by the lacklustre and expensive PCIe 4 feature of the x570s then you can save yourself a good £100 buying the refreshed MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX. It's had minor cosmetic enhancements and more importantly a 32MB eeprom added making it Zen-2 compatible out of the box. Plus, even if you were to have issues with compatibility due to 'possible' juvenile BIOS (newly released) it has Flash Back - making it a simple process to update the BIOS without a CPU installed (a very handy feature - if done correctly).

If you don't have any luck clocking your memory to the desired 3000/3200MHz minimum for Ryzen - i recommend you look at Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 3200MHz (AES in the product code). It's Micron E-Die and clocks to ~3600MHz+ c16 and cost ~£80 for 16GB and double the cost for 32GB if needed. Exceptional bang for buck and easy clocks. All i can say due to forum rules as unfortunately OcUK don't stock it.

The 2070S is a great card but the 5700XT AIBs are the bang for buck card and trade blows depending on games. Either will munch its way through 1440p gaming, depending on your budget. Gigabyte come into their own for the more expensive cards with their long warranty and UK RMA (and yes SLI/Crossfire - not worth it).

As for CPU - the 3600 is the stand out CPU for performance to cost ratio - but if money isn't an issue then the 3700X. But the money saved getting the 3600 could be offset and put towards a better GPU/Case or PSU if required and then a better CPU upgraded in the future - 3900X or possibly zen-3...

Example:

Motherboard: B450 MAX ~£100
CPUs: 3600 ~£180 or 3700X ~£320
Memory: Crucial BS LT 3200MHz 32GB ~160
GPUs: Gigbabyte 5700XT ~£440 or Gigabyte Gaming 2070S ~£540



My basket at Overclockers UK:
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lee32uk said:
I would try overclocking your current ram if you go with a Ryzen cpu. Pretty easy to do with the Ryzen DRAM calculator and Thaiphoon burner. See what you can get out of it first.

Click to expand...
3200Mhz is seen as the mimumum you really want to be using with 3600Mhz being the sweet spot. There is no way you are getting 2133Mhz anywhere close to 3200Mhz. Besides DDR4 costs probably the same as when he bought the 2133Mhz so not as expensive as it once was.
 
MartinPrince said:
3200Mhz is seen as the mimumum you really want to be using with 3600Mhz being the sweet spot. There is no way you are getting 2133Mhz anywhere close to 3200Mhz. Besides DDR4 costs probably the same as when he bought the 2133Mhz so not as expensive as it once was.
Click to expand...

You can overclock the infinity fabric. No need to buy expensive 3600MHz CL16 ram.

 
MartinPrince said:
I picked up some 3200MhzC16 last month for £74, so I wouldn't class that as expensive. Also there are many people who don't want to faff around with overclocking stuff. They just want to plug in and use.
Click to expand...

You make it sound like it is really difficult when that first video shows it takes literally 5 minutes to download the programs and enter the settings into your bios. If the op wants to spend £150 or so on a fresh 32GB (Assuming he wants the same amount of Ram) then that is his call. No harm in trying the overclock first though.
 
Sigh.

Got home, tinkered for ages. Removed a GPU, removed all but one stick of RAM, removed all HDDs apart from the main SSD, tried everything.

Wife: "what if it's the monitor?".

"Don't be stupid, the monitor is less than a year old and the rest of Frankenputer is like 6 years old".

"Try anyway, might be lucky".

It was the monitor.

Facepalm.jpg

(Also, my wife will never let me live this one down).

Thanks all, back to plan A, new PC in March. At least I've learned from this thread that I'll be going 3700x with 16/32gb of 3600mhz RAM and a gpu gp sorts.
 
Hmmmm, to 5700xt or not to 5700xt...

That Red Devil looks ace and it'll be the first entire AMD system I've had in over a decade. Quite tempting tbh. I'm assuming the 5700xt will be fine at 1440p?

Does AMD have any other cards coming out any time soon?
 
Diddums said:
Hmmmm, to 5700xt or not to 5700xt...

That Red Devil looks ace and it'll be the first entire AMD system I've had in over a decade. Quite tempting tbh. I'm assuming the 5700xt will be fine at 1440p?

Does AMD have any other cards coming out any time soon?
Click to expand...

It looks like a really good card from the reviews I have seen. I would probably go with the Gigabyte model though, for the extra years warranty and better RMA. Plus you have a Gigabyte rep on the forum (GIGA-Man) if you need any help.

There are rumours of new Navi cards in 2020 but I don't think anything is known at this stage. The next Xbox will also feature AMD graphics (And cpu), so maybe something new will be out for desktops by then.
 
lee32uk said:
It looks like a really good card from the reviews I have seen. I would probably go with the Gigabyte model though, for the extra years warranty and better RMA. Plus you have a Gigabyte rep on the forum (GIGA-Man) if you need any help.

There are rumours of new Navi cards in 2020 but I don't think anything is known at this stage. The next Xbox will also feature AMD graphics (And cpu), so maybe something new will be out for desktops by then.
Click to expand...

Cheers Lee, if I go for the 5700 XT it'll have to be the Powercolor, purely for nostalgic reasons. My biggest and most memorable GPU purchase was a 6950PCS++, I still remember handing the cash over to the fella at Yoyotech (RIP) on Tottenham Court Road. Huge step iny gaming life. Obviously this is a stupid reason but whatever. Whatever I buy will come from Ocuk anyway, these guys have been absolutely fantastic with things in the past (like Dave's PC), they've earned my loyalty for life :)

Shame Crossfire is dead, two of those in Crossfire would be superb, and tick a few boxes for me too :)
 
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