Best value CPU to replace an Ivybridge Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz?

At The Gates · 5 Jul 2020 at 18:16

Hi guys

My Ivybridge setup is getting pretty long in the tooth and the motherboard is starting to playing up with wonky USB connections. I have £500 to replace the CPU, motherboard and ram, can maybe go a bit more if there is something worth it. This is setup for pure imaging work. Photoshop with large raw files and scanning medium format TIFF and working on those. No gaming. I plan on just keeping my R9 270 and Samsung 840 Pro SSD unless i can squeeze a small NVME drive into the budget.

I am pretty out of the loop on CPUs. With my budget even Coffee Lake seems to expensive, are there decent AMD equivalents these days in my kind of budget?

Thanks

NightSt@lk3r · 5 Jul 2020 at 19:26

Can get a Ryzen 5 3600 with motherboard and ram and NVME for less than £500

Boot_Loop · 5 Jul 2020 at 19:33

3600 or 2nd gen Ryzen for peanuts then upgrade to Ryzen 4000 next year when the full stack is readily available.

At The Gates · 5 Jul 2020 at 20:30

Thanks guys. Can i use a B450 board with the 3600 or will it need an X570?

eeek · 5 Jul 2020 at 20:38

At The Gates said:
Thanks guys. Can i use a B450 board with the 3600 or will it need an X570?

The B450 boards should work with a 3600 (provided it's got an up to date bios) but they may not work with the 4000/Zen 3 CPUs were you to want to upgrade again next year.

~>Dg<~ · 5 Jul 2020 at 20:43

id just wait till the new amd cpus come out get a 8 core with 16 gb ram and a 550 board . should get that for about £500. your cpu is more than good enough till then. upgrade now and they come out in a few months you wish you would have waited. nothing worse especially when there is a decent increase over whats out now.

Ian Evey · 6 Jul 2020 at 09:32

Can get a 3700x motherboard amd ram for under £500 if you look around.

Thats a lot of processing power for what you use the pc for.

C64 · 6 Jul 2020 at 22:20

At The Gates said:
Thanks guys. Can i use a B450 board with the 3600 or will it need an X570?

make sure to get an msi board the tomahawk , gaming plus max,carbon or any that have the 32mb bios chip they also have much better vrm temperatures than all the other boards

went for gaming plus max myself as I preferred the pci-e x1 locations so i can stick my soundcard at the bottom but it's pretty much the same underneath as the tomahawk , the gaming pro carbon is probably the best one but its more expensive.

pc-guy · 6 Jul 2020 at 23:19

You demand on the computer is similar to me. I do play a bit of games (not much)

I think you might be better off with a zen+ processor like the 2600 or 1600AF, these are really cheap should be under £100 if you shop around. And offer 6c/12t, my cinebencg score of my 1600AF is over 2x more than my 4770K system. You can sell and upgrade to zen 3 processors maybe 4900x or get a cheap 3900x later down the line (1 year)

You need big ram, 32GB DDR3200 min for those large tiff files. The going rate seems to be £150 for a set.

motherboard wise - go with X570 or B550 that offers the most in terms of full PCIex4 slots. You are looking around £150-£180 for this. But if you are looking for matx format you will have to go with B550 which you need the mortar max that’s around £180 atm. Reason for these expensive motherboard is that you will start to find that you will benefit massively from NVMe drives, especially the fast ones. Also have ability to have multiple drives and expand down the line rather than sell your drive and get new ones are invaluable.

you should be having some money to spare for now which you can invest in some 10bit GPU like the quadro cards on auction -K4200 - around £150; alternatively invest in a nice fast nvme drive 1TB for around £100

Little_Crow · 7 Jul 2020 at 08:38

pc-guy said:
motherboard wise - go with X570 or B550 that offers the most in terms of full PCIex4 slots.

B550 as a rule doesn't Support Zen+ processors, only Zen2 and above, so won't be compatible with the processors you've listed.
X570 offers further backwards compatibility, and going by the increased price of B550 boards might not be a bad shout any way

pc-guy · 7 Jul 2020 at 10:38

Little_Crow said:
B550 as a rule doesn't Support Zen+ processors, only Zen2 and above, so won't be compatible with the processors you've listed.
X570 offers further backwards compatibility, and going by the increased price of B550 boards might not be a bad shout any way

That’s a very good point.

Joxeon · 7 Jul 2020 at 11:00

eeek said:
The B450 boards should work with a 3600 (provided it's got an up to date bios) but they may not work with the 4000/Zen 3 CPUs were you to want to upgrade again next year.

MSI has confirmed all its B450 boards will work with the upcoming Zen3. The MSI max line also work out the box with Zen 2 no matter which bios you get.

Something like this would work fine.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x MSI B450M Mortar MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 mATX Motherboard= £99.95
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £188.99
1 x Patriot Viper Steel 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS432G320C6K)= £124.99
1 x WD Blue SN550 500GB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS500G2B0C)= £74.99

Total: £499.42 (includes shipping: £10.50)

C64 · 7 Jul 2020 at 16:37

A word of warning on the patriot viper steel in no way would I call it low profile its med profile ram

low profile shouldnt have heatsinks more than a few mm above the ram chips

it is too high for my noctua d14 to place a front 140mm only a 120 mm fits with this ram

Sayso · 8 Jul 2020 at 11:47

C64 said:
A word of warning on the patriot viper steel in no way would I call it low profile its med profile ram

low profile shouldnt have heatsinks more than a few mm above the ram chips

it is too high for my noctua d14 to place a front 140mm only a 120 mm fits with this ram

Yeah the Darkrock Pro 120mm front fansits on the RAM.

Joxeon · 8 Jul 2020 at 18:03

You don't really need a big cooler for a 3600 though, even a £20 arctic freezer would do the job very well and not cause any ram clearance issues.

Also spending a lot on a cooler defeats the object of a cheap CPU, you might aswell put the cash towards a 3700x which comes with a decent cooler.

spudbynight · 12 Jul 2020 at 20:39

eeek said:
The B450 boards should work with a 3600 (provided it's got an up to date bios) but they may not work with the 4000/Zen 3 CPUs were you to want to upgrade again next year.

The Mortar and Tomahawk mobos are guaranteed to work with Ryzen 4

Jacky60 · 15 Jul 2020 at 14:41

You Ivybridge has lasted forever NOW is not the time to upgrade, wait for Ryzen 4000 and you'll get a fab upgrade at the best price/performance in 10 years. You've waited forever give it 4 more months and you'll have 15-20% more performance that will last you 7 years minimum assuming you go 8 core/16 thread or more. I know it's tempting to upgrade now but please wait until Sept-Dec.

arc@css · 15 Jul 2020 at 14:51

Jacky60 said:
You Ivybridge has lasted forever NOW is not the time to upgrade, wait for Ryzen 4000 and you'll get a fab upgrade at the best price/performance in 10 years. You've waited forever give it 4 more months and you'll have 15-20% more performance that will last you 7 years minimum assuming you go 8 core/16 thread or more. I know it's tempting to upgrade now but please wait until Sept-Dec.

+1

Zakal · 16 Jul 2020 at 00:51

I'm in exactly the same position, my 3770k has lasted so well but I'm really in need of an upgrade as it's sat at 100% load far too often. I added an RTX 2080 and overclocked the 3770k to 4.1Ghz to get a little extra out but I just need more power and can't wait another 4 months

I'm going to get:

MSI X570 Tomahawk
32GB 8pack 3600 RAM

But then I can't decide on CPU for now, obviously want to upgrade when the zen3 cpus come out but do I go for a 3900x (now £420) or something cheaper like a 3600.

I already have sata SSDs so would want to put an m.2 in but again the 1TB Corsair MP600 seems like a good option but Samsung are going to release a pcie4 m.2 at somepoint and I've always used Samsung so do I keep what I have then upgrade when available.

Too many choices is stopping me buying! someone tell me what to do

Oh one question for you all, I have a h100i cooler, it needs a new fan but still is working and cooling fine but it's 8 years old or something now..... replace it or keep it?

Journey · 16 Jul 2020 at 08:36

Zakal said:
Too many choices is stopping me buying! someone tell me what to do

You've not said what you use the PC for, can't help much unless you've told us all that.

Zakal said:
Oh one question for you all, I have a h100i cooler, it needs a new fan but still is working and cooling fine but it's 8 years old or something now..... replace it or keep it?

Keep it until you get your new system, and see if it performs as well as it does now. Why replace it if it works well?