Best way to narrow down options for CPU and MB

xenon20

xenon20

xenon20

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Hi All,

Thinking about upgrading my PC, but I'm aware based on past experience that it can be bewildering trying to make decisions on what hardware will suit my needs best.

Just wondering if there is any tools / sites out there that can help guide me. For example, where you can input information about how you will use the PC which will steer you towards specific CPU's, and where you input what kind of connectivity and functions you need which steer you towards specific motherboards that have all of what you need but nothing you don't etc?

What's the best way to spec new system components for non-experts/geeks that doesn't involve weeks of trawling, watching hundreds of videos, and just ending up taking a stab on something because you've overwhelmed yourself with too many specs / information overload etc?

What's the bottom line?

Also, is now a good time to buy?

Thanks
X20
 
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xenon20 said:
Thinking about upgrading my PC, but I'm aware based on past experience that it can be bewildering trying to make decisions on what hardware will suit my needs best.
Click to expand...

Probably the best thing to do is ask here. Tell us what you want to do and what your budget is. If gaming, tell us if you need a monitor and if you don't need one, tell us the resolution of your current monitor.

Are you gaming? Get a system based around a Ryzen 7800X3D.
Are you gaming on a budget? Get a system based around a Ryzen 5800X3D or 5700X3D.

As for now being or not being a good time to buy, there's always something new and better in the offing. Right now in the near future are the Ryzen 9800X3D CPU and Intel Battlemage GPUs. A smidge farther off are the Nvidia RTX 5080 and 5090 (be prepared for a cashectomy).
 
xenon20 said:
What's the bottom line?
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Once we give you a spec, you can choose to do your own research on the parts we suggest, so rather than watching hours of videos it'll just be one or two (if you want to).

xenon20 said:
where you input what kind of connectivity and functions you need which steer you towards specific motherboards that have all of what you need but nothing you don't etc?
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Rule of thumb: if you don't know that you need it, you probably don't. If you can share what you use on your PC right now, then I'd just replicate that connectivity with the new build.

For example: if you're connecting to high-end speakers, or have a headset, or an external hard drive.
 
Ok thanks,

My current system:
Windows 11
Ryzen 7 5700X (not overclocked)
ASRock X470 Taichi
EVGA RTX2070 XC Ultra Gaming (not overclocked)
32 GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance 3200 (not overclocked)
EVGA 650 G6 PSU
Thermalright Peerless Assassin CPU cooler
Be Quiet! Silent Base 601 mid tower case
Samsung 970 EVO M.2 500GB system drive
Samsung 850 EVO SATA 500GB games drive
2x Toshiba X300 4TB HDD's data drives
Samsung Q85T 4K TV main monitor
Dell U2412M second monitor

Audio
------
Audient ID14 Mk2 Audio I/F
Novation Launchpad Pro Midi pad controller
Arturia Keystep 37 midi keyboard
DJTT Midifighter Twister midi controller

PC is multi use:

Gaming
Mostly single player, get on fine with my current GPU in most situations, don't care for high frame rates in online play etc etc but like to have the option to play most games in at least medium quality settings.

Music Production
Mostly In the box, Bitwig Studio, heavy use of plugins, some sample based instruments

Video Editing / Photo Editing
Davinci Resolve, working with 4K footage from GoPro, Photoshop

General use, documents, web browsing etc

I haven't overclocked anything because I don't really know what I'm doing and tend to shy away from it - too much info online about how to go about it! Probably prefer to stick to good performance without the need to tweak, although recognise that I can probably get better performance from my current setup.

I don't seem to be able to use that many plugins in my DAW before CPU meter starts to spike and cause issues. Ideally I'd like to be able to use lots without worrying about having to bounce to audio. Not sure if single core clock speeds or multiple threads are better for this kind of stuff.

Like to be able to use fast ample storage for quick file transfers. Thinking PCIe 4 or 5 M.2 NVMe.

Use direct Ethernet, no need for WiFi MB. Need Display port (dell), HDMI (TV), USB-C (Audio I/F). Plenty of (pref. fast) USB connections for peripherals. The ability to upgrade to better GPU in the future.

If I upgraded now, I wouldn't again for at least 8-10 years (except possibly GPU)

Don't NEED to upgrade. Just toying with the idea right now. Budget is flexible within reason.
Thinking of just upgrading CPU, MB, Storage. Possibly DDR5 RAM. Also guessing that 650W PSU may not cut it.

Any thoughts welcomed / appreciated!

Cheers,
X20
 
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xenon20 said:
I don't seem to be able to use that many plugins in my DAW before CPU meter starts to spike and cause issues. Ideally I'd like to be able to use lots without worrying about having to bounce to audio. Not sure if single core clock speeds or multiple threads are better for this kind of stuff.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what you're saying, that's the only thing you actually need right now, better performance in your music software, since everything else is performing well enough?
 
some great on sale intel raptor lake i7s' on sale right now, the £180 one especially, the more expensive one comes with graphics
if you went for this route there is only one type of motherboard that it will work wit, namelyh LGA 1700, that narrows things down somewhat
My basket at OcUK: an lga 1700 motherboard you might be able to get cheaper elsewhere though!

Total: £383.98 (includes delivery: £3.99)​
 
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xenon20 said:
Pretty much yes, except that I'm also keen to upgrade the storage for faster and quieter disk performance. i.e ditch the HDD's.
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Okay.

I'm not very clued up with your specific music software, if they have forums you might want to look there in regards to the single core/thread versus multi core/thread thing, but I can give you a spec that includes an improvement to both and removes one of the HDDs.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £937.96 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

If you want to remove both SSDs (this motherboard has 4x M.2 slots, the Tomahawk only has 3):

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £1,296.95 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

Edit: note that the Tomahawk has spdif and the TUF X670E-Plus does not.

Personally, I'm inclined to say that you should just buy enough storage that the majority of your work is done from SSDs, since there's little benefit from moving archives from hard drives if you're rarely accessing them, compared to the huge cost of replacing 8TB of HDD storage with SSDs.

Here are the single/multi numbers, this is very rough though (should really check actual benchmarks for your workload):

7 5700X: 3382, 26670
7 7700X: 4202, 35958
9 7900: 4150, 48825
7 9700X: 4489, 37489
9 9900X: 4720, 54546

Note that if the workload includes AVX512 then the 9000 series are quite a lot faster, but the increase is usually far more modest elsewhere.
 
AMD Ryzen 7 9700X Eight Core 5.50GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail
PRO-AMD-02676
£339 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard
MB-375-MS
£240 (incl. VAT)
£170 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Corsair Vengeance EXPO 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C40 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK64GX5M2B5600Z40)
MY-4DL-CS
£170 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
WD Black SN850X 4TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS400T2X0E)
HD-592-WD
£290 (incl. VAT)
£270 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Asus TUF Gaming X670E-Plus WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard
MB-6J9-AS
£240 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Corsair Vengeance EXPO 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-4800040 6000MHz Dual Channel
MEM-CRS-02842
£210 (incl. VAT)
£200 (incl. VAT)
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Or he could drop a 5950x in his current motherboard which would save a small fortune. Surely double the amount of cores of his 5700x plus a extra 300mhz would make a significant difference? He will lose out on pci-e gen 4 M2 speeds but he has a Gen 3 slot and won't be able to tell the difference outside of benchmarking the drive anyway. He also has a gen 2 slot which is slower again but still a damn sight faster than a sata ssd.
 
In the way that I use the music software, which is more serial plugins on less overall number of tracks it sounds like single core performance is prioritised.

Any reason why you selected AMD over Intel?

Also how much life is left in Socket AM5? If I buy a new MB I'd be keen to ensure I have options to plonk a better CPU in it further down the line should I decide to (because at that point the best chips for (x) socket have gotten much cheaper which is what I did with my current board and CPU).

Regarding RAM, would I notice much difference in performance with DDR5 over my current DDR4?

And would my (Brand new due to RMA) 650w PSU cut it for either of the baskets you proposed? Can't really justify a new PSU seeing as the one I've got came through the post 5 days ago :cry:
 
xenon20 said:
I don't seem to be able to use that many plugins in my DAW before CPU meter starts to spike and cause issues. Ideally I'd like to be able to use lots without worrying about having to bounce to audio. Not sure if single core clock speeds or multiple threads are better for this kind of stuff.
Click to expand...

Fire up Task Manager on your second monitor and have it show per-core usage. The other thing to do is check RAM usage - paging RAM in and out can also spike CPU usage. A composer I occasionally follow on YouTube, Neil Parfitt, has a Mac Pro with over 512 GB of RAM and that RAM is mainly used for samples. A modern AM5 DDR5 system can have up to 192 GB of RAM; your AM4 DDR4 system tops out at 128 GB. Note that motherboards can be twitchy with 4 DIMMs at high speeds and you may need to run your RAM at base speed and not at EXPO speeds. This will make zero difference to your music.

Tetras said:
Personally, I'm inclined to say that you should just buy enough storage that the majority of your work is done from SSDs, since there's little benefit from moving archives from hard drives if you're rarely accessing them, compared to the huge cost of replacing 8TB of HDD storage with SSDs.
Click to expand...

4 TB M.2 drives are now under £200.

xenon20 said:
Also how much life is left in Socket AM5?
Click to expand...

Lots.
 
xenon20 said:
Any reason why you selected AMD over Intel?
Click to expand...
The Intel 13th-14th gen CPUs are broken, so you're rolling a dice if you buy one.

xenon20 said:
Regarding RAM, would I notice much difference in performance with DDR5 over my current DDR4?
Click to expand...
If you're not using it, no, but you can't take DDR4 to AM5.

xenon20 said:
And would my (Brand new due to RMA) 650w PSU cut it for either of the baskets you proposed? Can't really justify a new PSU seeing as the one I've got came through the post 5 days ago :cry:
Click to expand...
It is a good quality PSU so you should be fine. You won't be using the graphics card and the CPU at full-pelt at the same time and even if I thought it was borderline, I wouldn't advise you upgrade if there are no problems.

If you find that you have power issues, you can set an eco mode on the CPU and undervolt/power limit the GPU. I doubt it would be necessary because even if you upgraded the graphics card to say... a 4070, for the most part you'll be under half your PSU's capacity in typical usage like games.
 
I'm thinking @pastymuncher might be right. Stick with my current MB, buy an AM4 chip and learn how to OC it. Use saved money to put towards new GPU (also used for video rendering), Best Gen3 + Gen2 NVMe m.2 drives for current MB and possibly another 32GB of DDR4 (although not sure if it's ok to buy an identical RAM set to put in 2 spare slots?)
 
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xenon20 said:
I'm thinking @pastymuncher might be right. Stick with my current MB, buy an AM4 chip and learn how to OC it. Use saved money to put towards new GPU (also used for video rendering), Best Gen3 + Gen2 NVMe m.2 drives for current MB and possibly another 32GB of DDR4.
Click to expand...
The reason I didn't recommend that option is because I don't know if you're limited by mainly single or multi thread performance and if you are suffering because of single thread and those extra cores are just going to sit idle, then I'd want a much bigger uplift than the 5950X would offer you over the 5700X.

You can see some of the numbers here:
 
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Na. Decided to stick with current MB and CPU. Going to learn how to OC to get clock speed up to 4.6GHz (or close). Should meet my requirements and makes sense seeing as I've spent money on unlocked components that I try to get the best from them. Going to spend money on New Storage and better GPU.

Can anyone recommend a good beginners tutorial on how to go about overclocking my CPU and RAM?

GPU wise, what's good bang for buck right now? Radeon vs Nvidia?
 
Tetras said:
The Intel 13th-14th gen CPUs are broken, so you're rolling a dice if you buy one.
Click to expand...

On the Adamant IT podcast they claimed that the Intel CPUs we get in the UK are not broken as they are not manufactured in Malaysia.

xenon20 said:
and possibly another 32GB of DDR4 (although not sure if it's ok to buy an identical RAM set to put in 2 spare slots?)
Click to expand...

You should be fine though you may not be able to run them at EXPO speeds. Your music will not notice the difference.
 
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