Building new PC, general advice needed

Ormy1

Ormy1

Ormy1

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I'm planning to build a new PC in the next few months but keep some parts from my old PC. I've built PCs before including my old one but not for several years so I'm a bit behind on some of the newer developments.

My current/old PC spec:
Corsair CX750M PSU
Asus P8Z77-V mobo
4x4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 2400Mhz (11-13-14-32) 1.65v
Intel i7 3770K OCed to 4.4Ghz on stock voltages
Corsair H80i(v1) AIO cooler
WD 500GB SATA SSD
2x Nvidia EVGA GTX 980Ti

I'm aiming for 1920x1080 at smooth/consistent 60fps on high/ultra settings in most games for the next 2-3 years if possible. Currently I can usually maintain 60fps at med/high settings in most games but even on low settings there are occasional stutters in certain games and they always seem to happen at exactly the worst possible moment in online games, like when another player appears in front of me Tarkov or something. CPU and GPU and RAM usage are rarely above 75% (in Tarkov) so it must be either old and slow DDR3 ram or slow (compared to modern M2 drives) SATA SSD. (Yes I've spent time researching the best settings for these games). I'm hoping a mobo/cpu/ram/ssd upgrade will sort me out and also give me faster loading times too.

Planned new PC purchases:
Intel H570 chipset mobo, not sure which one (£100-150ish)
Intel i5 11600K (£230ish)
4x8GB 3200Mhz/3600Mhz Corsair Vengeance or Kingston HyperX (£200-300)
1TB NVMe PCIe4 M2 SSD (£175ish)
CPU AIO cooler (£100ish)

Total budget around £800-900

I don't care for any of this RGB lighting nonsense that is fashionable now, anything that has it must be able to turn the lighting off completely in settings.

Questions:
1. I'm assuming I can use my old PSU with the new mobo? ATX mobos still use the big 24+4 pin connectors like they have for years right? In terms of power draw the new hardware should consume similar wattage to the old so the PSU should cope fine.

2. The i5 11600k seems like a sweet spot for gaming right now and a few years down the line if I need more CPU power I can buy a used 11900K, sound about right?

3. What's the difference between the 11600, 11600K and 11600KF? I remember several years ago the 'K' meant it had an unlocked multiplier.

4. Given the difficulty of buying powerful GPUs at the moment I plan to stick with the ones I have and buy either a 3080 or 3090 on the used market in a year or two when nvidia release the 4xxx series and people are selling their 3xxx cards, assuming supply/demand of GPUs settles down by then. Sound sensible?

5. I'm seeing some of the NVMe PCIe4.0 M2 drives claim 7000MB/s read speeds. Is that actually realistically achievable? What do I need to do to make sure I can utilise all that tasty speed?

6. I'm quite confused by the huge selection of RAM, I never did quite get my head around the timings and stuff, just know that lower timing numbers are better. I'd like to use either Corsair Vengeance or Kingston HyperX again as I've never had problems with those types in the past. 32GB should be enough for gaming for a few years right? Am I going to notice the benefit of 3600Mhz (or faster) ram or should I stick to 3200Mhz and save some money? I do play one game in particular (factorio) that can be bottle-necked by ram bandwidth/speed unlike most games.

7. What's a good value AIO CPU cooler that is quiet but powerful enough to handle some mild overclocking? I'm assuming my current one pre-dates the intel 1200 socket and so will not be compatible?

8. I'm pretty sure I want the intel H570 chipset but no idea which specific mobo is the best value, any suggestions? I don't care about Ethernet speed or onboard audio/video. Solid build quality and good gaming performance is all I'm after.

Thanks.
 
4x8GB 3200Mhz/3600Mhz Corsair Vengeance or Kingston HyperX (£200-300) Get 2x 16GB Sticks. Many CPU's still don't play well or overclock with 4 memory sticks.
1TB NVMe PCIe4 M2 SSD (£175ish) I see no real need for a PCI-E 4.0 NVME, but I guess if the budget is there then why not.

Your PSU may not have the required connections, especially the 4 pin CPU cable. and I'd prefer something a bit newer too.
 
@Ormy1
Wouldn't bother with K chip on H board. Just go B/H plus 11400 for cheapest option .

Some b560 boards like Aorus brand can OC K chips .

Another cheap route which I've done is z490 and flashed it and stick in 11600kf

Personally would drop to 16GB means if getting Z board to OC K/KF chip . Also the Z490 UD accepts PCIe 4.0 m.2 and can be flashed with CPU

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £625.45 (includes shipping: £10.50)​
​

Solid AIO that doesn't break the bank and will handle a good OC

https://i.imgur.com/pR9oBb1.jpg
 
orbitalwalsh said:
@Ormy1
Wouldn't bother with K chip on H board. Just go B/H plus 11400 for cheapest option .

Some b560 boards like Aorus brand can OC K chips .

Another cheap route which I've done is z490 and flashed it and stick in 11600kf

Personally would drop to 16GB means if getting Z board to OC K/KF chip . Also the Z490 UD accepts PCIe 4.0 m.2 and can be flashed with CPU

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £625.45 (includes shipping: £10.50)
​

Solid AIO that doesn't break the bank and will handle a good OC

https://i.imgur.com/pR9oBb1.jpg
Click to expand...

for an extra 15 quid what about an Arctic Liquid Freezer 2 240mm for AIO?
 
Wouldn't bother with the K(F) chip at all, just get the 11400F, whack it on a mid-range B560, let MCE do its stuff and get some RAM running at 3200MHz C16 or below, as pointed out 2x 16GB.

PCI-E 4.0 SSD is a waste of time, for no benefit at all playing games, and by the time you need one you'll be able to add a second drive for the total cost of the single drive costs now.

CPU: Intel Core i5-11400F 2.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Alpenföhn Brocken 3 60.62 CFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI MAG B560M MORTAR WIFI Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Storage: Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Total: ~£540

32GB made up of 2x 16GB and a very good air cooler, that is quiet and yet reasonably priced, not sure what benefit an AIO offers, but if you have to get one go for the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240 or 280, they are under £100. The motherboard is really good, excellent features, Wi-Fi 6W, 2.5GbE, and a couple of M.2 slots, etc.
 
If you're breaking down your old PC to use the parts in the new one I'd suggest it would be worth contemplating re-using the 16Gb memory unless you really need the upgrade to 32Gb for a specific reason. The faster speed DDR4 won't improve performance massively in most real world apps and you don't generally need more than 16Gb for the majority of games/apps.
 
Quartz said:
Go with 2x 16 GB DIMMs rather than 4x 8 GB.
Click to expand...

Definitely this. Also, If you're breaking down your old PC to use the parts in the new one I'd suggest it would be worth contemplating re-using the 16Gb memory and not bothering with new DIMMS unless you really need the upgrade to 32Gb for a specific reason. The faster speed DDR4 won't improve performance massively in most real world apps and you don't generally need more than 16Gb for the majority of games/apps.
 
silvagti said:
If you're breaking down your old PC to use the parts in the new one I'd suggest it would be worth contemplating re-using the 16Gb memory unless you really need the upgrade to 32Gb for a specific reason. The faster speed DDR4 won't improve performance massively in most real world apps and you don't generally need more than 16Gb for the majority of games/apps.
Click to expand...

Good luck using DDR3 RAM in a DDR4 system. Also yes faster RAM is better for the few quid it would cost.
 
Journey said:
Good luck using DDR3 RAM in a DDR4 system. Also yes faster RAM is better for the few quid it would cost.
Click to expand...

Opps, I misread that as DDR4 for some reason beacuse I didn't think 2400Mhz DDR3 was a thing! OK, then yes you'll need some new RAM!

Given how little you can usefully salavage from your old PC it may make more sense to sell it complete as a working computer and just buy a new PSU. Your current one is nearly a decade old anyway to to me that should probably be replaced if it's been used daily throughout the last 10 years.

You can probably sell those 980's for a decent price on ebay and then that gives you the option to buy a complete PC system (with access to OEM/build stock Geforce RTX cards). Your planed new PC is very nearly a complete system anyway.
 
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Agree with the above though get a new PSU, sell the system as a whole with a GTX 980 Ti and it will pay for your whole new system, such is the GPU shortage.
 
Journey said:
Agree with the above though get a new PSU, sell the system as a whole with a GTX 980 Ti and it will pay for your whole new system, such is the GPU shortage.
Click to expand...

Looking on ebay that would work. Sell those 980Ti's for ~£350 each and then you can up your budget to ~£1500 and get a decent complete system with an RTX 3070.

eg.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ocuk...400f-nvidia-rtx-3070-gaming-pc-fs-1eh-og.html

Adjust the spec to suit but it's definitely an option within budget.
 
silvagti said:
Looking on ebay that would work. Sell those 980Ti's for ~£350 each and then you can up your budget to ~£1500 and get a decent complete system with an RTX 3070.

eg.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ocuk...400f-nvidia-rtx-3070-gaming-pc-fs-1eh-og.html

Adjust the spec to suit but it's definitely an option within budget.
Click to expand...

Nah, stick with the 980 Ti, that system at almost £1,500 is absolutely terrible, you are just paying scalped prices for the GPU and ending up with a subpar system to go with it. I think I'd rather pay £900 to someone on eBay than pay a company to scalp me.
 
Journey said:
Nah, stick with the 980 Ti, that system at almost £1,500 is absolutely terrible, you are just paying scalped prices for the GPU and ending up with a subpar system to go with it. I think I'd rather pay £900 to someone on eBay than pay a company to scalp me.
Click to expand...
At least you get a warranty. :D
 
Arctic , rad is thicker to take note on placement.

reaching £100 then go Alphacool with Eisbaer LT/normal model. all copper and can top up liquid . People forget liquid evaporates and by the end of the life span and doesn't look pretty with copper+alumin
 
Thanks so much for all the replies so far, much appreciated. I have more follow-up questions.

Quartz said:
Go with 2x 16 GB DIMMs rather than 4x 8 GB.
Click to expand...

A few people have said stick to 2 DIMMs rather than use 4 because CPUs don't play well with 4 DIMMs. I've built half a dozen PCs starting in the DDR2 days, all had 4 DIMMS, none had any problems. Is this a new thing?

Also (and I may be completely wrong here) but accessing the same amount of memory via twice the number of slots should be twice as fast right? By analogy, if I have a 1TB SSD, and compare that against 2x 500GB SSDs in RAID-0 the two drives together will have nearly double the read/write speed of the single drive. Doesn't the same logic apply to RAM? 4x8GB should be significantly faster than 2x16GB because the PC can access 4 DIMMs at once rather than 2?

Also some people have mention about RAM amount, I am beginning to run into RAM constraints in some of the more recent/bigger games I'm playing so I definitely need 32GB, and if I had a bigger budget it'd be 64GB.

Journey said:
PCI-E 4.0 SSD is a waste of time, for no benefit at all playing games, and by the time you need one you'll be able to add a second drive for the total cost of the single drive costs now.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know it won't affect fps within the game but doesn't faster read speeds mean faster loading times on my games? Given that some games are loading dozens of GB of assets into VRAM/RAM for a single level surely any read speed increase is going to be noticeable on slow loading games (i.e. Rust)? Time is money, if I can shave a few seconds off the loading times then that's going to add up to several hours within a year of gaming. My time is worth a lot to me so I'm willing to pay to save that time.

Journey said:
32GB made up of 2x 16GB and a very good air cooler, that is quiet and yet reasonably priced, not sure what benefit an AIO offers, but if you have to get one go for the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240 or 280, they are under £100.
Click to expand...

In my experience AIO coolers are far quieter than air coolers. Quietness is very important to me, eventually I'll be upgrading to a full custom waterloop (my first attempt at proper watercooling) in order to achieve complete silence.

Journey said:
Good luck using DDR3 RAM in a DDR4 system. Also yes faster RAM is better for the few quid it would cost.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I was thinking but when am I hitting the law of diminishing returns? 3600Mhz costs a fair bit more than 3200Mhz but is it worth it?

Regarding the GFX cards, whoever said sell the 980 Ti for £350 each is having a laugh. They are going for £200-250 on ebay.

I will not buy a complete system with only a 3070. I want a 3080 at minimum for future-proofing reasons. If I bought one with a 3070 I'd need to upgrade it within only a year or two, not good enough. Buying a new midrange GPU (e.g. the 3070 right now) every year or two is by the biggest waste of money in this hobby. My standard practice is, every 3ish years go on ebay and buy the top-end card from 2 or 3 generations ago. When I built my current rig I used a GTX 460 from my previous PC, when Nvidia released the 900 series I bought 2x GTX 680 for a very good price, when they released the RTX 2xxx series I bought 2x 980 Ti for a very good price. This has saved me so much money and still allows me to have quite powerful GPU hardware, and I will continue with this method in future. GPUs are like cars, the second you buy a new one it loses half its value.

A complete system with a 3080 is at least £2k which is a bit high. If I could find one for around £1500-1600 I'd happily sell my current rig whole and buy that, but I can't find anything prebuilt with a 3080 for less than £2k. I'd rather go ahead as originally planned, keep using my 980 Tis and wait a year or two for the GPU market to sort itself out.

Regarding SLI, yes I know it's becoming less and less supported, but right now more than 50% of the games I play regularly do still support it just fine. However this will be my last SLI GPU setup, when I upgrade I will buy a single card and ditch SLI for good.
 
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One more thing, serveral people recommended different CPU options but nobody actually answered my question (no.3 from original post). Could someone actually answer my question please and explain exactly what the difference is so I can make my own decision as to which CPU fills my needs and represents the best value.
 
Ormy1 said:
A few people have said stick to 2 DIMMs rather than use 4 because CPUs don't play well with 4 DIMMs. I've built half a dozen PCs starting in the DDR2 days, all had 4 DIMMS, none had any problems. Is this a new thing?
Click to expand...

Most systems have dual channel RAM so even with 4 slots you only benefit up to 2 sticks in terms of performance. Above that it makes no difference to speed. Buying 2 is generally recommended as it means you can easily double your RAM in future by adding two more sticks whereas if you have 4 it means having to replace them all when upgrading.

Ormy1 said:
GPUs are like cars, the second you buy a new one it loses half its value.
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Right now you should think of high end GPU's more like exotic niche hyper cars. They're so rare and the waiting list is so long that when you buy one it's immediately worth twice what you paid for it on the second hand market :D
 
Ormy1 said:
One more thing, serveral people recommended different CPU options but nobody actually answered my question (no.3 from original post). Could someone actually answer my question please and explain exactly what the difference is so I can make my own decision as to which CPU fills my needs and represents the best value.
Click to expand...
11600 - inteegrated graphics no overlocking

K series chip allows overclocking on a z motherboard.

F means no intergrated graphics

Kf overclocking without intergrated graphics.
 
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