Future Upgrade Path

ZeroG

ZeroG

ZeroG

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Joined
8 Feb 2014
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858
Location
Aberdeen
I've been thinking about what my future upgrade path might be to start working out costing etc. This is my current spec which is used mainly for gaming, including VR with an HTC Vive.

Motherboard: MSI X99A Sli-Plus
RAM: 16GB DDR4 @ 2400MHz
CPU: i7-5820k (Haswell-E)
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080Ti
Storage: 1x Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB (OS), 1x OCZ Vertex 2 120GB (Games), 1x WD 6TB (Games & Storage)

Now I know my GPU will last me a while yet so I've fine with that but wondered where it would be better to go motherboard/cpu wise? I hear AMD has really come on the last few years compared to Intel but haven't really looked into any of their offerings for many years.

I am looking to get a 1TB Sabrent Rocket NVMe drive so I can get more games on a fast SSD as the OCZ drive doesn't really hold many games. I was considering adding it into my current system but i don't know if it would slow down my GPU due to PCIe lane sharing?
 
I would switch to AM4 to take advantage of the Ryzen CPUs.

They are slower single-thread (so a few frames slower than Intel if you're using a 1080ti at 1080p), however massively superior at multi-threaded performance. They also draw far fewer watts from the wall.

AM4 has a great upgrade path, depending on where you enter - so if you got (for example) a 3600 today (6 cores, 12 threads) which should be enough in most current games at 1440p to avoid any bottlenecking with your 1080Ti, you could move all the way up to a 4000-series 3950 equivalent in the future (expected 16 cores, 32 threads; expected 15% IPC increase) if you wanted to upgrade your CPU in the future.

B450 motherboards are a good budget option, otherwise consider waiting for the new B550 boards in a few weeks. B450 board may (depending on the motherboard manufacturer) support Zen 3 (4000 series CPUs), B550 will support Zen 3 and maybe another generation of CPUs before AMD move to a new socket with DDR5.

A lot of this is speculation, and will likely turn out to be wrong, but such is the way in trying to guess at future hardware!
 
Intel haven't really moved on much from your CPU so I wouldn't go to Comet Lake. AM4 has a lot more cores available, so there's that, but personally i'd wait until there's something more exciting in a year or two.
 
Thanks for the replies. I think I will certainly have to look into AMD's current offerings and what is expected to come soon. I run 2x 27" monitors at 144Hz along with my 1080Ti so certainly interested in pairing those up with something that will drive future games.

I think my immediate future purchase I'm leaning to is the 1TB Sabrent Rocket NVMe but don't know if I want to make this for games only or also have Windows on it.
 
ZeroG said:
Thanks for the replies. I think I will certainly have to look into AMD's current offerings and what is expected to come soon. I run 2x 27" monitors at 144Hz along with my 1080Ti so certainly interested in pairing those up with something that will drive future games.

I think my immediate future purchase I'm leaning to is the 1TB Sabrent Rocket NVMe but don't know if I want to make this for games only or also have Windows on it.
Click to expand...
SSD for everything.
 
I'd be looking at a decent X570 motherboard, likely the MSI Tomahawk.

AMD are bringing out their 3000 series XT refreshes this month, so if they do the same for the 4000 series too that's in theory a fair few options for future cpus. E.g.
3900x
3900xt
4900x
4900xt

I have my Windows and games on the same drive and don't have any issues, mind you I don't have a large number of games installed.
 
I guess i should probably come up with some sort of budget then see what fits it at the time. Will need to look up which one would suit my purposes most I guess.

My currently installed Steam library is 2.2TB and that's just with a fraction of stuff installed heh so I'm gonna have to pick and choose what to install.
 
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