Help with upgrade specs

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18 Apr 2007
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12
It's been a while since I've done anything other than browse these forums but I'm after some advice.

I am currently running a i7 3770K, 16GB Ram, 970GTX setup with a pair of 200GB SSDs I'd like to upgrade.

Whilst its served me well for 8 years I think it's due an upgrade, and with the new RTX cards and Zen3, it may be worth basically binning all but the case and peripherals.

I use it as a general use dekstop, a bit of Visual Studio (no huge solutions), web browsing and I am ideally speccing it out to be good for VR flight simming (DCS, Condor2 and MSFS 2020).

My thoughts so far are; Ryzen 5900X, MSI B550 Tomahawk, 32GB DDR4 (3600?), a 1TB M2 drive and a RTX3080.

I'm pretty open to suggestion here, and the build it aiming to be solid for the next 5+ years as my current one has been. I'd like to buy well, and don't mind spending on good bits where it's going to make a difference, but maybe not spending on the best of everything for the sake of it? (This seems particularly easy to do with memory and motherboard chipsets), but then I don't want to buy junk either.

So if you guys can help with suggestions for particularly memory, an M2 SSDs that'd be great, also a PSU recommendation would be great, as my current 550W probably won't cut it!

The RTX3080 sounds good, but I have some concern that with only 10GB VRAM it may not actually be so wonderfull if I end up with a VR headset as is currently the plan for flightsims.

(Also open to the idea of i9 10850..., but think Zen3 5900X is probably the way to go)

Many thanks!
 
12 core is somewhat lot for general usage, though certainly the best bet for longest usability without upgrades.
Anyway availability will be early in next month...
Though who knows if you can get 3080 for Christmas with at least semi paper launch.
Jensen himself admitted it might be months before they can make enough cards.
So there's even chance of AMD's RDNA2 cards becoming better available earlier.

For CPU cooler Alpenfohn Brocken 3 would be good one for £43.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpenfohn-brocken-3-cpu-cooler-140mm-hs-05a-al.html
Assuming your case can fit 165mm high cooler.
If that's too high Scythe Mugen 5 would be actually little heavier.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/scythe-scmg-5100-mugen-5-rev.b-cpu-cooler-hs-046-sy.html
(might need straightening cooler's base for best performance with Ryzen)


For motherboard £150 level B550 boards like that Tomahawk are good bang per buck choises with PCIe v4 for graphics card.
£200 gets all PCIe v4 X570 board.

For memory we don't yet know certainly what's the optimal/bang per buck speed for Zen3, but 3600MHz would be certainly good.


M.2 drive WD Blue SN550 is bang per buck choise for 1TB at £109.
After that price jumps £30 with Corsair MP510 for full speed PCIe v3 drive.

PSU availabiltiy is pretty darn sporadic at the moment because of Corona virus.
Though Phanteks AMP is well priced 10 year warranty
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/phanteks-amp-750w-80-plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-09r-pt.html
 
slight cheaper, even when MSI not on sale and better support/RMA

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-b550-aorus-elite-amd-am4-b550-atx-motherboard-mb-58v-gi.html

If you went ryzen 3900x then you'd get free pcie 4.0 500gb form giigabyte, OCUK currently not dooing that deal yet but hopefully soon. Though performance of Zen3 is hard to ignore :D Pricing though, specially 5800x is hard one to bite!

personally load up on 4000hz ram or 3600hz kit like Viper that can overclock to it

also RTX will have RTX IO in the future along with MS directStorage so shoould hellp with vram :) Hence you'll see a big push fill full pcie 4.0 m.2 next year . MS doesn't like sony stealing some limelight off new xbox with PS5 IO speeds.

you might end up with RX6*** :)
 
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