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i7-9700 -> 3700X, worth the bother/board cost?

Jimmy Weirdarms

Jimmy Weirdarms

Jimmy Weirdarms

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14 Aug 2017
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1,195
The never ending upgrade cascade...

We have a bunch of computers in the house, I'm upgrading one of them with a 5800x3d, which leaves a 3700x spare. There's also -
Living room games machine: i7-9700, 32GB DDR4, 2080Ti, Mini ITX
File server: i3-8100, 16GB DDR4, Mini ITX

I was thinking about upgrading the living room games machine with the 3700x, shuffling the 9700 into the file server and ditching the old i3. But I'd need to buy an AM4 mini ITX motherboard and to get a half decent B550 I'm looking at a couple of hundred quid, for a board that's already EOL.
Is it worth it? Is 9700->3700x more of a side-grade anyway? In which case maybe I should sell the 9700, its motherboard and the 3700x and get something better?

The file-server doesn't really need much more processing power, it's basically there to run zfs/git/samba and it does those things just fine already.
 
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For games it is pretty side-grade, yeah. For productivity it would be an upgrade.

One option if you sold both, would be to get a 13600K on a DDR4 board, though you might have to wait for B760 since all the ITX ones I can see are DDR5.
 
Any idea when B760 due to land?

I can see there are some ITX Z690 boards which aren't outrageous, I guess I would just need to make sure to get one which can do a BIOS flash without needing a 12th gen processor?
 
Jimmy Weirdarms said:
... In which case maybe I should sell the 9700, its motherboard and the 3700x and get something better?
Click to expand...

This is what I'd be inclined to do and pick up a cheapish 12400/12600(K) & B660 motherboard combo which should be dropping in price now and are great value gaming CPU's and a very nice improvement over both the 9700 and 3700X.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
5800x3d is a good drop in upgrade for someone who is already invested in am4 id personally not build a whole new system around it.
Click to expand...

Yeah so the 5800x3d is going into a my partner's existing AM4 gaming system - 3700X / MEG X570 UNIFY / 64GB / 2070S*
I wouldn't build a new system around it now either, but she has that good quality mainboard and 64GB of decent-ish RAM in there, so a full platform update is a much bigger proposition.

I also have my workstation - 5950x / MEG X570 UNIFY / 64GB / 1070ti
And then we have the living room machine/my gaming rig which is - i7-9700 / Some cheap ITX H310 / 32GB / 2080Ti
And the fileserver - i3-8100 / Some ITX H370 with 6*SATA / 16GB / iGPU

When the 5800x3d goes in, there's a spare 3700X. So the question was - should I put the 9700 in the fileserver and buy an ITX X570/B550 board for the living room machine to put the 3700X into for a relatively cheap** upgrade?

The answer seems to be either a) don't bother it's not much of an upgrade, buy beer instead or b) sell both the 3700x and the 9700, combine with what you were going to spend on a new board to get an even better board/CPU combo? Maybe a 13th gen i5 or something.

So yeah, agreed, buying a new motherboard to fit around a 3700X is actually probably an even worse idea than building a new machine around a 5800X3D! Ditch the older parts or don't bother.


(*yes, she's due a new GPU at some point, was going to wait a couple of months until the situation is a bit more stable on that front)
(**not that AM4 mini ITX boards are actually that cheap)
 
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9th gen Intel is better for gaming is it not? Probably more benefit to upgrading the file-server with the 3700x. However, I would most definitely choose the 'sell both' option for no reason other that that wonderful feeling of fresh hardware. I recently upgraded from a 9900k to a 13600K and my my, it is an incredible chip. So simple to undervolt and retain most of the performance. In fact, I have mine just slightly below a 12900k on multi threaded performance and it maxes its power draw at 120W, keeping it v.cool.
 
Have the 3700X, got it for both productivity and games, works good for both, mind you i'm gaming with a RX 6600 so nothing high end.
 
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