Intel or AMD for my new build?

DaYteX

DaYteX

DaYteX

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Joined
7 Dec 2009
Posts
50
Hi, I wonder if you guys might be able to help. I've been wanting to upgrade my PC for months now. I've waited so i can grow my budget. I'm looking to upgrade in the next few weeks but I'm unsure of what is the best use of my money.
My budget is £1200-£1500 tops, I'm only replacing the motherboard, CPU, ram and graphics card. I really want to add my graphics card to my water loop. No real reason why other than it looks good and i wanted to try something different on this build.
My PC is used for gaming mostly FPS and simulators and I'd not be looking to change again for at least 2 yrs.
I'm considering Intel and AMD. In the past I've tended to go for AMD due to price, with this build i have a little more money to play. My last Intel CPU was a Pentium 2 so you could say I'm AMD at heart but I'm open for a switch.

What do you guys think is the better choice of the two lists below? Have I made and school boy errors? are there better parts i could use at the same price?

Or am I way off and you could spec me a better build in my budget?

Intel

MSI Z370 Krait Gaming Intel Z370 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Stock Code MB-32E-MS
£149.99*


Intel Core i7-8700K 3.7GHz (Coffee Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail
Stock Code CP-63R-IN
£398.99*


Team Group Dark Pro "8Pack Edition" 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C16 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/
Stock Code MY-08Q-TG
£209.99*


Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 Gaming RGB 8192MB GDDR5X PCI-Express Graphics Card (GV-N1080G1 GAMING-8
Stock Code GX-184-GI
£548.99*


EK Water Blocks EK-FC1080/ 1070/ 1060 GTX Strix Nickel + Plexi
Stock Code WC-9AS-EK
£104.99*


EK Water Blocks EK-FC1080/ 1070/ 1060 GTX G1 Gigabyte Backplate - Black
Stock Code WC-9B7-EK
£27.95*

Total of £1452


AMD

AMD Ryzen 7 Eight Core 1700X 3.80GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail
Stock Code CP-39W-AM
£319.99*


Asrock X370 Killer SLI AMD X370 (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Stock Code MB-151-AK
£149.99*


Team Group Dark Pro "8Pack Edition" 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C14 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/
Stock Code MY-08L-TG
£188.99*


Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 64 8GB HBM2 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Stand Alone
Stock Code GX-387-SP
£499.99*


EK Water Blocks EK-FC Radeon Vega - Nickel
Stock Code WC-9GH-EK
£104.99*


EK Water Blocks EK-FC Radeon Vega Backplate - Black
Stock Code WC-9GM-EK
£26.99*

Total £1302

I've been doing loads of research online but Im still none the wiser
 
@DaYteX

Windforce 1080, shares smart PCB as G1.
All 1080 hit the same underwater but gigabyte allow cooler removal- see rep post
Phanteks block has full RGB that can be connected to the Aorus board
3200 8 pack ram can hit 4000hz , saves a bit of cash

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,503.01
(includes shipping: £11.10)



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@orbitalwalsh
Noobish question but are you saying if i go for the GPU you suggested instead it will hit the same MHz when its watercooled? I'm assuming ill have to overclock this I've never done it before will it be hard or straight forwards?
Your suggestion for the water block change is that purely for the RGB thing or is there another advantage. my water loop now is all ek.
 
DaYteX said:
@orbitalwalsh
Noobish question but are you saying if i go for the GPU you suggested instead it will hit the same MHz when its watercooled? I'm assuming ill have to overclock this I've never done it before will it be hard or straight forwards?
Your suggestion for the water block change is that purely for the RGB thing or is there another advantage. my water loop now is all ek.
Click to expand...

All Nvidia gtx 1000 cards boost higher then what's officially stated , least 1900hz and can get to 2 or 2.ghz manually doing it which is easy to be honest .
Block had RGB and allows you to keep stock backplate, some cards have lovely numbers like this one.

Asus Ryzen build - warranty voided on Strix card though

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,460.01
(includes shipping: £11.10)





And then.... The power house !!! Ryzen 1700 and gtx 1080 Ti. Gaming 3 will clock Ryzen same speed as x370 boards. Ram is plug and play with XMP enabled

All though, might be overkill...

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,462.06
(includes shipping: £11.10)



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Card has 4 year warranty- also strong Gigabyte rep presence on here

Worth checking out the card on YouTube

What's your screen Res or screen you might be considering - Ti and 1080 could be a bit over the top or if your screen has Freesync, the wrong card for the job

Gtx 1080 will easily do 1440p 144hz whilst the Ti will last longer at the Res or drive 3440x1440 100hz wide screens​
 
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is it good to mix Nvidia and AMD together. Many many years ago i have issues mixing the two?

My screen res is only 1080p a new monitor is on the table but i cant for the next year or two. The misses knew I wanted a new one and bought me one for xmas last year i didn't have the heart to tell her I wanted a 4k monitor.

I've never been successful at overclocking would it be worth going for the 1800x in that case and spending the extra money? or is the 8700x a better cpu. it have less cores but seems to get better FPS over the ryzen
 
It's all fine now . Money is money so the more a companies GPU can work with other hardware , more they stand to make etc etc

If it's 1080p and I guess your other half has bought it , will be 60hz ... You can run a 1060 GTX just fine, play everything at ultra

The 8700k is the better core for hitting the maximum framers - notice my words there lol
1700+ is great for streaming , others can state from own findings and reviews 1600 performs the same in games. If your streaming or having to use a lot of thread application stuff the 1700 wins !
Overclocking isn't to hard, not now and so many reviews, articles and users on here that can help .
If you really want to avoid any overclocked ... I5 8400- it's the best performing CPU for cost Vs performance from Intel in a long time. Due to increase cores and speed. Slap this in a z370 board and fast ram to combat the lack of over clock speed to the K series chips , by simply going into bios and enabling XMP - sorted

1700x would be better then 1700 if you didn't want to overclock yourself
 
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I would go with AMD, I have a 1700x but I really do think 8+ cores is the future and game will start taking advantage of the extra cores soon. Even now though, it's great being able to render a video and play a game maxed out with no lag.
 
orbitalwalsh said:
It's all fine now . Money is money so the more a companies GPU can work with other hardware , more they stand to make etc etc

If it's 1080p and I guess your other half has bought it , will be 60hz ... You can run a 1060 GTX just fine, play everything at ultra

The 8700k is the better core for hitting the maximum framers - notice my words there lol
1700+ is great for streaming , others can state from own findings and reviews 1600 performs the same in games. If your streaming or having to use a lot of thread application stuff the 1700 wins !
Overclocking isn't to hard, not now and so many reviews, articles and users on here that can help .
If you really want to avoid any overclocked ... I5 8400- it's the best performing CPU for cost Vs performance from Intel in a long time. Due to increase cores and speed. Slap this in a z370 board and fast ram to combat the lack of over clock speed to the K series chips , by simply going into bios and enabling XMP - sorted

1700x would be better then 1700 if you didn't want to overclock yourself
Click to expand...

I don't think I use lots for thread applications. Its mainly gaming i'd use it for. my current fx-9590 really cannot play newer more cpu hungry games. battlefield 1 for example max is about 60fps and the heat is crazy cause its working full load for such long times.
I'm thinking graphics card will be 1080, I know you say its over kill for my monitor at 1080p 60hz but this one will be accidentally dropped at some point next year I'm sure. I really wanted to water cool my card i have a real bug for wanting to do it. If i don't change my current card now (rx580) ill have to mess around with my loop then and id rather do it now. While typing this out it dose seem like abit of a waste of money tho.

CPU Im really confused about. the 1700x owners give great reviews on it like ELiTECH above. However reviews and comparison sites say its not as good as the I7-8700k. On paper 8/16 is better than 6/12 so why is the 8700k coming up better for games.
and like ELiTECH said will developers soon make use of the extra cores living the 8700k just as useless as my fx-9590 is now.

Ive now got an idea in my head of spending the £1500 on a threadripper set up and keeping my current gfx card for the time being. Then in a year or so change my monitor and GFX card and keep everything else for at least 5 yrs. Or will this threadripper simply become redundant too soon or not work with a mid range graphics card?

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,470.46
(includes shipping: £10.50)



​
 
DaYteX said:
I don't think I use lots for thread applications. Its mainly gaming i'd use it for. my current fx-9590 really cannot play newer more cpu hungry games. battlefield 1 for example max is about 60fps and the heat is crazy cause its working full load for such long times.
I'm thinking graphics card will be 1080, I know you say its over kill for my monitor at 1080p 60hz but this one will be accidentally dropped at some point next year I'm sure. I really wanted to water cool my card i have a real bug for wanting to do it. If i don't change my current card now (rx580) ill have to mess around with my loop then and id rather do it now. While typing this out it dose seem like abit of a waste of money tho.

CPU Im really confused about. the 1700x owners give great reviews on it like ELiTECH above. However reviews and comparison sites say its not as good as the I7-8700k. On paper 8/16 is better than 6/12 so why is the 8700k coming up better for games.
and like ELiTECH said will developers soon make use of the extra cores living the 8700k just as useless as my fx-9590 is now.

Ive now got an idea in my head of spending the £1500 on a threadripper set up and keeping my current gfx card for the time being. Then in a year or so change my monitor and GFX card and keep everything else for at least 5 yrs. Or will this threadripper simply become redundant too soon or not work with a mid range graphics card?

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,470.46
(includes shipping: £10.50)



​
Click to expand...

If you were rendering from the CPU, thread ripper hands down ! Gaming , an i5 8400 or Ryzen 1600 would do better or the same for fraction of the price .

The reason why Intel beats or matches Ryzen with less cores and threads is because it has better IPC and IMC - instructions per cycle and memory controller .
AMD tried to go mass Cores with FX and failed. Ryzen has much better IPC then before by still behind Intel, but it's able to have more cores which all adds up
 
orbitalwalsh said:
If you were rendering from the CPU, thread ripper hands down ! Gaming , an i5 8400 or Ryzen 1600 would do better or the same for fraction of the price .

The reason why Intel beats or matches Ryzen with less cores and threads is because it has better IPC and IMC - instructions per cycle and memory controller .
AMD tried to go mass Cores with FX and failed. Ryzen has much better IPC then before by still behind Intel, but it's able to have more cores which all adds up
Click to expand...

OK well threadripper is out the window then. Im thinking ill give Intel a try as its been years since i list tried them. If however I did go for AMD whats the real difference between x370 and B350 chipset. i read once x370 is better for overclocking but for me thats something I wouldnt really do much off.
 
I think (and stand to correction here) that the primary difference is that the X370 offers dual GPU support and extra Sata/USB3.1. The other less obvious differences are better VRM's and voltage stability for extreme overclocking.

However, both should be able to overclock to 3.8/3.9 Ghz. It is only to get the 4Ghz+ clocks where the X370 would offer a clear cut advantage and of course multi GPU support of you want to go that way.
 
If your cashing numbers and have a budget for hero or Taichi board since they are the best.
Gaming 3 and Strix is the board for anyone on a budget or wanting all cash to go towards the Best GPU they can get , which is £120 saving from x370 flagship to b350 flagship
 
So this is what Im thinking of

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,542.00
(includes shipping: £11.10)



​

The CPU has less cores but it seems its better for gaming and that's really what it will be used for. One game I play that's pretty CPU hungry is Arma when in editor mode there is a lot of AI that the CPU needs to control i'm guessing this is still good for that.
I'm going for Gigabyte graphics card as i wont invalidate the warranty fitting the water block right? dose this apply to any gigabyte card? I've also stuck to the EK water block, one because the rest of my loop is EK but also the phanteks has RGB and my system is all white so id never use the colours. I've not chosen a backplate would i need one or is it optional?
Motherboard I chosen costs more than i was planning. I've picked it due to look (no silly lights everywhere) but also If i figure out how to overclock anything i wanted a board that was up to the job.
Ram I went with as you said it can easily hit 4000mhz?

What dose enabling the XMP thing do?

Is there anything here that is a waste of money?
 
haszek said:
Or you can get msi 1080 which comes already with ek block and backplate and it comes out a bit cheaper :)
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...oled-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-32f-ms.html
Click to expand...
yeah i saw that one a while back it was on here for about £520 at the time. my only issue with that was that in a year or so and i went to sell it on I'd probably not get very many people interested in it. where as if i put the air cooler back on it I think id be able to sell it on for a much better price.
 
DaYteX said:
So this is what Im thinking of

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,542.00
(includes shipping: £11.10)



​
Click to expand...

You will not be disappointed with that if it’s your order. With that board and Ram you have a solid basis to get a decent clock in your chip too, overall pretty solid
 
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