Just got a big raise. Upgrade or New Start?

Loony BoB said:
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Tetras said:
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It's the height requirements which are going to be the big issue in finding a case, I had a higher height requirement (loft conversion, slanted roof) and even I struggled, adding in 'no top vent' is going to be painful because a lot of companies have gone top vent due to thermals.

EDIT: There's also nothing 'wrong' with going matx, I'm actually running a matx board.. you might lose an nvme slot and only have the option of 2 on the board instead 3. You will probably lose access to all the pcie slots due to the gpu but to be fair we're nearly doing that on atx these days but outside of those issues, as long as the matx isn't a budget option it should be fine imo. It will allow you to go smaller on the case.
 
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Tetras said:
The most affordable upgrade would be something like a 5600 (£140) or 5700X (£180) in your current motherboard and a 6700 XT (£380), but I'm guessing that's not ambitious enough in this circumstance.

Another upgrade option would be to max your board out with a 5800X3D (£330) and get a 4070 Ti or 7900 XT, which are both pretty capable options for 1440p.
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I was going to suggest something like the latter of those options for simplicity, but keep in mind B350 has slower PCI-E I think which could reduce performance a bit on GPUs like that, although I suspect it's not a huge differential.
I'd probably add a 2TB NVME drive too and get rid of the 500GB and possibly 1TB HDDs.
 
HangTime said:
I was going to suggest something like the latter of those options for simplicity, but keep in mind B350 has slower PCI-E I think which could reduce performance a bit on GPUs like that, although I suspect it's not a huge differential.
I'd probably add a 2TB NVME drive too and get rid of the 500GB and possibly 1TB HDDs.
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Yeah, I thought the same thing too.

OPs motherboard is just that little bit too old to be putting a 4070ti or 4080 into it. It would work but might be a bottleneck.
 
Yeah it feels kind of 'wrong' to be losing performance on a high end GPU, but one way of looking at it is that a 4070ti at 97% is going to be significantly faster than a 3080 in a PCI-E 4 motherboard which probably costs about the same and would be more hassle having to swap out the mobo.
 
Thankfully no matter what I end up with it'll be a big jump from my ol' reliable 980 :) It's served me very well I must admit, but definitely time to switch.
 
@Loony BoB - Just my 5 cents here.
  • If you want potential future upgrade path then the AMD platform is the way to go. They will support the current socket for at least another 2, and maybe 3 years like they have with the current gen. (look at the performance difference between your 1600x and a 5800x3d for gaming for example) which would allow for a potential CPU upgrade later down the line rather than a full new build. The intel platform will not be getting any new CPU's for it so is effectively end of life. Any future CPU upgrade would need a new motherboard.
  • Is there a game you play more than others, it might be worth looking at the performance of the GPU that you are going for in that particular game. (For example I mainly play COD and the 7900XTX is faster than the 4090 in this game)
  • Invest in a decent monitor or screen - Currently I have the 34 Alienware QD-OLED and its absolutely fantastic. This or maybe the LG 27inch OLED if you prefer the non Ultrawide format.
  • If it's gaming performance out the box and you can wait until April, the 7800X3D CPU would be the one to go for as it will beat or surpass the 13900k in most games out of the box, cost less and be on a more future proof platform.
  • Build it yourself - it's basically like Lego and there are some many youtube videos showing you how to do it, it is almost impossible to mess up.
  • Go overkill on the power supply - 1000w minimum.
 
Appreciate every cent anyone offers! :D Having said that, I have already reached out to OcUK and we're in discussions on a couple of things regarding case/cooling... I'm pretty settled at this stage on the internals. Still, I love a chat, and it never hurts to listen to free advice...

I generally will try to make my CPU & board last the full distance of roughly 5 years and then upgrade again, starting with the board if required, personally - current one gave me 6 years. I feel like I should get some strong distance with the Intel one, and based on what I'm hearing, the AMD side is struggling with RAM at present.

I definitely play a mixture of games, very across the board. I wouldn't worry about picking any specs based on that as a result of my love for variety.

Probably won't be waiting until April - once I start looking around, I tend to make my choice within a week and be done with it.

I can understand the sentiment of wantint to build it myself, I've built every PC I've owned since ~2004 or so, and I work in IT and have had more than my fair share of helping out the desktop team. Also had a couple of long term relationships during that time and built all the computers for them, too. It's not that I am scared or anything - I'm simply burnt out on it, and wouldn't mind the opposite novelty of having someone else do my work for once ;)

100% agree on the PSU. I'm going for 1000W, I think it should be overkill for the specs I've picked out.

Monitor is actually a pretty interesting thing to think about, I do feel my monitors are great for now though. Their main limitation is probably that they are 60Hz monitors, but honestly, I'm the kind of guy who will overload Rimworld and play the game at far lower fps than 60 at times, so I should be okay. I'm not much of a PVP gamer as well, which helps, as FPS is a little less important for single player games. Still, you never know what I'll switch up in the coming year...
 
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