Looking to upgrade my current setup, been out of the game for awhile!

David Northmore

David Northmore

David Northmore

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Joined
30 Dec 2018
Posts
5
Hi there!

Hope I can get some help on this, it's been a long time since I've kept any close eye on the current parts market and I'm looking to upgrade my current gaming rig especially as I do a lot of VR gaming.

Here are my current specs:

System
  • CPU
    Intel Core i9 7900X 4500MHz Skylake-X
  • Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Rampage VI Apex
  • RAM
    HyperX Predator HX424C12PB3/8 Memory 2400 MHz DDR4 (4x 8GB / 32GB)
  • GPU
    Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming OC 11264MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card
  • Case
    Corsair Graphite 760T V2 Windowed Full Tower Case - White
  • Storage
    Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (OS)
    Samsund SSD 970 Evo Plus 1TB (Gaming Storage)
    Samsung SSD 840 Evo 120GB (backup drive)
    Seagate ST2000DM001 2TB SATA III Performance Hard Disk Drive (Backup Drive)
    Western Digital WD10EADS-00L5B1 3.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive 1TB Caviar Green 7200 32MB (Misc use drive)
  • PSU
    Corsair Professional Series HX 1200W '80 Plus Platinum' Modular Power Supply
  • Display(s)
    Asus ROG Strix XG32V Curved Gaming Monitor (Main Monitor)

    Acer Predator XB281HK 4k (2nd monitor)
  • Cooling
    2 x Noctua Fans + 2 Fan AIO cooling system (can't recall name at this time)
  • Operating System
    Windows 10 64bit

While I'm pretty loyal to Intel, I have heard that AMD have been doing decently in the CPU game, I don't think I need to upgrade my GPU but any advice is greatly appreciated!
 
Your PC seems decent enough as it is.
It is a terrible time to upgrade gpu's!

For cpu etc, if I were you I would wait ~12 months until amd's zen4 arrives.
The market is also moving to a new ram standard ddr5, and zen4 will be the first amd chipset which supports it.
 
I found that I seem to get major FPS drops in a lot of VR games as well as desktop games (such as Hell Let Loose), I know my GPU is fine but I feel that I'm being throttled somewhere performance wise.
 
David Northmore said:
I found that I seem to get major FPS drops in a lot of VR games as well as desktop games (such as Hell Let Loose), I know my GPU is fine but I feel that I'm being throttled somewhere performance wise.
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My first impressions was the same as @EdwardTeach but if your convinced its the cpu causing frame drops then an 8 or 12 core ryzen would be my choice.

You could reuse your 2400mhz memory or upgrade to 3600mhz.

Intel Alderlake due to be released later this year with ddr5 support.
 
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I’d probably just up memory speeds and drop in an RX6900XT. AMD’s RDNA2 GPU’s run really well with Intel systems. Much better than Nvidia RTX parts.
 
You're very likely looking at £600 minimum if you want to upgrade just the base cpu, motherboard and ram to something like a Ryzen 5800X..

With that PC you really shouldn't have any slowdowns unless they are heat/throttling related!
 
keenan said:
You're very likely looking at £600 minimum if you want to upgrade just the base cpu, motherboard and ram to something like a Ryzen 5800X..

With that PC you really shouldn't have any slowdowns unless they are heat/throttling related!
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This is the general response I've been getting, but I don't think its heat related. I'd setup my RGB as a makeshift heat gauge, red = 80+ and I've never seen it hit that when gaming.

I do have some old storage in this setup, maybe that could be contributing to the bad frames and slow response?

And could the motherboard be throttling the performance at all?
 
David Northmore said:
This is the general response I've been getting, but I don't think its heat related. I'd setup my RGB as a makeshift heat gauge, red = 80+ and I've never seen it hit that when gaming.

I do have some old storage in this setup, maybe that could be contributing to the bad frames and slow response?

And could the motherboard be throttling the performance at all?
Click to expand...

There could always be a small chance of slowdowns running a game from an old mechanical harddrive if it's not functioning properly..

As far as motherboard goes, throttling is highly unlikely as the vrm's normally function fine well over 100'C, but you could check..

Is your CPU overclocked? If so, is it 100% stable?

You could monitor the cpu temps/speeds with hwinfo while running something like Cinebench R20 and see if it overheats or throttles..
 
keenan said:
There could always be a small chance of slowdowns running a game from an old mechanical harddrive if it's not functioning properly..

As far as motherboard goes, throttling is highly unlikely as the vrm's normally function fine well over 100'C, but you could check..

Is your CPU overclocked? If so, is it 100% stable?

You could monitor the cpu temps/speeds with hwinfo while running something like Cinebench R20 and see if it overheats or throttles..
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I have used cinebench and everything looked alright, as for the OC that should be stable as its the profile that came with the pre-build originally from OCUK themselves.

Maybe a full on blitz clean and removing old HDDs could be a good first step?

And in regards to cooling, I could always improve it further so that it's ready for any future changes, any suggestions on that?
 
David Northmore said:
I have used cinebench and everything looked alright, as for the OC that should be stable as its the profile that came with the pre-build originally from OCUK themselves.

Maybe a full on blitz clean and removing old HDDs could be a good first step?

And in regards to cooling, I could always improve it further so that it's ready for any future changes, any suggestions on that?
Click to expand...

It might be a good idea to check the fans/radiators and make sure they're clean..

If it's been running for a while then in rare cases the waterblocks could also have build up inside of them, but this should easily reflect in the load temperature of either the CPU or GPU.

Also check the GPU temps as that could throttle your speeds as well.

No point in upgrading the cooling if it's sufficient at this point. For now, you should do troubleshooting to see where exactly the performance gets hampered!
 
David Northmore said:
So I have one of those all in one CPU block coolers, I've heard differing opinions on these where replacing the liquid is a good idea, where leaving it as is is the best idea. Any input on that?
Click to expand...

Just leave it as is, messing around with any of that might lead to even more issues..
 
David Northmore said:
Hi there!

Hope I can get some help on this, it's been a long time since I've kept any close eye on the current parts market and I'm looking to upgrade my current gaming rig especially as I do a lot of VR gaming.

Here are my current specs:

System
  • CPU
    Intel Core i9 7900X 4500MHz Skylake-X
  • Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Rampage VI Apex
  • RAM
    HyperX Predator HX424C12PB3/8 Memory 2400 MHz DDR4 (4x 8GB / 32GB)
  • GPU
    Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming OC 11264MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card
  • Case
    Corsair Graphite 760T V2 Windowed Full Tower Case - White
  • Storage
    Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (OS)
    Samsund SSD 970 Evo Plus 1TB (Gaming Storage)
    Samsung SSD 840 Evo 120GB (backup drive)
    Seagate ST2000DM001 2TB SATA III Performance Hard Disk Drive (Backup Drive)
    Western Digital WD10EADS-00L5B1 3.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive 1TB Caviar Green 7200 32MB (Misc use drive)
  • PSU
    Corsair Professional Series HX 1200W '80 Plus Platinum' Modular Power Supply
  • Display(s)
    Asus ROG Strix XG32V Curved Gaming Monitor (Main Monitor)

    Acer Predator XB281HK 4k (2nd monitor)
  • Cooling
    2 x Noctua Fans + 2 Fan AIO cooling system (can't recall name at this time)
  • Operating System
    Windows 10 64bit
While I'm pretty loyal to Intel, I have heard that AMD have been doing decently in the CPU game, I don't think I need to upgrade my GPU but any advice is greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

If you are buying new OS you may consider installing it on the nvme drive to benefit from better IOPS.
 
David Northmore said:
I have used cinebench and everything looked alright, as for the OC that should be stable as its the profile that came with the pre-build originally from OCUK themselves.
Click to expand...
Have you run Prime95 at different settings over night?
Most short tests are very unreliable for telling true stability of hardware.
Especially Cinebench would need some other simultaneously run stress test, because it doesn't stress "uncore" part of CPU and memory really any.

Also actual testing of water pipe cooler's functionality needs like 20-30 minutes long stress.
 
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