So, I have made up my mind, ideally last 2 weeks of July, Im building a PC if I can (I have 2 weeks leave then)
My existing PC has served me well (Sandybridge E 3930K, 32G RAM, dual R290's (in x-fire) SATA SSD's and HDD's, but it is struggling now and I kept putting off an upgrade.
I guess the big question for me today (after seeing the price drop for the 7950X) is do I wait for AM5 refresh, or just go current AM5 and take advantage of the price drops as current AM5 is still a big upgrade I presume
I'm sure I saw someone on here say the B850 boards weren't as good as the B650, I remember v19 vs v21, I think some detail of the chipset, but I can't exactly remember. That also made me think current AM5
My main usage will be heavy photo and video editing with some gaming, mainly games that don't play well on the switch or steam deck, AOE4, Age of Mythology retold when it is released, CIV series, you get the picture.
After running a full tower case for all this time I need to reclaim space so Im going ITX with as much power as I can, this is what I was sort of looking at back in Dec 23 when I first started looking at this for costing (In todays prices.)
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Sixteen Core 4.9GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail £359.99
Asus ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 Mini ITX Motherboard £219.95 - could go to X670E for USB4
G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - B £239.98
Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card £998.99 (this does fit in the case)
Crucial T705 4TB NVMe PCIe Gen5 M.2 Solid State Drive £610.99 (could swap for Gen 4 to save cash)
Samsung 990 Pro 4TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 4.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive with Heatsink £350.00 - these go on the back of the mobo - do I need to worry about cooling?
Lian Li Galahad II Trinity SL-INF AIO 240mm ARGB CPU Water Cooler - Black £144.94 Not into RGB, will be turning it off, but this gets good reviews
Add to that Dan A4-H20 + 850W SFX PSU and Im looking at £3593.45 originally at Dec 23 prices!
Due to the case size, it seemed necessary for the 8TB of storage as I didn't want to have to rebuild or redo the cable management to add another 4TB in 6-8 months time. 8TB is 60% less than I have now.
32GB of RAM is probably fine, but Ive been running 32GB for years, if Im spending this much I want to feel like it is an upgrade
Could save cash on GFX, but having worked on projects using an Nvidia card elsewhere, the difference is night and day for GPU acceleration and CUDA of course. Maybe a 4070? Or have AMD improved that much?
It is going to be hard as OCUK have a lot of pre order stuff at the mo, ideally around the £2500 mark, though happy to go to 3K if needed.
My existing PC has served me well (Sandybridge E 3930K, 32G RAM, dual R290's (in x-fire) SATA SSD's and HDD's, but it is struggling now and I kept putting off an upgrade.
I guess the big question for me today (after seeing the price drop for the 7950X) is do I wait for AM5 refresh, or just go current AM5 and take advantage of the price drops as current AM5 is still a big upgrade I presume
I'm sure I saw someone on here say the B850 boards weren't as good as the B650, I remember v19 vs v21, I think some detail of the chipset, but I can't exactly remember. That also made me think current AM5
My main usage will be heavy photo and video editing with some gaming, mainly games that don't play well on the switch or steam deck, AOE4, Age of Mythology retold when it is released, CIV series, you get the picture.
After running a full tower case for all this time I need to reclaim space so Im going ITX with as much power as I can, this is what I was sort of looking at back in Dec 23 when I first started looking at this for costing (In todays prices.)
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Sixteen Core 4.9GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail £359.99
Asus ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 Mini ITX Motherboard £219.95 - could go to X670E for USB4
G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - B £239.98
Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card £998.99 (this does fit in the case)
Crucial T705 4TB NVMe PCIe Gen5 M.2 Solid State Drive £610.99 (could swap for Gen 4 to save cash)
Samsung 990 Pro 4TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 4.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive with Heatsink £350.00 - these go on the back of the mobo - do I need to worry about cooling?
Lian Li Galahad II Trinity SL-INF AIO 240mm ARGB CPU Water Cooler - Black £144.94 Not into RGB, will be turning it off, but this gets good reviews
Add to that Dan A4-H20 + 850W SFX PSU and Im looking at £3593.45 originally at Dec 23 prices!
Due to the case size, it seemed necessary for the 8TB of storage as I didn't want to have to rebuild or redo the cable management to add another 4TB in 6-8 months time. 8TB is 60% less than I have now.
32GB of RAM is probably fine, but Ive been running 32GB for years, if Im spending this much I want to feel like it is an upgrade
Could save cash on GFX, but having worked on projects using an Nvidia card elsewhere, the difference is night and day for GPU acceleration and CUDA of course. Maybe a 4070? Or have AMD improved that much?
It is going to be hard as OCUK have a lot of pre order stuff at the mo, ideally around the £2500 mark, though happy to go to 3K if needed.
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