New build - cpu thoughts please

[John J Sheridan]

So I currently have an Intel i5-11400F (6-core, 11th Gen) along with 64Gb DDR4 ram with an Asrock Phantom Gaming 4 (Z590) motherboard. It has been fine up to now but it is struggling with my Astrophotography where I might have several 1000 photos to stack.

The re-build will mostly be used for Astrophotography and a bit of light gaming - currently into RDR2.

Budget is max £2k - will be keeping current case, PSU, GeForce 4080 gpu and M.2 ssds so just looking for thoughts on cpu, ram and mobo please.

Thanks

 

[tamzzy]

I am assuming that the program you are using is heavily multithreaded, in which case then the obvious choice would be the Ryzen 9950x
However if the program is Intel biased then it'll be a toss up between the 14900(k) or the 285k

 

[Tetras]

Have you checked while monitoring your usage in e.g. task manager, that it is definitely the CPU that is the bottleneck and not e.g. the SSD?

Here's a baseline Intel spec:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-03111) = £379.99
• 1 x Intel Holiday Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows + Ubisoft Plus (SKU: DIG-INT-03637) = £0.00
• 1 x Asrock Z890 Pro-A (LGA 1851) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-03365) = £179.99
• 1 x Crucial Pro 96GB (2x48GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C46 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRU-01084) = £248.99
• 1 x Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE Black CPU Air Cooler (SKU: COO-TLR-03291) = £33.95

Total: £850.91 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

Here's a baseline AMD build:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Twelve Core 5.60GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-02675) = £449.99
• 1 x Asrock X870 Pro RS (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-03309) = £199.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO/XMP 96GB (2X48GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-03746) = £299.99
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE A-RGB White CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02666) = £39.95

Total: £997.91 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

I wouldn't know where to find benchmarks for what you do, but here's some PassMark numbers (single thread, multithread):

11400F: 2994, 17007
265K: 4802, 59312
9900X: 4684, 54744

 

[Havana_UK]

If you want to know a 16-core recommendation then:
My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Sixteen Core 5.70GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-02674) = £649.99
• 1 x Asrock X870E Taichi Lite (Socket AM5) DDR5 EATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-03304) = £374.99
• 1 x G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-GSK-01357) = £229.99
• 1 x Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE Dual Tower CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02723) = £36.95

Total: £1,299.91 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

Single thread: 4730
Multi thread: 66384

 

[jigger]

Some very heavily discounted Lenovo P620’s available just now.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Ryzen 9 7900X was below £300 last week and the Ryzen 9 7950X is available for around £400 and the X3D version is under £500. Spend the rest of the budget on some 4TB or 8TB high speed SSDs and a decent amount of RAM.

 

[John J Sheridan]

Thanks people for your replies.

Existing cpu is the bottleneck - when I'm running Siril I can see the cpu spiking at over 95% and sometimes the whole system freezes up for a while then carries on again.

Looking at the Intel 265K but worried as people are saying socket 1851 might be Arrow Lake only so no upgrade path for the future. The AMD AM5 socket looks a better bet. The 7950X is around £450 as against the newer 9950X at around £600 so can't see the logic going for the 9950X when it doesn't seem that much better than the outgoing 7950X ?

64Gb ram seems the obvious choice, or possibly 96Gb (2 x 48Gb) ?

I looked at SSD's using PCIe 5.0 but pretty expensive - already have gen 4 SSD's

 

[Tetras]

64Gb ram seems the obvious choice, or possibly 96Gb (2 x 48Gb) ?

96GB is a bit niche. You're well under budget though, so I don't see the harm, especially since current DDR5 doesn't much like running 4 sticks (particularly 4x dual rank sticks).

I looked at SSD's using PCIe 5.0 but pretty expensive - already have gen 4 SSD's

Yeah, pretty rare that SSD bandwidth is enough of a bottleneck to justify it.

The 7950X is around £450 as against the newer 9950X at around £600 so can't see the logic going for the 9950X when it doesn't seem that much better than the outgoing 7950X ?

I don't know where to find benchmarks for the kind of work you do, so it is difficult to say. Sometimes the difference between them is tiny, but it can grow to 20%+ with some workloads.