Spec me.

Emjay86

Emjay86

Emjay86

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Joined
2 Apr 2011
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1,075
Location
Wales
Hi guys,

My pc is desperately getting old now (about 10 years!) And is in need of an upgrade!

I am looking for a good mobo, cpu and RAM combo that preferably will last a good few years (I'm thinking possibly a 1151 socket? With a coffee make cpu?) And preferably the corsair vengeance ram, to go with my other icue stuff.

I will be watercooling the cpu, basically just switching straight over to what I have now, which is a 360 and 120 rad for my old i7-2600 Sandy bridge! It's overkill cooling because I also had 2 GTX 580's but eventually moved to a 970 that is happy with it's stock cooler.

I'm not overly rich or anything so I'm hoping to get something on a black Friday possibly and my eventual goal is to get a new corsair case that will again link up with my icue stuff.

I use my rig purely for gaming and unfortunately will be playing red dead 2 which I understand is a hog.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Intel is good if you want to change motherboard and socket multiple times per architecture.
Their clock simply hasn't said tick or tock in years.
LGA1151 is dead end with Intel bringing next year new socket for fourth rebranding of 6th gen Skylake architecture... And mighty extra two cores for up to 10 cores.
(because Intel's calculator can't add more than +2 cores at once)
"7th" gen Kaby Lake was nothing but clockspeed tweak and had no business of being anything but 6770K etc.
And coffee on Intel's pants, err in lake was just two cores more of the same, with second two cores being excuse for another "generation update".
Only reason it needed new motherboard was Intel's greed:
https://www.techpowerup.com/250109/...0-ghz-overclock-on-a-z170-chipset-motherboard

While AMD has 16 core Ryzen 3950X and also next year's Zen3 architecture CPUs will fit to current boards after BIOS update.
8 core/16 thread Ryzen 3700X is very good for bang per buck for high end.
For basic budget 3600X would give 6 core/12 thread.
And in couple years 12 core Zen3 should start to be priced well (AMD lowers prices of older models) giving good upgrade BIOS and swap CPU upgrade path.

At least upgrade to 8 core should be planned.
Year from now next-gen consoles bring basically underclocked 3700X as baseline for game developers to use.
Hence CPU requirements of heavier games will no doubt climb major amount after that.
Most of the existing games have been designed in four cores is high end Intel stagnation era and very few games can benefit from more than 6 cores.

And if supposedly new Intel CPUs are many years old in architecture, speculative code execution is even older design and like rotten house.
https://www.cbronline.com/news/new-intel-cpu-vulnerability
Search words are Meltdown, Spectre, Spoiler, Fallout, RIDL and Zombieload (no doubt missing one or two) if you want to Google about quality of Intel's work.
While despite of lot less resources and Zen uArch main design having been done well before these "side channel" attacks became known, AMD has avoided these vulnerabilities almost completely.


For motherboards there are few options starting from £100 level if you won't be going past 8 cores in CPU.
For higher core counts newer X570 chipset board with stronger CPU VRM would be good.

In memory 2x8GB would be good for now, but suspect in couple years heavier games need more.
After all fitting into old consoles has been design goal in most of the current games and next-gen consoles will at least double the memory.
So if not after the smallest budget 2x16GB would be better for many years into future.

Also if PSU is decade old also that should be replaced.

What kind budget you're planning to have?
 
It's an unfortunate state of affairs, but Intel have been recycling their tech for years. Now that AMD have made massive leaps within their performance and architecture, investing into Intel now would be a bad move.

If you're on a budget, this would be what you're looking at:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £370.43 (includes shipping: £10.50)
​
If you have a little more to spend:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £570.47 (includes shipping: £10.50)​


If you need another SSD, google 'Sabarent Rocket'. Their 1tb NVME drives are outstanding price/performance atm.
 
Thanks for the info so far guys, really helpful.

I've heard a few things about Intel not being so great but I've always heard that AMD is the poor man's CPU too. Coupled with hardware reviews still stating Intel are the better hardware I've just stuck with them.

I'm currently running an i7-2600k which has done me fine but I've noticed a bit of slowing down with some games lately and the minimum specs for red dead 2 was pretty much what my CPU is so I now know it's time to change.

I'm terrible for my loyalty and as such I've become a fanboy of Intel, Nvidia and corsair. Perhaps it's time to look out of the box a bit, at least with CPU to start!

I've got 2 SSD and 2 HDD so I'm all good for that. I literally just need the mobo, cpu and RAM combo with a water block for the cpu (likely to be the corsair iCUE one).

Thanks again foe the feedback thus far, definitely given me something to mull over!
 
Emjay86 said:
Thanks for the info so far guys, really helpful.

I've heard a few things about Intel not being so great but I've always heard that AMD is the poor man's CPU too. Coupled with hardware reviews still stating Intel are the better hardware I've just stuck with them.

I'm currently running an i7-2600k which has done me fine but I've noticed a bit of slowing down with some games lately and the minimum specs for red dead 2 was pretty much what my CPU is so I now know it's time to change.

I'm terrible for my loyalty and as such I've become a fanboy of Intel, Nvidia and corsair. Perhaps it's time to look out of the box a bit, at least with CPU to start!

I've got 2 SSD and 2 HDD so I'm all good for that. I literally just need the mobo, cpu and RAM combo with a water block for the cpu (likely to be the corsair iCUE one).

Thanks again foe the feedback thus far, definitely given me something to mull over!
Click to expand...

So first of all just ignore what the "reviewers" are saying. There is a small chance that Intel has paid them for their reviews (not unlikely) but brand hating definitely comes from having being paid (IMO) . There was a time that Intel were hands down the best CPU for choice. This is however going back to the AMD Bulldozer/Piledriver days.

AMD have really pulled their finger out now and have the best chips on the market. If you're interested, there are reviews out there that show the 3700x outperforming Intels 9900k (and the 3700x isn't even AMDs top offering). Intel also have a new line of CPUs coming out soon and indicated a new socket will be required ( :rolleyes: ). AMD on the otherhand have 4xxx series coming out soon which will run on the existing AM4 socket. It would be madness to invest with Intel at this point in time.

nVidia have the same issue, they just regurgitate, but they do innovate. There are budgets cards from both AMD and nVidia that suite gaming needs. Mainly, the 1660Super for 1080p and the 5700x for 1440p+. It just depends on budget and monitor.
 
Thanks for the further info. I'll be picking an AMD CPU then I guess!

I'll stick with my Nvidia for now though as I'm eyeing up an RTX as a later goal, with a wide-screen curved monitor...

I'm willing to save for them and don't need them immediately so I can be patient.
 
Emjay86 said:
I'll stick with my Nvidia for now though as I'm eyeing up an RTX as a later goal, with a wide-screen curved monitor...
Click to expand...
Buying current card for raytracing for future proofing is bad idea.
RTX cards suffer major performance penalty from use of raytracing.
Pretty sure bet that next GPU generations will make current cards look slow in it.
That's been the norm for most products bringing some new feature/tech.

I would say that the time to buy card for longer time will be year from now.
Nvidia likely has new cards out for summer, but bang per buck is more likely toward gangbanged to butt.
After that AMD should have new raytracing architecture GPUs out, possibly with release or product announcement at summer like current Navis.
Next-gen consoles will be using that GPU architecture.
So it's sure bet after that games will fit well for it when most games are made as multiplatters.
 
EsaT said:
Buying current card for raytracing for future proofing is bad idea.
RTX cards suffer major performance penalty from use of raytracing.
Pretty sure bet that next GPU generations will make current cards look slow in it.
That's been the norm for most products bringing some new feature/tech.

I would say that the time to buy card for longer time will be year from now.
Nvidia likely has new cards out for summer, but bang per buck is more likely toward gangbanged to butt.
After that AMD should have new raytracing architecture GPUs out, possibly with release or product announcement at summer like current Navis.
Next-gen consoles will be using that GPU architecture.
So it's sure bet after that games will fit well for it when most games are made as multiplatters.
Click to expand...

So are you suggesting a Radeon instead of Nvidia too?

I've launched red dead this afternoon and my graphics are garbage. It seems I have finally succumbed to the gtx 970 only using 3gb of V Ram as in-game it allows me to use up to 2860 ish V Ram... looks like I'll need a GPU sooner than expected too!
 
Emjay86 said:
So are you suggesting a Radeon instead of Nvidia too?

I've launched red dead this afternoon and my graphics are garbage. It seems I have finally succumbed to the gtx 970 only using 3gb of V Ram as in-game it allows me to use up to 2860 ish V Ram... looks like I'll need a GPU sooner than expected too!
Click to expand...
If wanting value for money it's best to buy now card with good performance per price.
And RX 5700 / 5700 XT are pretty darn good in bang per buck:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_rx_5700_and_5700_xt_review,13.html
With 980 Ti being really low in that table it's obvious that GTX970 wouldn't compare in much any way and that you can get huge increase to performance with very reasonably cost.
 
Hi Guys,

Thanks hugely for the info thus far.

As we are nearing black friday i'm still rather confused at what my best options are. I have done reading elsewhere and all i keep reading is that CPU wise the intel chips 8th and 9th gen are still better for gaming than the AMD, from 5-15% on 1080p (which is what im on).

Either way I feel i need to upgrade something. My GPU is fine for now but I really do like the raytracing stuff, that all said I have just read another article with someone stating they had a RTX 2070 that struggles to perform with the raytracing on, which isnt what I want either!

I should add my specs:

intel core i7 2600k @ 3.4ghz
Sandybridge 32nm technology
8.00GB dual-channel DDR3 @ 665mhz (9-9-9-24)
Gigabyte Technology co. ltd z68x-UD7-B3 (socket 1155)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970

Obviously my aging bits are my CPU, MOBO and RAM which are nigh on 10 years old now (or there abouts!)

I literally have no issue playing any games at a decent level/speed which is why I have not upgraded up until now. I understand however that I am on the cusp of my rig being obsolete and unable to run anything at all so I need to shift :)

Based on all of that, is it better for me to go for an upgrade bundle OR RTX GPU (that isnt crap!) in the black friday sales or am I better off leaving it until next year with the launch of next gen consoles?

I am looking to get some wear out of my components as money inst always available with me and usually will take a good while to save up.

Many thanks in advance!
 
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