The 10 year upgrade project

kallope

kallope

kallope

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27 Jan 2010
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So after 10 years I feel its about time to upgrade my computer. My i7 920 was my first computer build and I have enjoyed using it over the years, but I feel its time to get with he times and enjoy some of that RGB goodness.

The case it will go into is the NZXT H500 and I have a Seasonic S12 520W power supply already. I enjoy gaming on the PC but also do photo and video editing.

Just wanted to check these parts by you all and make sure I wasn't missing anything or that the power supply will be enough.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,095.01 (includes shipping: £11.10)​
​

I do keep changing my mind over the motherboard. Keep swapping between the b450 and x570 motherboards as I probably won't be upgrading again for another 10 years lol.
 
Hi

If you don't mind dropping the overpriced cooler, ram and RGB fans you can get a 3700X for not much more. And as you mention longevity is important, the 8 core 3700X will last longer than the 6 core 3600. Also changed the gpu to the Gigabyte model for better RMA support should you need it.

I would also change the psu as the Seasonic S12II is pretty ancient by today's standards.


My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,102.98 (includes shipping: £11.10)
​
 
kallope said:
I have a Seasonic S12 520W power supply already.


Keep swapping between the b450 and x570 motherboards as I probably won't be upgrading again for another 10 years lol.
Click to expand...
Seasonic S12 (and S12II) was structurally outdated low end already decade ago.
Even DC-DC design M12D/S12D would be outdated low end in efficiency.
80+ Gold has been decency level over half dozen years and was actually surpassed equally long ago at top.


If you want durability and longevity just forget waterpipe coolers.
Besides being in average bad bang per buck marketing hype products, they have multiple eventual total cooling loss causing degradation/wear mechanisms:
- Pump is wearing part and when that fails CPU will be cooking up at idle.
- Also individual water molecules permeate through tubing at some rate, which depends on material and thickness of tubes.
And without adequate amount of coolant there won't be any heat transfer.​
- Also when coolant's biocides/corrosion inhibitors wear down there's danger of gunk and corrosion products starting to form in loop.​
(and absolutely worst case is leak killing PC)

In heatpipe cooler only failing capable part is easy and cheap to replace fan, whose failure doesn't eat all cooling power.
And in continuous cooling per noise high end heatpipe coolers are more than match for average waterpipe cooler.
Small and slim radiators simply don't have excess of surface area.
While water's heat capacity slows down temperature rise, all that heat has to be dissipated into air.
Actually that Scythe Mugen 5 makes average waterpipe cooler sweat blood after loop's heat capacity gets saturated.


All show, little bang would be per price result of that part list with those horribly overpriced RGB bling bling parts.
  • Only two cores more after decade would be only half step, especially when 6 cores/12 threads is now basic/starter level.
    Further before Christmas next-gen consoles will bring 8 cores/16 threads as base level with pretty much underclocked for energy efficiency 3700X as CPU!
    (actual high end is now 12+ cores)​
  • Only £25 more would start giving 2x16GB memory which would be actually good for that decade.
    Basic level 2x8GB shouldn't be budgeted any more than £80, unless you used rolled up banknotes to light up Christmas candles.
    (next-gen consoles will no doubt start rise in memory use of games and everything get constantly more bloated)​
While that Corsair's RGB bloatware would actually bog down PC:
https://youtu.be/NzAeAFudylI?t=6m10s


If you really want that towards 10 years usage life, then you should plan in CPU change to at least 12 core in few years.
That quad core didn't get hopelessly outdated already long ago simply because Intel completely stagnated advance the moment AMD fell behind.
As result of that especially game developers had no incentive to really look into how and for what to use high amount of cores.
Now that those things have been looked into, we can start expecting those new uses to scale also past 8 cores.
Also lots of things in especially video editing hogs cores like corrupt elite sucks society dry of money.

Actually improved Zen3 architecture should still be on DDR4 and current AM4 platform (don't see DDR5 arriving into consumer market fast enough) and that would also give boost to per core performance.

For that upgrade path and long usage X570 would certainly have benefits.
While not bad for the price B450 Tomahawk would need some case airflow for VRM to stay cool with heavily stressed high core count CPUs.
Stronger and modern design VRMs of proper X570 boards would handle 12/16 core without heating with only small cooling.
 
Thank you very much for the replies. Its greatly appreciated.

After considering what you have said Esat, it would probably be worth getting the most cores possible at this moment in time so that it lasts me for a long time.

With that in mind I have changed the basket for the below. I know the deal is with RGB ram, and the bloatware may slow me down, but when I was looking at the cpu, motherboard and 3600mhz ram, I couldn't seem to find anything cheaper than this. Would there be more benefit in looking at 2x16GB sticks of 3200mhz? if so, what would you recommend?

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,347.60 (includes shipping: £11.70)
​
 
Ryzen 3700x seem to be the sweet spot and most performance vs value/cost. Save yourself some pennies and get 32gb of memory

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-3700X/4044vs4043

Overclockers UK:[/b]
Total: £570.47 (includes shipping: £10.50)​
​

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kallope said:
Would there be more benefit in looking at 2x16GB sticks of 3200mhz? if so, what would you recommend?
Click to expand...
"Apples to apples" 3600MHz performs better than 3200MHz.
But if memory starts running out its speed doesn't matter anymore.
And heavier photo/video editing eats more memory than average games.
Whose memory consumption will no doubt start rising after next-gen consoles.
Unless you like minimizing number of background staff (closing browser etc) 16GB is starting to run short for heavier/modded games.
(games will never see all of that with PCs running bloated OS)

Also 16GB DIMMs being "dual rank" allowing command interleaving actually helps little in performance compared to 2x8GB 3200MHz.
 
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