Thinking of an AM4 build to replace an aging 4770k build or does it have to be AM5?

[sastusbulbas]

Been out of the loop for a while, last couple of times I was going to uprade, I spent on other hobbies, as such my aging 4770k build is probably best being replaced sooner rather than later, and two of my kids have pretty much the same build as me, but less money to upgrade with being students. Our old 4770k builds are at teh bottom of the page.
We all play various games, use our PC's for music, study/work, the usual stuff. WiFi and spdif optical are usually required. Currently we all game at 1080p 120hz, but the lads are playing more modern game titles than I do, the oldest buying newer titles and struggling.
With the upcomming end of support for Windows 10 too, well I am keen for the old PC's to be upgraded so the W10 licences can be updatedd to Windows 11 I guess.

I was thinking of getting myself whatever the best AM4 board currently available is. I liked higher end boards in the past, power and reset buttons and so forth. SPDIF is a must, decent WiFi desired, I would love more than two NVME slots simply so I can ditch Sata as I use a 500gb OS drive, 4tb games drive, 4tb storage drive.

Initial thoughts for my own PC were based on an AMD 5800x which can be had for around £140 at the moment. But if the 5700X3D gives £60 of improved performance I would obviously consider that. Bear in mind I'm now an old man with three kids and don't think I need the latest greatest ultimate performance.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Crucial T500 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01089) = £74.99
• 1 x Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 Evo Dark CPU Cooler - 120 mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02667) = £19.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Eight Core 4.7GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3CB-AM) = £164.99
• 1 x Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WIFI II (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6J0-AS) = £149.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 32GB (2x16GB) 3600 MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Dual Kit (CMK32GX4M2Z3600C18) (SKU: MY-4CL-CS) = £49.99

Total: £459.95 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

But my head is going around in circles here, I am reading various reviews and opinions, AMD 5 is the must have, yet seeing benchmarks showing little difference considering the extra cost.
I read there is no benefit or point in going for the latest NVME gen 5 drives? So should stick with PCIe4 NVME drives? But should look at longevity based on TLC nand? So pretty much similar prices for DDR4 vs DDR5 and storage. And also wonder what does running more than two NVME drives do to the GPU's available lanes?

As an AM5 alternative, I was wondering if the following would be worth the extra cost. Around £300 more which is half the cost of a GPU. Are the performance gains going to be a noticeable quality of life improvement? Will I get to use three or four NVME drives without impacting on GPU performance?

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 9700X Eight Core 5.50GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-02676) = £299.99
• 1 x Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WIFI7 (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-GIG-03319) = £259.99
• 1 x Crucial T500 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01089) = £74.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO/XMP 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-00996) = £74.99
• 1 x Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 Evo Dark CPU Cooler - 120 mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02667) = £19.99

Total: £729.95 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

Next month I was thinking of getting an AMD 7800xt or 9070xt, thinking of maybe spending around £600 give or take. But not sure if I should watch for the 9060xt?
I was thinking the AOC 4k gaming monitor would be a monitor upgrade at some point to replace my ancient BenQ 1080p 120hz relic. I rarely play AAA titles, I may well in future, but primarily WoT, Warframe, Minecraft, old C&C titles and whatever the family want me to join in on.

I was not planning on using my old Phanteks case, possibly upgrading in future, but I have an old NZXT 510 non flow case I could use as a stop gap. I also have a spare Seasonic 650w Platinum PSU and Coolermaster 1000w Gold PSU, both boxed in the loft if I am better off rotating PSU's. Regarding coolers, again the Noctua U12s and U14s are here but can be upgraded to AM4/AM5 if I submit a bracket request upun purchasing and AMD CPU.


For the lads I was thinking of the following which can be had for around £375. They are currently saving with a goal of £300-£400 for the basic system, and will then save for their choice of GPU, not sure what will be affordable but they both want more than 8gb of vram. They are both studying with very little income. Not sure if there are better options or even an AM5 option here?

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Eight Core 4.7GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3CB-AM) = £164.99
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming B550-Plus WIFI II (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6HX-AS) = £134.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 32GB (2x16GB) 3600 MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Dual Kit (CMK32GX4M2Z3600C18) (SKU: MY-4CL-CS) = £49.99
• 1 x Kingston NV3 1TB PCI-e 4.0 NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive (SNV3S/1000G) (SKU: STO-KNG-02942) = £51.95

Total: £401.92 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

My PC
4770K, Asus ROG Z87 MicroATX, 16gb DDR3 2400, 500gb SSD, 4tb SSD, 4tb HDD, RX-590 8gb GPU, Seasonic 850w platinum PSU, Phanteks Enthoo Mini XL microATX case.
Lads PC
4770K, Gigabyte Z97 SOC ATX, 16gb DDR3 2133, 250gb SSD, 1tb SSD, 1tb HDD, RX-570 8gb GPU, NZXT C750w gold PSU, NZXT S340 ATX case.
Lads PC
4770k, Asus Z97I Plus MiniITX, 16gb DDR3 2400, 250gb SSD, 1tb SSD, 1tb HDD, RX-580 8gb GPU, Seasonic 650w Gold PSU, Silverstone TJ08B MicroATX case.

 

[tamzzy]

Wow, that's a lot of thought into it, and thank you, not many people would put that much detail.
but...what is the budget for each computer and what needs upgrading in each budget?

 

[mickyflinn]

For the lads.

You can get a 7600x for £145 ATM which I would jump on.

Gigabyte B650 EAGLE AX Motherboard £123​

32gb 6000mhz £80

 

[dfour]

ALso this bundle deal plus better cooling

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Crucial T500 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01089) = £74.99
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02665) = £29.99
• 1 x OcUK Gaming B69 Bundle - Ryzen 9 7900X MSI B650 32GB DDR5 (SKU: PRO-AMD-05331) = £499.99

Total: £604.97 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[Tetras]

AMD 5 is the must have, yet seeing benchmarks showing little difference considering the extra cost.

It depends on what CPUs you're comparing to. It isn't just about the performance though, but about the platform and future upgradability (of GPU, memory and CPU). AM4 is generally just a more limited platform with less connectivity and features and no upgrade path once you have the 5700X3D.

I read there is no benefit or point in going for the latest NVME gen 5 drives?

Correct. Massive file copies is the most obvious benefit, but that's no good unless you're copying to something fast.

As an AM5 alternative, I was wondering if the following would be worth the extra cost. Around £300 more which is half the cost of a GPU. Are the performance gains going to be a noticeable quality of life improvement? Will I get to use three or four NVME drives without impacting on GPU performance?

This is a complicated question and a lot of variables. First off: you are not comparing apples with apples, either with the CPU or the board. Something like a 7600X would be a more appropriate comparison, since it is available for a similar price and the board's connectivity is more closely related to A620/B840 or entry-level B650/B850 at this point.

In reference to the drives, that's another difficult question because X870 boards mess around with the M.2 slots due to USB4.

But should look at longevity based on TLC nand?

Absolutely.

Next month I was thinking of getting an AMD 7800xt or 9070xt, thinking of maybe spending around £600 give or take. But not sure if I should watch for the 9060xt?
I was thinking the AOC 4k gaming monitor would be a monitor upgrade at some point to replace my ancient BenQ 1080p 120hz relic. I rarely play AAA titles, I may well in future, but primarily WoT, Warframe, Minecraft, old C&C titles and whatever the family want me to join in on.

9060 XT is unsuitable for 4K gaming, no matter how good an upgrade FSR4 is. I'd be going for the 9070 or 9070 XT. That said, a 9060 XT would still be a great upgrade on a 590/580/570.

Regarding coolers, again the Noctua U12s and U14s are here but can be upgraded to AM4/AM5 if I submit a bracket request upun purchasing and AMD CPU.

Can't beat a freebie! Those can handle any current AM5 CPU for gaming, allowing for fan curve tweaking.

 

[sastusbulbas]

Wow, that's a lot of thought into it, and thank you, not many people would put that much detail.
but...what is the budget for each computer and what needs upgrading in each budget?

Kids (they are at college/uni but I still cal them kids) are currently saving up to a maximum of £400 for a motherboard/cpu/ram/nvme bundle. I was thinking of £400 to £700 on my own motherboard/cpu/ram/nvme bundle. I'm convincing my lads that saving for the motherboard bundle will give best bang for buck, allowing them to then save and add more storage and a better GPU later.

For the lads.

You can get a 7600x for £145 ATM which I would jump on.

Gigabyte B650 EAGLE AX Motherboard £123​

32gb 6000mhz £80

Good shout on the 7600x, though the cheapest B650 motherboard with a required spdif output for them is the Asus Prime B650 Plus WiFi at £140, could save money on the memory using B grade at around £60. So they have an AM5 option below £400 which is as good as anything they can do with AM4, superb.

ALso this bundle deal plus better cooling

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Crucial T500 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01089) = £74.99
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02665) = £29.99
• 1 x OcUK Gaming B69 Bundle - Ryzen 9 7900X MSI B650 32GB DDR5 (SKU: PRO-AMD-05331) = £499.99

Total: £604.97 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

Yeah, I almost pulled the plug on that yesterday, but it has no SPDIF output, which I need, the PC does a lot of music, via SPDIF into the DAC on a rack next to it.

As for the 12 core vs 8 core, I read somewhere something about 12 core being 6+6 core and not actually that better in some applications over a straight 8 core, can't find or remember the article though. The reality is pretty much any modern CPU will probably be a step up on a 4770K inc 6 cores.

It depends on what CPUs you're comparing to. It isn't just about the performance though, but about the platform and future upgradability (of GPU, memory and CPU). AM4 is generally just a more limited platform with less connectivity and features and no upgrade path once you have the 5700X3D.


2. This is a complicated question and a lot of variables. First off: you are not comparing apples with apples, either with the CPU or the board. Something like a 7600X would be a more appropriate comparison, since it is available for a similar price and the board's connectivity is more closely related to A620/B840 or entry-level B650/B850 at this point.

2. In reference to the drives, that's another difficult question because X870 boards mess around with the M.2 slots due to USB4.


9060 XT is unsuitable for 4K gaming, no matter how good an upgrade FSR4 is. I'd be going for the 9070 or 9070 XT. That said, a 9060 XT would still be a great upgrade on a 590/580/570.

1. Yeah, I think I am answering myself with the 1st question, in reality the the best option is AM5.

2. So the most difficult part is choosing an AM5 motherboard that suits my needs, multiple NVME drives would be great, plenty of USB ports, longevity so Guess PCI gen 5 may some day be worthwhile, SPDIF out, built in IO shield, WiFi 7 seeing as it's the newest? Not much out there providing more than three nvme slots with built in heat sinks on the MB. For the most features and IO connectivity it seems X870E beats everything else hands down for a premium?

3. Yeah, the 9070/9070xt seems to be the one to go for, though the 7900xt is tempting with 20gb of vram and less cost.

So back to working out what AM5 motherboard and CPU I may want. Tempted to spend more than a normal person should on the motherboard and re-think the CPU, even thinking the better motherboard with a 7600x may do me, with the provision that if the lads are short I then upgrade and donate the 7600x to one of them, I will be upgrading the case and fitting another cooler later anyway.

I used Asus ROG motherboards right up until the Gigabyte Z97 SOC, I liked these motherboards mainly for the build quality, connectivity, occasional builds without a case connected, I found those power and reset buttons quite handy, they were more pemium motherboards in their day. The current motherboards with similar features and multiple ports seem to be around the £350 plus mark, not sure if I would come across as an idiot for desiring something that cost £440, but love the idea of all the features of the Gigabyte Aorus Master and Asus ROG Strix X870e motherboards.
Though I do intend most likely on a midrange GPU and CPU at some point, I wouldn't feel as good upgrading a £140 motherboard with a £440 cpu, and I think that something like an AMD 9800 X3D would be my limit if I get into more AAA titles. Yet as much as I understand even a 7600x in a £140 motherboard will blow me away, the lack of drive slots, build quality and therefor me wanting to upgrade onto that £140 motherboard, that desire may be reduced.
My idea regarding the 5700X3D in a B55O ROG Strix was simply build it and no upgrades until its neeing a new platform.
I've just went from thinking I could build an AM4 system for around £400+ to replace my ancient PC, to thinking a £400+ AM5 motherboard would be a better long term investment.

Would I be far off if I felt a modern £400 motherboard is in build terms equal to what cost £200 13 years ago? I think I paid around £180 for the MicroATX Z87 ROG MB, and the Z97 SOC around £200.

Are there preferred brands these days for RMA, warranty etc? Or is it all pretty much the same?



For the lads I think the 7600x with a B650 motherboard is a good idea. I am sure the Kingston 1tb NVME drive at £52 is sufficient.

 

[tamzzy]

1. Yeah, I think I am answering myself with the 1st question, in reality the the best option is AM5.

yes, for £700 you're better off with AM5

2. So the most difficult part is choosing an AM5 motherboard that suits my needs, multiple NVME drives would be great, plenty of USB ports, longevity so Guess PCI gen 5 may some day be worthwhile, SPDIF out, built in IO shield, WiFi 7 seeing as it's the newest? Not much out there providing more than three nvme slots with built in heat sinks on the MB. For the most features and IO connectivity it seems X870E beats everything else hands down for a premium?

if it's within the budget pcie5 is nice to have, but i wouldn't fret if not. x850e is not worth it. do you really need 4nvme slots? could you not just do with 2x 4tb drives?

 

[Tetras]

Would I be far off if I felt a modern £400 motherboard is in build terms equal to what cost £200 13 years ago? I think I paid around £180 for the MicroATX Z87 ROG MB, and the Z97 SOC around £200.

Are there preferred brands these days for RMA, warranty etc? Or is it all pretty much the same?

This is tricky to answer because everybody has different ideas of what a "good" motherboard is and what their needs are.

If you want me to be blunt, in terms of build, features and connectivity, a £100-£150 motherboard is at worst equivalent to, at best far superior, to most midrange/high-end boards if you're going to go back ~15 years.

A £400 motherboard would just poop all over one, since they're equivalent to a very high-end HEDT or server board. Part of the reason for this is that with the increase in number of CPU cores on consumer sockets, the max power consumption, the memory speeds and the connectivity have improved so much, that the average motherboard HAS to be built better or it'd be capped at something like a Ryzen 3/Core i3.

For the average user/gamer, it is very hard to find a scenario that one of the cheapest B650 or B850 boards can't meet your needs (e.g. B650 Eagle), though in your case, SPDIF limits your options.

For spending in the £400 region, I'd really be looking at someone who wants a kind of workstation, is an enthusiast that likes stuff to play/tinker with, and/or is after premium features like 10Gb LAN. If I'm blunt again: spending over £200 on the board (especially 300-400+) needs a REALLY good reason, otherwise it is sucking performance out of the more noticeable parts like CPU/GPU for no real gain(s).

I used Asus ROG motherboards right up until the Gigabyte Z97 SOC, I liked these motherboards mainly for the build quality, connectivity, occasional builds without a case connected, I found those power and reset buttons quite handy, they were more pemium motherboards in their day. The current motherboards with similar features and multiple ports seem to be around the £350 plus mark, not sure if I would come across as an idiot for desiring something that cost £440, but love the idea of all the features of the Gigabyte Aorus Master and Asus ROG Strix X870e motherboards.

The Strix B650E-F was widely recommended for a time, because it was one of the cheapest PCI-E 5.0 (graphics) capable boards. Unfortunately, I don't think it has SPDIF, so you'd have to look at the Strix B650E-E or X670E-F for that. They're still decent choices (on a good deal), especially since Asus has pushed the next gen boards prices WAY up.

For the most features and IO connectivity it seems X870E beats everything else hands down for a premium?

Well, the only thing that X870E consistently offers over X670E is USB4, apart from that B850 is what I'd say is the best price/feature match right now and it avoids the lane sharing shenanigans caused by USB4.

Not much out there providing more than three nvme slots with built in heat sinks on the MB.

It isn't important to have heatsinks.

WiFi 7 seeing as it's the newest?

Nice to have, I guess, but wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me.

PCI gen 5 may some day be worthwhile

Also nice to have, but again, not a dealbreaker, since the performance impact is currently minimal and you can adjust your buying patterns if necessary to mitigate that (e.g. get a card with 16 lanes). B850 has made it a lot cheaper to get than before, since e.g. even pretty low-end Gigabyte B850M boards have PCI-E 5.0 graphics.

 

[sastusbulbas]

Your a star Tetras, after years of ignoring PC evolution, I have a headache from watching videos and reading, I appreciate your replies, thankyou.

I have tried to limit my requirements to SPDIF, the ability to run three or four NVME's, the heatsink thing is simply aesthetics, but yes the amount of AM5 options and some of the features lost at lower price points, as well as how the PCI lanes work is rather a lot of information to digest.
I was glad you mentioned the USB 4 thing, as it led me to a Youtube video showing how X870 lanes are distributed. I was also looking at the B850 Tomahawk which is a little sparse on the USB, and Asrock Nova X870 which looks well equiped in particular with storage lanes and enough USB slots.

The big thing I meant regarding a couple of the X870E motherboards and winning hands down was simply USB connectivity vs price on that back IO panel, specifically USB 3.2 ports, though having looked at 670 yes a few of them are decent too in that regard, but for eight USB and SPDIF it seems to start around £300 even for RoG X670 and B850 such as the TUF gaming, with X870 we see around eight USB from around the £210 pricepoint.
I have used eight often, currently two external 4tb drives, a bluetooth adapter, a usb lamp, an Xbox controller docking station, headphone DAC, Keyboard, Mouse, and phone charger, plugged into the rear IO. I currently only have four USB 2 and six USB 3.0 on this micro ATX.

Currently the router here is wifi 6, though we have been looking at WiFi 7 due to a couple of PC's doing gaming over WiFi due to not wanting to drill holes for cables, the wife would like a specific cable visible elsewhere removed.

Sadly as mentioned its a bit of a shame to see how using numerous NVME drives can affect lanes, the ROG motherboards don't look like they do to well there, the Asrock Nova looks to fair a little better, though rather expensive at £360 it seems to offer a decent amount of USB 3.2, WiFi 7 which may well be used in future, and more importantly am I right in thinking it can run 4 NVME drives with no issues? The biggest complaint I have seen regarding the Nova is a lack of Bclock for overclocking, not sure thats too important for me as I doubt I would be doing any sort of extreme OC.

The other thing I have read about is Asrock having burn issues with 9800X3D which will be resolved most likely? So much to catch up with. So not going to rush it, but I am still tempted with the better motherboard and a 7600x to get myself started, mainly for what can be connected and features I may use, I understand a basic board wll score just as well, it's simply the freedom of multiple NVME, plenty of USB, WiFi7 that feel like added value that need to be considered.

 

[JollyJamma]

WiFi 7 which may well be used in future, and more importantly am I right in thinking it can run 4 NVME drives with no issues? The biggest complaint I have seen regarding the Nova is a lack of Bclock for overclocking, not sure thats too important for me as I doubt I would be doing any sort of extreme OC.

The other thing I have read about is Asrock having burn issues with 9800X3D which will be resolved most likely? So much to catch up with. So not going to rush it, but I am still tempted with the better motherboard and a 7600x to get myself started, mainly for what can be connected and features I may use, I understand a basic board wll score just as well, it's simply the freedom of multiple NVME, plenty of USB, WiFi7 that feel like added value that need to be considered.

I would keep in mind that most Wifi 7 devices aren't actually properly certified Wifi 7 and only have some features of the fully certified Wifi 7 standard. Wifi 6e devices would be pretty much as good as it gets until fully certified Wifi 7 devices become available.

You can always upgrade the onboard Wifi/BT module of a motherboard down the road if you need.

As has been stated, NVME 5.0 is a waste and a good NVME drive with a good controller and cache will be great (my vote goes for the SN850X 2tb). You could also just get a PCI-e 16x riser card that allows you to add more NVME drives instead of trying to fit all of them directly on the motherboard.

ASRock have issued a formal acknowledgement that their motherboards led to the failure of AM5 CPUs but a BIOS update should fix that but you'd need to check first. I'd still consider buying ASrock as they have some great motherboards but I'd do a BIOS update as the first thing when setting up the system.

 

[Quartz]

SPDIF is a must,

Do be aware that you can get USB to SPDIF adapters.

9060 XT is unsuitable for 4K gaming, no matter how good an upgrade FSR4 is.

That remains to be seen. It will be unsuitable for modern AAA games at ultra settings at 4k with full RT but even my 4090 struggles there! Games at medium or low settings - especially without RT - may be different.

 

[Tetras]

I was glad you mentioned the USB 4 thing, as it led me to a Youtube video showing how X870 lanes are distributed. I was also looking at the B850 Tomahawk which is a little sparse on the USB, and Asrock Nova X870 which looks well equiped in particular with storage lanes and enough USB slots..

Yeah, I noticed that, the Tomahawk has an unusual number of Type-C for some reason.

The biggest complaint I have seen regarding the Nova is a lack of Bclock for overclocking, not sure thats too important for me as I doubt I would be doing any sort of extreme OC.

I wouldn't be bothered by OC, undervolting is far more popular.

am I right in thinking it can run 4 NVME drives with no issues?

Yeah, the reason this board has less issues is because they don't bother trying to use 4 of the CPU's 8 spare lanes (4 of which are allocated to USB4 on almost all X870x boards) and they only give you one PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot, so no need to take anything from the graphics card's lanes.

The other thing I have read about is Asrock having burn issues with 9800X3D which will be resolved most likely? So much to catch up with. So not going to rush it, but I am still tempted with the better motherboard and a 7600x to get myself started, mainly for what can be connected and features I may use, I understand a basic board wll score just as well, it's simply the freedom of multiple NVME, plenty of USB, WiFi7 that feel like added value that need to be considered.

ASRock say it is resolved, but they've said that twice now (the first time they blamed memory issues, the second time they're blaming PBO). That said, not everybody has had problems, so it isn't like every X3D automatically blows up in one of their boards, regardless of BIOS version.

In reference to the USB, M.2 slots, etc, I understand your thoughts, but I still don't think you need to pay that much. You can still get plenty of USB on B850 boards like the ~£200 B850 Livemixer, which also has SPDIF and WIFI7. Admittedly only 3x M.2, but 4TB SSDs are getting more reasonably priced and 8TB is on the way.

 

[dfour]

Re SPDIF. Pretty much any creative sound card fromt he last ten years has spdif and can be had cheaply second hand. Even the old audigy 2 has one and hte soubnd blaster Z series have 2 on them and can be had for under £50 second hand.

 

[sastusbulbas]

Re SPDIF. Pretty much any creative sound card fromt he last ten years has spdif and can be had cheaply second hand. Even the old audigy 2 has one and hte soubnd blaster Z series have 2 on them and can be had for under £50 second hand.

Yeah, I get the point, but again that's money that could go towards a motherboard, and some of the premium motherboards have decent on board sound options, I only use the rear optical out to a stereo DAC though, so do not need all the features of a dedicated sound card.

It's a bit like also suggesting dropping the requirement for wifi/bluetooth as I can buy adapters. If your dropping a function to come into a price point that then requires more money to obtain the function you drop, what is the point.

In the end its convenience, not having to buy add ons for base functionality that is already present and more than good enough for the required applications.

 

[sastusbulbas]

In reference to the USB, M.2 slots, etc, I understand your thoughts, but I still don't think you need to pay that much. You can still get plenty of USB on B850 boards like the ~£200 B850 Livemixer, which also has SPDIF and WIFI7. Admittedly only 3x M.2, but 4TB SSDs are getting more reasonably priced and 8TB is on the way.

I had looked at that, seeing EIGHT usb "2" ports was like going back 13 years again and a bit excessive, a couple for keyboard, mouse, eenev the USB lamp is fine. For storage devices it has to be 3.0 or higher, 3.2 or USB-C for the solid state storage. The lack of faster ports has been noticeable on the older PC's, especially for my lad and his PC importing and working with music from his course work.

The idea is to try and move away from sata and I have avoided buying a 4tb SSD for a number of months simply due to wanting to change platform, possibly all that may remain is an optical drive. That's the reasoning behind having the ability to possibly run 4 nvme. Iit seems a waste throwing money at slower driives which require cables and power if it can be avoided.

A 4tb NVME WD Blue drive is £200, the 2.5" Sata WD Blue is £245. 8tb Sata SSD's are around £550 plus, a WD SN850 8tb nvme is £560.

I originally had planned on running two Crucial MX500 4tb in this old system and taking them to the new build, but I would rather run Crucial NVME 4tb drives.

I will look at a few more motherboards this week, currently I feel the motherboard is more important than the CPU, as the CPU is an enjoyable upgade path. I still like the idea of just having nvme drives out of sight.

Now thinking of a case too, with an optical bay, Fractal Pop seems to be the only modern case with such, with old models like the Phanteks Enthoo Pro Glass, Fractal Define R7 still available.

For now I am thinking but not definitive on,

7600x short term, as it can passed to one of the kids later.
Asrock X870e Nova is teasing me with its NVME slots and looks, and all those more modern USB ports lol. Yeah it's £160 more than I need to spend, but it's pretty nice.
32gb of memory.
Crucial 1tb Gen 4 NVME as the main drive, adding more 4tb NVME's later this year.
AMD 9070xt will be added next month.

Maybe a Fractal Pop instead of stripping the old H500 down, the old solid front H500 contains an old system currently cooled with four Akasa Vipers in yellow, which would look ok with an MSI Tomahawk I have considered but to be honest the H500 was not a well received case regarding cooling, an old unused Asus 775 ROG with a Q9550 in resting in there lol.

 

[Gray2233]

Yeah, I get the point, but again that's money that could go towards a motherboard, and some of the premium motherboards have decent on board sound options.

Depending on who you ask (including myself) there's no such thing as decent onboard sound.

There's adapters out there for £10-20 which offer HDMI or USB to SPDIF for £10-20 that would function just fine and you'd experience no loss in audio quality.

You have a focus on getting the best motherboard it seems, and while I can understand your logic to an extent I also think it's based on an out of date opinion and something @Tetras mentioned earlier, and something I'm going to try and build upon a little:

Modern £150-200 motherboards are around what would have cost double their relative value back when you bought into your equipment. Intel divided consumer and higher end chips, so you bought the consumer end by going for an I7 4770K and (I assume) Z87/97 motherboard while X79/X99 was a thing for those needing a more powerful platform. You were limited to quad cores whereas those on the X-X9 platforms could buy hexa-octa cores or higher depending. Now for entry level and outside of extreme use-case scenarios, platforms such as AM5 combine those things. Even then, a lot if not most mid range AM5 motherboards would happily run a 9950X, aka a 16C32T CPU just fine with appropriate cooling. Spending more adds features now, you're not buying into higher quality components you're adding USB/M.2 slots, perhaps viable PCI-E lanes depending.

You still get Wi-Fi and often BlueTooth with said midrange boards more often than not.

Try not to overthink, spending less isn't necessarily spending more long term or going to gain you higher quality.

 

[Tetras]

The idea is to try and move away from sata and I have avoided buying a 4tb SSD for a number of months simply due to wanting to change platform, possibly all that may remain is an optical drive. That's the reasoning behind having the ability to possibly run 4 nvme. Iit seems a waste throwing money at slower driives which require cables and power if it can be avoided.

A 4tb NVME WD Blue drive is £200, the 2.5" Sata WD Blue is £245. 8tb Sata SSD's are around £550 plus, a WD SN850 8tb nvme is £560.

I originally had planned on running two Crucial MX500 4tb in this old system and taking them to the new build, but I would rather run Crucial NVME 4tb drives.

I don't mean this in a bad way, but if you need THAT much storage in your PC you're probably doing it wrong.

If I elaborate, gaming-oriented PCs really need a max of 2TB, 4TB at the most, because realistically you're not going to play that many games at once.

If you need multiple 4TB drives, I can't imagine that's for gaming and there's some degree of archiving involved there, so normally I'd be looking at an external file server, like a NAS or something like that. It makes storage expansion and backups easier. That's obviously extra expense, so eh.

32gb of memory.

If you're going for the longer-term in planning with your board, it make sense to get 48GB or 64GB now, since upgrading to 4 sticks is difficult with DDR5.

Crucial 1tb Gen 4 NVME as the main drive, adding more 4tb NVME's later this year.

If storage is such a big issue for you, I think it would be a mistake to "waste" a slot with a 1TB drive. Get at least 2TB.

There's another way to add storage too, if you're not aware. You can use PCI-E adapters. Most boards only have 1x slot that is viable for these (a full size slot that is 4 lanes electrically), which in some cases is disabled by using the M.2 slots. You can also get adapters which have PCIE switch chips in them and you can fit multiple M.2 drives even though only 4 lanes are available. I'd expect this to have a performance penalty if you were to use multiple drives at once.

 

[Gray2233]

I don't mean this in a bad way, but if you need THAT much storage in your PC you're probably doing it wrong.

Better off with a NAS at that point imo, it'd likely be cheaper and more convenient if done right.

Edit: Depending on the reasoning, cloud storage solutions might even be better and would save a small fortune.

Edit2: A NAS doesn't need to be some sort of high expense thing with a specific setup either. It's literally just Network Attached Storage -- aka you could repurpose one of your old builds you'll have sat around anyway, load it up with cheap storage, and bung it somewhere out of the way while connected to your network. You could even set up a VPN so the kids at UNI etc could gain access, it's pretty streamlined now. I tell people I have a NAS because I do, but it's a few TB of hard drives running on an old low power system out of the way that used to be an I5 3770K with a Gigabyte Z77 D3H motherboard, aka the second cheapest Gigabyte board on the market. That bugger used to run the same chip 24-7 for almost a decade at 4.9ghz without skipping a beat. Obviously I don't run it that way now, but it's sat with the RAM/Mobo etc it was built with and no GPU. Guess what, if you for some reason need faster drives for whatever reason slap a PCI-E card into the unused slots with a few m.2's, I realise you use a very fast home network.

 

[sastusbulbas]

Depending on who you ask (including myself) there's no such thing as decent onboard sound.

There's adapters out there for £10-20 which offer HDMI or USB to SPDIF for £10-20 that would function just fine and you'd experience no loss in audio quality.

You have a focus on getting the best motherboard it seems, and while I can understand your logic to an extent I also think it's based on an out of date opinion and something @Tetras mentioned earlier, and something I'm going to try and build upon a little:

Modern £150-200 motherboards are around what would have cost double their relative value back when you bought into your equipment. Intel divided consumer and higher end chips, so you bought the consumer end by going for an I7 4770K and (I assume) Z87/97 motherboard while X79/X99 was a thing for those needing a more powerful platform. You were limited to quad cores whereas those on the X-X9 platforms could buy hexa-octa cores or higher depending. Now for entry level and outside of extreme use-case scenarios, platforms such as AM5 combine those things. Even then, a lot if not most mid range AM5 motherboards would happily run a 9950X, aka a 16C32T CPU just fine with appropriate cooling. Spending more adds features now, you're not buying into higher quality components you're adding USB/M.2 slots, perhaps viable PCI-E lanes depending.

You still get Wi-Fi and often BlueTooth with said midrange boards more often than not.

Try not to overthink, spending less isn't necessarily spending more long term or going to gain you higher quality.

I wrote that poorly regarding audio quality, I was meaning with regard to spdif, digital output, for stereo. I am primarily using optic SPDIF out for stereo only into a couple of older DAC's.
A competent digital optical out should be indistinguishable motherboard or soundcard, unless something has been done badly.

The reason for ROG and SOC in the old Z87/97 days was in part build quality, longevity, a bit of overclocking, wanting a more premium board but not a flagship. So yeah part of it is also wanting a well made board that is a bit nicer to own with a few more up to date features that will be used for a few years or more. I really didn't like the look of budget motherboards and sparce features. Not a huge fan of RGB either.

I don't mean this in a bad way, but if you need THAT much storage in your PC you're probably doing it wrong.

If I elaborate, gaming-oriented PCs really need a max of 2TB, 4TB at the most, because realistically you're not going to play that many games at once.

If you need multiple 4TB drives, I can't imagine that's for gaming and there's some degree of archiving involved there, so normally I'd be looking at an external file server, like a NAS or something like that. It makes storage expansion and backups easier. That's obviously extra expense, so eh.


If you're going for the longer-term in planning with your board, it make sense to get 48GB or 64GB now, since upgrading to 4 sticks is difficult with DDR5.


If storage is such a big issue for you, I think it would be a mistake to "waste" a slot with a 1TB drive. Get at least 2TB.

There's another way to add storage too, if you're not aware. You can use PCI-E adapters. Most boards only have 1x slot that is viable for these (a full size slot that is 4 lanes electrically), which in some cases is disabled by using the M.2 slots. You can also get adapters which have PCIE switch chips in them and you can fit multiple M.2 drives even though only 4 lanes are available. I'd expect this to have a performance penalty if you were to use multiple drives at once.

I don't see anything wrong with multiple drives in the PC, It's simply a preference to how I like my own PC set up. Used three drives for years. Used externals for simplicity with backups, used Homegroup for in home file sharing and streaming from W7 up to W10 for a while. The 8tb external was initially for file share attached to the router.

I have thought about a server/NAS before. I have the Mini XL case, the Mini ITX Z97 initially was lined up to go in there as a dual system.

Going around in circles here with motherboards, being too fussy. Even looking at MiniITX and Micro, I used to prefer MicroATX. Gigabyte B850M Aorus MicroATX does not do lane sharing, support for three drives, has spdif, but its white, Not sure of white. But it's another option. I doubt it will take a Noctua U14s. But yeah a few of the B850 ATX boards look promising, the not sharing lanes I feel worth having. But the Nova is still an atractive board and still playing away in my head.

One thing about the Steel Legend B850 is the Asrock Steel Legend 9070xt would match. But I feel the Aorus ATX in black is more atractive, I think with the MSI Tomahawk you lose lanes on nvme3 so would use 1/2/4? Again I sort of think this would look OK in the NZXT case with the yellow Viper fans. Lots of great options to be honest.

Not sure but think I prefer the POP silent with it's blank top panel. Yet I also feel a full ATX gives better GPU cooling, and should be front vented.

With the CPU and memory I am still thinking 7600x and 32gb as minimums.

Not going to rush it,

Better off with a NAS at that point imo, it'd likely be cheaper and more convenient if done right.

Edit: Depending on the reasoning, cloud storage solutions might even be better and would save a small fortune.

Edit2: A NAS doesn't need to be some sort of high expense thing with a specific setup either. It's literally just Network Attached Storage -- aka you could repurpose one of your old builds you'll have sat around anyway, load it up with cheap storage, and bung it somewhere out of the way while connected to your network. You could even set up a VPN so the kids at UNI etc could gain access, it's pretty streamlined now. I tell people I have a NAS because I do, but it's a few TB of hard drives running on an old low power system out of the way that used to be an I5 3770K with a Gigabyte Z77 D3H motherboard, aka the second cheapest Gigabyte board on the market. That bugger used to run the same chip 24-7 for almost a decade at 4.9ghz without skipping a beat. Obviously I don't run it that way now, but it's sat with the RAM/Mobo etc it was built with and no GPU. Guess what, if you for some reason need faster drives for whatever reason slap a PCI-E card into the unused slots with a few m.2's, I realise you use a very fast home network.

Well a possible experiment would be to build a NAS with some of the old hardware, it had crossed my mind. But that would be a thought for another time.