Time for an upgrade?

paradigm · 13 Dec 2023 at 17:43

I’ve been out of the loop for a few years, having kids and a career move does wonders for your ability to focus on a hobby or even keep current with the news related to your hobby.

My current PC is an X299X based system, i9-10980XE, Gigabyte Aorus Master X299X, 32GB of DDR4 and a 2070 Super, all wrapped in an NZXT H440, with a custom hardline watercooling loop.

I’m not 100% sure if I even need to upgrade yet? If I did upgrade, what are my options? I’ve tended towards HEDT platforms for many generations (since the X58 days), and I prefer to use custom water to air or AIO, mainly for the quietness. Is Sapphire Rapids my best option, or one of the current generation AMD processors? (I’ve not had an AMD CPU as my main machine since the Athlon 64 days!).

Any ideas appreciated, and if you need more information to make a good judgement, I’m happy to oblige.

BriT · 13 Dec 2023 at 18:53

Guess it depends what do you use it for? gaming? editing etc? Also what kind of games.

paradigm · 13 Dec 2023 at 18:59

Gaming and running virtual lab environments for Microsoft technologies mainly. Games tend to be FPS, racing, puzzle (think superliminal and the like). I’ll also want whatever PC I have at the time to handle GTA6 (assuming it gets a PC launch). I also have a VR setup (Index) and wouldn’t be averse to getting a higher resolution headset.

My display is only a 120Hz panel, but it is 5120x1440, so maintaining decent frame rates for that resolution is paramount.

I’ve not yet struggled for frame rates on my existing setup, but I’ve also not bought a new game for a few years.

It also acts as my capture PC for when I’m capturing retro PC footage, but as that’s usually DOS resolutions up to 1024x768, the capture isn’t that demanding.

Tetras · 13 Dec 2023 at 20:36

paradigm said:
I’ve not yet struggled for frame rates on my existing setup, but I’ve also not bought a new game for a few years.

Your PC looks pretty good, I doubt there are any recent games it will struggle to play, but your resolution is pretty big and the 2070 Super not that fast anymore, so an upgrade to a 4080 would be what I'd consider.

paradigm · 13 Dec 2023 at 20:55

Interesting. So you don’t think I’d bottleneck a 4080 with my CPU?

Any suggestions for a card that has the option of a decent waterblock? As I said it would need to be brought into my custom loop. I’m fine fitting it myself, though I’m not sure these days if there are any GPU board manufacturers that are friendly to cooler changes?

Tetras · 13 Dec 2023 at 21:55

paradigm said:
So you don’t think I’d bottleneck a 4080 with my CPU?

It will, but 5120 x 1440 is a very large resolution, similar to 4K and the 2070 Super is really underpowered for that in modern games.

paradigm said:
If I did upgrade, what are my options? I’ve tended towards HEDT platforms for many generations (since the X58 days), and I prefer to use custom water to air or AIO, mainly for the quietness.

Unfortunately affordable HEDT no longer exists, it is more like a high-end workstation or server and costs £0000s to buy the CPUs and motherboards. I'd look at something more like a 14700K and check benchmarks for your workloads, because if you didn't need HEDT specific stuff (like more PCI-E lanes and higher number of cores), the performance is not worth the cost.

paradigm · 14 Dec 2023 at 13:58

Yes, I’ve looked at both Intel and AMD HEDT, and the prices for CPUs are insane. The motherboards are just about palatable, but my god the CPUs!

What would be a good top-end combo for Intel and AMD without leaping to HEDT? I’d probably go full build, case and all, only carrying over my peripherals and display.

Tetras · 14 Dec 2023 at 14:36

paradigm said:
What would be a good top-end combo for Intel and AMD without leaping to HEDT? I’d probably go full build, case and all, only carrying over my peripherals and display.

If I use these numbers as a rough comparison, then:
- 7950X3D/7950X or 14900K would double your multithread performance.
- 14700K or 7900X would add over 50% to your single and multithread.

FYI: the X3D performs better in games than the singlethreaded score suggests.

Firestar_3x · 14 Dec 2023 at 18:15

4090 was an absolute game changer from my Index, if upgrading i'd consider spending the extra.

paradigm · 14 Dec 2023 at 18:34

Firestar_3x said:
4090 was an absolute game changer from my Index, if upgrading i'd consider spending the extra.

Appreciate the advice! It’s certainly looking like a full build at this point, I best get reading and planning for the build.

Firestar_3x · 14 Dec 2023 at 18:46

paradigm said:
Appreciate the advice! It’s certainly looking like a full build at this point, I best get reading and planning for the build.

Enjoy, give @Gibbo a shout when ready to buy, i'm sure he can help out

Consider keeping your Intel build for lab stuff and constructing a dedicated gaming machine with a CPU best fit for that purpose.

Above approach worked well for me, also welcome back!