Upgrade advice - make a monster!

Soldato
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Please could I have some tips on my system. It's 2 years old now and I am seeking some tips to speed it up and keep it modern.

I have an i7 5930k cooled with a Corsair All-In-One, 64GB RAM, Nvidia 108ti and a Corsair PCI-E SSD. All running Windows 10. I have a 27" 2560x1440 resolution.

Within some games, namely Total War: Warhammer 1 (and 2), Counterstrike:GO and a few others, there is occasional system lag. I like to play on maximum settings, so this could well be why.

What would be the best system for gaming that I could make currently?

Would an i9 *really* be an advancement, or will it slow me down, as i've seen benchmarks that suggest older i7 cores to be far better with games, as the clock speed is higher, even if the core count is fewer?

I'm keen to stick to a single GPU to avoid any issues with tearing/microstutter, or compatibility. Re-using old system parts is not an issue as I am fortunate enough to have saved enough to rebuy everything required.

TIA
 
Soldato
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If there's occasional lag affecting everything that's likely from entirely different things than inadequate CPU.
Might be well some driver bugging, or Wintoys having updated itself many enough times to have broken something.
 
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With your spec, the single biggest upgrade you could do would be CPU, but that would also require motherboard & RAM.

The i9s wouldn't be a massive upgrade because most games still aren't the best at multi-threading, even though they're improving, a decent semi-recent quad core with hyper threading is still enough for everything, so a hex core will be more than sufficient for a good few years still.

The 8700k/8086k is the best gaming CPU around at the moment & 6 cores is more than enough unless you do heavy rendering or video work, even if you did, it still does a good job.

Most seem to be able to hit 5GHz on all cores, possibly higher.

One of the best improvements from a CPU upgrade, is it often makes a noticeable improvement to your minimum frame rates, unless you are really heavily GPU limited, but with a 1080ti - that's unlikely.

I went from 5820k -> 6900K -> 8700k & the 8700k offers noticeable improvements in games where frame rate is important, although given how not resource intensive CS:GO is, I doubt you'd notice much of a change... it was more worthwhile for Battlefield games and others where the minimum frame rates might dip below your monitor's refresh rate.

Single core IPC (instructions per clock) coupled with a high frequency is still the best option for games.

If your monitor is 60Hz, it might not be worthwhile... if it's a 120Hz+ monitor, then you might notice the improvement...

Unless you're desperate for the new 2080ti, I don't think anyone will recommend the upgrade to you as the price/performance ratio is poor, especially as you already have a really good card.


Also, what kind of system lag are you referring to? A fresh OS reinstall or paying attention to what background processes are stealing CPU or SSD resources may sort that for you.
 
Soldato
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Sounds good - I have a 144Hz monitor.

The lag remained after I fresh installed from Win7 to Win10, on a new SSD (PCIE). I can only assume it to be related to either my CPU/Mobo not being able to handle the throughput at the res/freq.
 
Soldato
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Sounds good - I have a 144Hz monitor.

The lag remained after I fresh installed from Win7 to Win10, on a new SSD (PCIE). I can only assume it to be related to either my CPU/Mobo not being able to handle the throughput at the res/freq.

lowest end z390 from Gigabyte is around £145 and beast their z390 range- have to see how much i7 9700k is or 9900k and overclock to 5.1ghz+ if you've got the cash and really want it
 
Soldato
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lowest end z390 from Gigabyte is around £145 and beast their z390 range- have to see how much i7 9700k is or 9900k and overclock to 5.1ghz+ if you've got the cash and really want it


I'm just wanting to make a very powerful PC - mine was incredible when first built 2 years ago, but is now showing it's age. I'm not wanting to de-lid, or likewise, have an overheating CPU, so i'm after the most powerful system I can have using an All-in-One Liquid cooler.
 
Soldato
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I'm just wanting to make a very powerful PC - mine was incredible when first built 2 years ago, but is now showing it's age. I'm not wanting to de-lid, or likewise, have an overheating CPU, so i'm after the most powerful system I can have using an All-in-One Liquid cooler.

most powerful would be naturally 9700/9900k - up to the buyer to see if its money well spent on their basis etc
 
Soldato
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I'm just wanting to make a very powerful PC - mine was incredible when first built 2 years ago, but is now showing it's age. I'm not wanting to de-lid, or likewise, have an overheating CPU, so i'm after the most powerful system I can have using an All-in-One Liquid cooler.

Did you build the last one yourself? Have you got the 5930K running at stock or overclocked?

How much difference are you expecting, you are running a 6c/12t CPU, moving to the 8700K/9900K isn't going to give you 20% more FPS in your games. Also you say "lag" do the games pause and then resume, more like stutter? You should measure your 0.1% lows during a game session to see if that is the issue, how many and how often.
 
Soldato
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Did you build the last one yourself? Have you got the 5930K running at stock or overclocked?

How much difference are you expecting, you are running a 6c/12t CPU, moving to the 8700K/9900K isn't going to give you 20% more FPS in your games. Also you say "lag" do the games pause and then resume, more like stutter? You should measure your 0.1% lows during a game session to see if that is the issue, how many and how often.

Yes built myself - built thousands of PCs until around 2yrs ago when I moved up through management finally!

I'm just after future proofing a build to last 2-3yrs now at this stage.

Toss up between an 8086k and i9 9900k system.
 
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