Upgrade from 4770k to 14700k

[Werewolf]

Hi

I posted a thread a few months back with a possible specification for a new machine, but decided to put it off until the new intel CPU's came out.

So I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how this looks.


My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i7-14700K (Raptor Lake-S) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-00800) = £419.99
• 1 x Kingston FURY Beast 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C40 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KF556C40BBK2-64) (SKU: MY-29W-KS) = £209.99
• 1 x Noctua NH-D15 Dual Radiator Quiet CPU Cooler with two NH-A15 Fans (SKU: HS-026-NC) = £99.94
• 1 x MSI Pro Z790-A WIFI (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-36Y-MS) = £269.99
• 1 x Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (SKU: AC-000-AC) = £7.99

Total: £1,007.90 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

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I already have
Case: Phanteks eclipse p600s
PSU: Bequiet purepower 12m 1000 atx 3 gold
NVME 1 (boot -new): Seagate 530 2tb
NVME 2 (games - new): Crucia P4 2tb
GPU: 3070
SSD:2tb Crucial (slower/older games)
HDD 1 (docs): 4tb (might be replaced with a new 8tb)

 

[Werewolf]

I'll have another look at memory and the cooler

Re the upgrade path, i'm honestly not bothered at all, I have zero plans to upgrade again within the next 2-3 year*s, I'm only really upgrading now because of a few games that are showing the age of the current CPU, I'm not a big gamer and I suspect what I'm going for now is going to be overkill for the next few years.

I was actually shocked when I realised how long I'd had it, for some reason I'd been stuck thinking it was only 5 years old.


*I tend to replace motherboard/cpu/ram at the same time anyway.

 

[Werewolf]

I've had some looking around and I think I've found some Corsair ram that might fit the bill - it seems like there aren't many 32gb modules that do higher speeds.

How does the: VENGEANCE® 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 DRAM 6000MT/s CL30 Memory Kit — Black sound.
The downside is it's out of stock for the next couple of weeks, and it's not from OCUK (I tend to like to buy cpu/ram/mobo from the same place).

I think this build is going to be the first time in 20 years I've not gone with Crucial, i'd like to but I don't think they do any ram that meets what I want (their DDR5 ram seems to be slower and lower capacity)

 

[Werewolf]

I'm a little confused as the motherboard is rated to IIRC 48gb per slot.

Re coolers I'm personally very against AIO's as it always seems that a failure on one has very little margin of error, and I've got a couple of friends who had them fail resulting in damage to their PC's (one had it fail with no warning and it seemed to kill one of the memory channels on his CPU).

 

[Werewolf]

argh more choices! Cheers


Re 64gb
I'm wanting a machine that hopefully I won't have to touch bar the video card for 3-5 years, I "over specced" on ram for my 4770 system by giving it 32gb and that's been the main thing that seems to have let it last usably as it has (i've only really swapped out drives and updated the video card). I have too many memories of thinking "I can increase them ram in a couple of years" only to find the ram is now significantly more expensive as it's not in mainstream production and it's almost as cheap to replace the motherboard/cpu as well.

I'm going to look into the asus, I think i'd originally disregarded at least some of their boards because they didn't have enough m2/sata slots and IIRC full audio (I'm sure it's asus who for some fairly expensive boards are down to just a headphone and mic jack*).

I'll look into the coolers as well.



*Which instantly rules a board out for me, as I use the line in a lot.

 

[Werewolf]

I'll try and keep the thread updated when I do the build

Normally i'd just crack on but this time I'm probably going to be doing two nearly identical builds at once* as my bother has been wanting an upgrade as well and he's current machine is only about a month newer than mine (that was same mobo/cpu/ram - it tends to make sense for trouble shooting and spare if we both get the same base build).

I've had a look at the asus motherboard and I quite like it but it seems the shrouds/heatsinks on the VRM's cause issues for a number of air coolers, which combined with the loss of a pair of SATA ports and a PCI-E slot are really putting me off it, as I want to go with air cooling (I consider it far more reliable than AIO's, especially if you can fit two fans to the heatsink).


*Basically only some of the drives and the GPU's are going to be different.

 

[Werewolf]

Having read this thread repeatedly and taken in the suggestions (and the ones from my previous thread) I think i've settled on:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i7-14700K (Raptor Lake-S) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-00800) = £419.99
• 1 x Noctua NH-D15 Dual Radiator Quiet CPU Cooler with two NH-A15 Fans (SKU: HS-026-NC) = £99.95
• 1 x MSI Pro Z790-A WIFI (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-36Y-MS) = £269.98
• 1 x Arctic MX-6 Thermal Compound With Spatula - 4g (SKU: TH-01U-AR) = £9.50

Total: £807.41 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

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Ram is Corsair DDR5 6000 with cas 30 timings.


Some reasoning:
Whilst there are probably better motherboards out there, the MSI one has enough NVME and SATA slots to keep both my brother and I happy, a full set of audio connectors, will take a wider range of air coolers and has 4 PCI-E slots which is important to me (it means I can add stuff later internally).

Cooler - again there are arguably better/cheaper options, but I know this one will fit and the manufacturer has good support, I'm also aware that it comes with two fans that are worth ~£25 each and my current Noctura has been running flawlessly for ~10 years (the fans are still going strong and quiet, meanwhile various other cans in the machne have been replaced 2-times).
I've decided against AIO's because I really don't like the fact that if they fail in any way you've got a very limited time before you have a serious issue and they are IMO more likely to fail in a way that requires full replacement (a friend had the pump in his fail without warning and killed the ability of his PC to use one of the memory lanes due to the overheating).
I looked at the thermaltake etc but whilst the price difference was large, I did note that at least one reviewer had an issue with the fans, and I think the noctura fans are better (I'd have quite possibly ended up replacing the fans on the thermaltake, so that's another ~30+ to it's cost).

Ram seems a good compromise between speed and capacity, I'm not after blazing fast speed as historically i've tended to run into more problems in regards to running low on memory, so mid speed but plenty seems like a good compromise, it's shown as compatible/tested by the manfuctura with the 14 series chips on this board, and it should fit ok according to Noctura in my case.

I've no intention of overclocking the CPU, so extreme levels of performance and related cooling are not an issue.

As I've said before, I'm not worried about dropping in a later CPU, as I'm planning on running this for several years and for the last 20 years I've basically always replaced the motherboard when I've upgraded the CPU

 

[Werewolf]

Just got a partial shipment through from overclockers, and the noctura box is huge.
Now I'm waiting for the motherboard to be back in stock and the ram to arrive from taiwan.

On the plus side it's giving me plenty of time to get my emails sorted (so many "you bought a drill last week, here are more drills you might like" from amazon etc), and get everything ready. I've taken the route this build of sorting out a windows installation usb, and another one with memtest and all the apps and drivers on it.

 

[Werewolf]

@Werewolf psst...better motherboard...same price: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...-lga-1700-ddr5-atx-motherboard-mb-379-ms.html

Typical!
At least the motherboard hasn't shipped.

I'll give them a ring Monday morning and see if they can swap out the board on my order and hopefully get them to do it for my brothers as well.
It looks like it loses a PCI-E slot, but gains an SATA, better sound, better/stronger slot for the main GPU, and a couple of other minor changes (plus a usb stick to load updated bios's onto!)

 

[Werewolf]

Even better

I just rang up and got the board changed over

 

[Werewolf]

A little update.

Started assembling the build yesterday.
Lessons learned so far:

The BeQuiet PSU's main ATX cable is very tight to get fitted on the motherboard in the case, it took me several attempts to do it because there isn't much slack in the cable to move it around. The secondary motherboard cables on the flip side have a good bit of slack.
The cooler is huge, but with PWM control turned on it's shutting down the cpu fans at times in windows.

Windows 11 does not have a built in driver for the network adaptor, so you have to use the OOBE command to tell the installer to do a no network install.

 

[Werewolf]

I thik i'm going to look into that re the driver on the usb stick i'm using to install, if just so that it's ready for the future.

I'm actually building two machines that will be nearly identical (just a couple of difference in tertiary drives and the video card), so i'm using a couple of usb sticks to hopefully have all the drivers and installation media needed, and i'm going to keep them specifically for these machines (i bought a pair of new ones and have tagged them as such).

Hopefully by about Monday I'll have both fully running (I'm not rushing it).

 

[Werewolf]

not managed any build for a couple of days.

Started building machine 2 properly today and it's going much, much faster in part because I know what not to do, and in part because I've got the order down and it's different to what i'd normally do.

So for anyone else using an nh15d my suggested build order for parts to the motherboard is:
NVME drives that are anywhere near the CPU.
CPU
Cooler bracket.
apply thermal paste.
Fit ram.
Fit cooler to bracket.

Normally I'd have gone ram and drives after cpu cooler.

It saved a lot of fiddling, also laying everything out on a second anti static mat neatly helped.

 

[Werewolf]

Build 2 has progressed a lot faster and easier but stalled for now.

I've had to order a ATX 24 pin extension cable, the bequiet cable due to how i've had to route it to get it to fit is blocking the GPU from fitting it and making access to the SATA connectors hard.

I miss the days of the PSU being at the top of the case, it seemed cable runs to the motherboard were so much simpler back then.