Upgrade or replace?

[bigdave2k9]

Evenings... Feel's weird posting, it's been quiet a while.
Got a bit of a conundrum. I'm taking an guess my motherboard packed in last week, the pc no longer wants to boots, noticeable sign is the LED display in the top right corner no longer displays any details and in the coming months was a bit of a pain once switched off to turn on.
These spec's my look familiar to some, it's from my posted build in 2016.. So obviously it's had 8 years of trouble free use.

Case - Corsair 900D
PSU - EVGA SuperNova P2 1200W, 80 Plus Plantium
Mobo - Asus Rampage V Extreme
CPU - Intel i7 5930k (Haswell)
RAM - 32GB Corsair Dominator Platium 8x4GB @ 3000mhz
GPU - 2x EVGA 980ti Hydro Copper
M.2 SSD - Samsung 950 Pro, 512GB
SSD - 2x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO

-----------------------------------------

As best guess is its the motherboard, having a look around I can still pick up a new board for the price of £250 - £300.. Was surprised to find new boards given it's release in 2014. I've been thinking is it worth just swapping the board out and keep on running it as it is more than sufficient to what I currently do or is there something respectably priced on the market that it can be swapped out with? Keeping in mine there needs to be water blocks available for the replacement board. Budget is respectable but given current circumstances I cannot go OTT like the original build. Open to AMD and Intel.


Let me know your thoughts..

 

[bigdave2k9]

I absolutely would not spend £250-£300 on a board for that platform. You can get a 12400F (comes with an acceptable air cooler) and a motherboard (compatible with your existing memory) for less than £300.

This is how far out of it I am, aint really touched PC's since building the above (far to busy working). So I'm certainly not surprised that the i5 you linked is as good if not better than the i7 I've currently got. Air cooling isn't really an option, I've got to do the water for the graphic's card's as they are water cooled from EVGA. At present they will stay until they pack in no point changing what works.

Looks like regardless of board choice, i'll be loosing 4 sticks of RAM, cannot spot any board that will take all 8, that's no loss.

IF i said £500.. what would you buy?

Time for a new pc imo.
Nvidia 5000 series and Intel 15th gen due around the end of the year, can you limp along with a laptop or something until then, or need something sooner?

Presently limping between 2 ipad's and the wife's i3 mATX build. No games at all as tied up on the dead rig. Ideally something soon. Got 2-3 weeks realistically to sort it before I'm off work for 6 weeks on recovery, so will need something to occupy my mind.

 

[bigdave2k9]

have you tried replacing the bios battery?
old system, £1 item
worth a shot

Aye, now done that. Still no signs of life.

System up keep with water for the performance you'd be getting with a replacement board is a total waste of time, not to mention the money cost and the hassle of keeping it under water.

I'd honestly just build new, yes you've got a great PSU but having dual 980Ti's in SLI is just totally pointless these days when you could get similar performance for £300 or less. I'd spend £1,000 on a new build if you really need a working system, then I'd put sometime aside when/if you have it, to dismantle the current one and diagnose it properly, then look for a used bargain motherboard etc. and sell it as a whole system, or sell the one you just built for a small loss if you don't like it.

I guess it comes down to time vs. money vs effort.

Looks that way now. Given what's coming around the corner for me, I cannot indulge like I've done in the past on parts. £1200 is my budget. Now the hard part is finding a board to suite my requirements..

I'm going to ask for opinions as I'm that out the loop with what's about.

--------------------------------------

Required - Board, CPU, RAM, GPU


Board - Intel preferred but not picky, 2x m.2, ideally 6 Sata 6gb's, the more USB's the better, optical audio (may have to settle for sound card)
CPU - i5 / i7 (as said, AMD is an option) Gaming and occasional rendering work.
RAM - 32GB
GPU - must be able to do 3 screens (4k on all 3 as new screen's coming later this year)
Sound card - If no optical out on the board.

Just envisioning the half empty 900D case at the end of it
Appreciate any pointers.

 

[bigdave2k9]

awh, disappointed



any way to reduce this to 4x SATA? 6x SATA usually = highend board nowadays. SATA being replaced my M.2 slots


Need CUDA/nvidia specific workloads?
How important is RTX?


how core-heavy is your workload?
will rendering feature in your consideration for the cpu choice, or just the best value gaming cpu is sufficient?

finally, how likely are you to want to upgrade the core (CPU/Mobo/RAM) in the next 5 years?

Yup, it's served me well for 8 years. So i'd say i got my money's worth from it. Can part it out and stick it on the bay and see if any of it sells.

I can possibly shuffle drives around and maybe use an extra M.2 or two, as i did notice they seem to be more used now.

RTX is always a bonus, i mean who wouldn't want it.

Never really factored that in. Given gaming is more than rendering i'd work the gaming side of things.

Doubtful, usually run them until they pack in.

 

[bigdave2k9]

A quick round of replies as wandered off to work... much appreciated the replies so far, just proves how far tech has come since this build..
Some interesting reading ahead.

Just noticed the OP is running 8 sticks of RAM. Haswell-E has a habit of the memory controller failing with high memory loading. Might be worth swapping the CPU as you can pick them up for peanuts.

Didn't know that. Once I've got a new system built, I'll bench the board and try a new chip in it. As you've highlighted the chips are peanuts so worth a try.

Yeah, the problem I had is that I can't find a motherboard and even the Z790 Tomahawk (7x SATA and SPDIF) is like.. ~£250 and the OP's budget isn't big enough that dumping £250-£300 on the board seems like a good move.

The B650 Tomahawk being £200 (can be had decently under) makes it hard to argue against going AM5 and could maybe even squeeze in a 7800X3D (gaming) or 7900 non-X (productivity).

I've noticed a few mentioning about the board cost factor. If there is a justifiable case of using a higher end board to meet requirements, it will be taken into consideration.
If I had to swap out HDD's for M.2 or use a PCI-E based expander then so be it.. compromise where necessary.

yes i can see the AMD brigade marching in now
however in OP's circumstances there is a big argument to go intel as i've already laid out lol

I've had 3 AMD systems and 2 Intel systems. I'm not biased usually work to price.

Funnily enough Dave, I can think of a few people round here

I won't open that tin of worms

 

[bigdave2k9]

both my amd and intel specs have all your requirements (6x sata, 8 or more usb rear ports, spdif port) and also 3 or more m.2 ports

The joys of reading comments on my phone. Can't throw a pile a tabs up and compare everything correctly. Least I know what I'm doing tomorrow..

 

[bigdave2k9]

Had a little play around, most importantly done my numbers. I believe I've taken into consideration what has been said, feel free to slap me if not.. Is the extra bit of expense worth the reward?

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i7-14700K (Raptor Lake-S) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-00800) = £399.95
• 1 x Gigabyte Z790 Gaming X AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BM-GI) = £199.99
• 1 x Kingston FURY Beast EXPO RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (KF560C36BBEAK2-32) (SKU: MY-29R-KS) = £139.99
• 1 x Asus GeForce RTX 4070Ti TUF Gaming 12GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-48X-AS) = £734.99

Total: £1,482.91 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

The only item I've not accounted for in an aftermarket cooler.. not sure if to use a traditional one or go AIO.

 

[bigdave2k9]

Duplicated my post

 

[bigdave2k9]

Some other options on ram.

The TeamGroup are out of stock at the moment so would depend if you can wait for the stock or want it now. Fury ram is in stock, £20 cheaper and 6000mhz instead of 4800mhz

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FF3D532G6000HC30DC01) (SKU: MY-0B8-TG) = £109.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - White (FF4D532G6000HC30DC01) (SKU: MY-0B6-TG) = £109.99
• 1 x Kingston FURY Beast EXPO 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (KF560C36BBEK2-32) (SKU: MY-29T-KS) = £119.99

Total: £339.97 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

To be honest, never even heard to TeamGroup Delta, which is why i went with Kingston just as I know the branding.. Always happy to try something thou, so i'll swap them out for them.

 

[bigdave2k9]

Don't spend that sort of money on a vanilla 4070ti, it's not much more to get the faster/more VRAM 4070ti Super.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Gainward GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Phoenix 16GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics (SKU: GRA-GNW-01537) = £769.99

Total: £769.99 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

This is why i like discussion.. Tab'd up, compared, swapped out.. for the sake of £35 a worthy swap.

 

[bigdave2k9]

Gaming and rendering is your usage, right? 2 page threads get long enough that I'm easily confused.

That memory seems pretty pricey for 6000 C36 and EXPO is intended for AMD. I'd switch to an XMP kit.

I wouldn't pay £735 for a 12GB card, the 4070 Ti should be cheaper than that. I'd either get the 4070 Ti Super with 16GB of memory so you can benefit from that for your gaming/rendering, or just switch down to the most inexpensive 4070 Super you can tolerate.


Peerless assassin or phantom spirit is just ~£35 and can cool the 14700K, but you DO have to engage in power management and preferably restore the stock settings from the pre-overclocked BIOS that most boards run. An AIO is likely to be best if you're going to run this CPU at 100% load for long periods, though it depends on the AIO because some of them are no better than the £35 air cooler

For gaming, you definitely don't need an AIO.

That's the one.. Yup the RAM has been swapped, but i think it will be getting swapped out again for some low profile RAM, as I've found a tidy air cooler but it covers the RAM stick's so it's one or the other. If i remember right no links to external sites, but it's been compared to Noctua CPU coolers and is on par temp wise.

As above, apparently I'd chosen a vanilla version of the 4070Ti that's been swapped out for the recommendation, it just made sense.

 

[bigdave2k9]

No, but we can link to reviews

Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 EVO Review: This isn’t a competition. This is a massacre.

As long as it will fit in your case, this is the air cooler you should probably buy.

www.tomshardware.com

Looks good..

My father in-law is a pain.. I linked him the one in the basket below just to look at and the bugger order it..

CAS timings, now that it has to be low profile RAM to fit under the cooler, it's a choice of 2. Kingston or Crucial.


My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i7-14700K (Raptor Lake-S) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-00800) = £399.95
• 1 x Gigabyte Z790 Gaming X AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BM-GI) = £199.99
• 1 x Gainward GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Phoenix 16GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics (SKU: GRA-GNW-01537) = £769.99
• 1 x DeepCool AK620 Digital CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: HS-01J-DC) = £69.95
• 1 x Crucial Pro OC 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRU-02219) = £109.99
• 1 x Kingston FURY Beast 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C40 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MY-29J-KS) = £128.99

Total: £1,686.85 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

 

[bigdave2k9]

If I was prepared to buy the Crucial memory I'd probably get the 48GB 5600 kit instead, especially as it might buy more time before an upgrade for the productivity stuff.

I like Kingston memory, but £129 for 6000 C40 is not a great deal.

I can near enough price match the Crucial memory.. but extra 16GB for a sacrafice of 400mhz.. hhmm