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..

 

[throwaway4372]

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?

 

[Tetras]

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.

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.

 

[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.

 

[tamzzy]

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

 

[Tetras]

IF i said £500.. what would you buy?

Probably something like this, since it has the best upgrade potential for the future and if you have to buy a new block (I don't know much about water cooling), I figure you might as well get a board/socket that'll last awhile:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 7600 Six Core 5.10GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DW-AM) = £182.99
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6K0-AS) = £169.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Vulcan EXPO 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C38 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FLABD532G6000HC38ADC01) (SKU: MY-0B2-TG) = £99.95

Total: £456.92 (includes delivery: £3.99)​

 

[JollyJamma]

New system

also, SLi isn’t a thing any more so sell one of the GPUs (unless you need it for rendering or something else).

 

[Journey]

Let me know your thoughts..

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.

 

[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.

 

[tamzzy]

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

awh, disappointed

Now the hard part is finding a board to suite my requirements..

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)

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

Gaming and occasional rendering work.

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

i5 / i7 (as said, AMD is an option)

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?

 

[Tetras]

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

B650 Tomahawk has 6x SATA and Z790 Pro RS has 8, but only the Tomahawk has SPDIF.

 

[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.

 

[tamzzy]

i think in your case, you have two options
either the ryzen 7700(x) or the 14600k
sounds like upgradeability is a non-issue so one of the advantages of the AM5 platform is out of the window

the 14600k is neck and neck with the ryzen 7700x, with the 7700 slightly behind: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i5-14600k/21.html (these are minimum fps, there are graphs for the others but i personally prefer to look at minimums as it's a better indicator of smoothness)
the 14600k uses (up to 80w) more power than the ryzen cpus: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i5-14600k/23.html
the 14600k is better (~25%) in multicore rendering workloads: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i5-14600k/6.html (use the 7800x3d as a surrogate result)

 

[Tetras]

£1200 is my budget. Now the hard part is finding a board to suite my requirements..

...

Required - Board, CPU, RAM, GPU

This motherboard is not a great pick, tbh. It takes too much of your budget and it is only DDR4 which I don't think makes sense if you're doing rendering as you might want to go beyond 128GB one day, but it does have 7x SATA and rear SPDIF. If you look for the newer version, the Edge MAX, that is not only a cheaper board, supports DDR5 AND it increases the number of SATA ports to 8.

With your budget, you're making a big sacrifice by spending over £300 on the motherboard because you could get a nicer CPU or GPU with that money, but I know AM5 systems are going to be more widely recommended here, so just giving you some options to look at. The 4070 Ti Super has 16GB of memory and that could come in handy with your rendering. The 4060 Ti also has a 16GB version, but the gaming performance is poop for the cost so I personally would not make that sacrifice.

I'd swap the i5-12400 for a 12600KF, which is around £15-£25 cheaper.

Memory: you already have 32GB DDR4, so I went for an upgrade to 64GB. The 8pack RAM has good performance, but if you plan to upgrade to 128GB then get a 2x32GB kit instead.

The non-white version of the dual is cheaper, but I went with white to match the motherboard heatsinks.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-12400 2.50GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AL-IN) = £175.00
• 1 x MSI MPG Z790 Edge WIFI DDR4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-36Z-MS) = £349.99
• 1 x Team Group Xtreem "8Pack Edition" 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (SKU: MY-09Y-TG) = £139.99
• 1 x Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual OC White 12GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-49E-AS) = £529.99

Total: £1,202.96 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

 

[tamzzy]

but I know AM5 systems are going to be more widely recommended here

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

 

[Tetras]

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

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).

 

[tamzzy]

this is my take on the budget:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-14600K (Raptor Lake-S) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-00802) = £299.99
• 1 x Gigabyte Z790 Gaming X AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BM-GI) = £199.99
• 1 x Crucial Pro OC 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRU-02219) = £109.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 Super Twin Edge 12Gb Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-01499) = £548.99

Total: £1,158.96 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

14th gen intel, so you get the benefit of the newer raptor lake cores (13/14th gen) compared to the older alder lake cores (12 gen)...so better clocks and single thread performance
made the jump to ddr5, but only 32gb of it
the gigabyte board has 6 sata ports, 8 usb rear ports + 1 usbc, and also optical out
4070 super

for the cooler: £32 gets you the Thermalright PS120SE ARGB (not sold at ocuk, but googleable)

 

[jigger]

Unless you need some of the features of X99 (the 40 lanes of PCIE gen3) I wouldn’t buy a new board.

A 3900x/5900x or even 3700X/5800X system would hammer the 5930 at a third of its power use for close to the cost of the motherboard replacement.

 

[Tetras]

• 1 x Gigabyte Z790 Gaming X AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BM-GI) = £199.99

Darn, I missed that one.

Just 2x audio jacks with SPDIF, that's a weird combination

 

[Gray2233]

Tbh, if the OP was happy with his X99 performance, almost any current gen chip is going to annihilate his old CPU. Even something like a 7600 is going to show serious uplift, I don't think I'd be getting so hung up on the CPU side of things.