Upgrading advice

Anomalistics · 30 Jan 2020 at 16:37

Hi there, I wonder if you can help me. I am currently running a 3930k with a 980TI and have 16GB of RAM. Following a recent purchase (34" Widescreen 1440p Monitor) - I now want to get a I9-9900K, which I believe is now the ultimate choice for gaming. What is considered the very best board for this chipset, and what ram would you recommend also? Money is not an issue.

I have been having a look at the X570 Gigabyte XTreme but I am getting mixed signals. On some sites it is not stocked at all, on others it is considered to be end-of-life - which makes no sense to me? Any advice is appreciated.

Edit: I plan to upgrade to the very latest RTX series when it is released later this year as well.

Danny75 · 31 Jan 2020 at 04:46

Hello,

The 9900K isn't compatible with X570. Need AMD Ryzen with X570. For Intel 9th Gen you want a Z390 board.

And then, your 3930K won't be bottlenecking that 980Ti at 3440x1440 (sure, faster architecture + higher clocked CPUs will squeeze a bit more from it but not exactly bottlenecking) and the greater difference will be made by upgrading GPU to a beefier one. That's what you'll be feeling the most - the impact on the 980Ti of playing at higher resolution, not the CPU. Given that both Intel and AMD will release new CPUs this year (likely Intel before AMD according to rumours pointing to early 2020) you may as well wait for those too. If you've had enough waiting by the time the new RTX cards come out then grab whatever CPU is best at the same time.

https://www.wepc.com/news/10th-gen-intel-comet-lake-s-cpu/

It's expected these will be the new best gaming CPUs. Although AMD Ryzen should continue to be the best value for money and who knows if Ryzen 4000 series will beat out the Intel 10th Gens when they arrive later on. So again, I'd wait till it's new RTX time and then see if there's any news then to help decide on the CPU front.

Drumroll · 31 Jan 2020 at 04:54

You're right about the 9900. Ultimate= last processor for the platform. Any upgrade and another 200+ for a motherboard.

EsaT · 31 Jan 2020 at 09:36

9900K would be ludicrously expensive for just two more cores.
And 8 cores/16 threads won't be any ultimate for future gaming, when that 8c/16t is base line for game development from consoles.
No doubt in couple years heaviest games made for PC can use more.
After new things to do with high core counts are figured out, those will scale further than 8 cores.