An 9900K upgrade build with a couple questions

wnd · December 3, 2018

I've enjoyed a 2500K for 7 years, of which 1.5 years highly clocked on a z77 board. The board however broke up recently and I've been wanting to update ever since.

I mostly play recent games but also use special cases like Dosbox emulators and I'm interested of getting into the RPCS3 Playstation 3 emulator. Both heavily benefit specially of Intel and even Ryzen 2700x gets destroyed. Also, even though I will go with the existing GTX980 for starters, I think I also want some of that extra gaming speed for the future.. much like how 2500K was a great buy for very long.

I begun a topic here earlier about 9600K, but I watched some Gamers Nexus reviews where they noticed that some of the latest games which utilizes 8 threads properly, like Far Cry 5 and the Unreal Engine, would benefit of having more than 6 cores (to eliminate stuttering.) For that reason and the longetivity of having extra cores, I think I want to now go with 9900K, especially because it's only a little more money from the 8 core 9700K.

I was worried that 9900K is very power consuming, but after checking some power supply calculator pages it seems safe to put 9900K and GTX980 to a decent 650W PSU, which I have. The page calculated 496W as absolute minimum recommendation. I have only a couple SSD's and few USB peripheals.

The case that I have is Fractal Design Meshify C. I think I want some Asus motherboard model which is decent for 9900K. It doesn't have to live up to LN2 level overclocking because I plan to go only with water AIO for now. Perhaps custom hard piping in the future with a better PSU. I also like RGB because of having a window and some RGB fans already. I think Asus Aura is a good thing to have for compatible fans and stripes? Would you recommend going with some other RGB standard?

The motherboard model I thought about most is Asus ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING, because it is currently in stock in nearby shop at 280€ here in Finland, along the 9900K about 600€. I also like that it has integrated WI-FI and relatively good integrated audio. Picture attached. Would you recommend some other model instead?

For memory I was thinking about G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4 3200 Mhz, because it looks cool, is in stock for 189€ for 2x8GB. I am being told though, that is not good quality memory. Picture attached. What "RGB sticks" would you recommend for 9900K?

In total the 9900K + the motherboard + the memory would be 1069€, which is 1213 USD or 1602 CAD.

Dedayog · December 3, 2018

Don't know much about RGB at all, but I'd rock a 8700K in that build cuz for $650-700 USD you'd be good. No clue how you got $1200 USB for CPU, motherboard, and RAM.

wnd · December 3, 2018

Components are not the cheapest here in Finland unfortunately, which can be proven with the actual store links. It's an averagely priced component shop in general around here, which sometimes has stuff in stock other shops don't have and vice versa. As a plus, you can go pick up the ordered parts even during the night if you can't wait.

https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/6615/jrrgs/G-Skill-Trident-Z-RGB-DDR4-3200-Mhz-16-Gt-muistimodulipakkau

https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/4215/knqnq/Intel-Core-i5-9600K-3-7-GHz-LGA1151-suoritin

https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/30107/kqkmc/Asus-ROG-STRIX-Z390-E-GAMING-Intel-Z390-LGA1151-ATX-emolevy

8700k is a good thing to think about. Though it has 6 real cores and 12 hyper-threaded, it's probably about the same as 9700k in practice, which has 8 real cores and no HT. It's still a lot of cores and it has lower TDP than 9900k, which is nice for overclocking with smaller cooling.