Upgrade path(s) discussion

atxcyclist · August 10, 2019

My 7600k has become a dinosaur since I purchased it a while back, so I'm thinking it's nearly time to upgrade. I see three paths before me:

1. Find a 7700k

Pros: A few screws and some thermal paste and I'm done, don't have to reinstall a single program or driver

Cons: Price is really high on generations-old Intel, only marginal gain in performance, likely the next generation of games will want more than it provides

2. Buy B450/R5 3600/RAM combo

Pros: Great performance gain, price per dollar is probably the best, possibility to go better on the processor in the future but really unnecessary for how long it should be viable

Cons: Will need AMD compatible RAM so that raises the cost, requires full reinstall of OS and all that

3. Buy x399/1920x/RAM combo, but later on might go with a 2nd (or 3rd if compatible) gen Threadripper when prices drop

Pros: High end platform, hell of a lot of threads, board quality is likely high so a good long-term investment

Cons: Oh boy... 4-channel RAM cost, per-core performance is worse than my 7600k, much higher power draw, probably cannot harness even a fraction of the potential with what I do at home (might get into video though)

Shortly thereafter I will be moving to a better video card as well, although I just want 1080p gaming here and currently I have a 60hz monitor. Yes, my current 6gb 1060 is fine, but I want to experience raytracing and some of the new tech eventually. I think option 1 is by far the worst, 2 is likely the best, 3 is good but very expensive and only works in my favor if games start utilizing a ton of threads. Any thoughts? I've considered a b450/3700x combo, but it's a big jump in price and likely not that beneficial.

atxcyclist · August 13, 2019

On 8/10/2019 at 12:48 AM, Genwyn said:

And you wouldn't need a full reinstall of the OS, just have your installation media ready and it will replace the broken drivers with ms stock drivers if needed, usually it won't. Windows 10 is at the very least a lot smarter with that stuff. You'll just have to reactivate it which takes a minute tops.

Thanks for the input, I'm going to try just using the same install and see where that gets me, if all else fails I have a flashdrive with 1903 build and I'd just need to shuffle my Steam library and Google Chrome accounts around. Ended up with an MSI B450 Gaming Plus, 16gb of Corsair 3200 that's for Ryzen and should be fine, and actually got the 2700x 50th anniversary because it was on sale. I debated if I wanted the higher IPC of the newer Ryzen 3600, but I think in the long run an extra 2 cores and 4 threads will be more beneficial (perhaps?). Since my 7600k is not really a slouch for past games and still fairly overkill for daily computing, I wanted to keep it with the RAM I had, it wasn't as fast as this new stuff anyway. Threadripper seemed great until you factor in another $70-125+ for a cooling solution.