Upgrading 2 PCs, help?

[Tsuyara]

Short version: Trying to upgrade my SO's and my PC.

Budget/Location:

1.4k€ combined if everything goes right, it's a bit flexible, but not much. The lower the better, since we're going to have to buy other stuff afterward, like a new GPU for my dying 980ti, new keyboard, maybe a new case/PSU if hers fail.

US for hers, DE for mine (conversion rate of 1:1).

Aim:

Gaming and just general usage, a lot of multitasking. So a normal evening would be both of us playing together, watching a show at the same time and her streaming to me over discord (ideally i guess i'd stream to her too, but both our PCs are running at their limit). Generally lots of other programs running in the background as well. I tend to care more about graphics and looks, so for her it's mostly just a concern on how many cores you need for all the multitasking she does.

Monitors:

She has 2 1080p 60hz, i believe, one for gaming the other for multitasking. Though hopefully soon a 3rd, not sure which, but i really don't want to think about it, my wallet is screaming at me as it is.

I recently got a 1440p 144hz as main for gaming, with 2 1080p 60hz for multitasking

Extra:

I'm hoping Microsoft will be nice and let us keep our windows licenses? At least i heard it'd be possible if you wrote support.

Not aware of any peripheral issue on her end, my keyboard is basically dying though and i really need a new one (soda spill 2 years ago, so liquid+stickiness on certain keys, spacebar uneven), but i'm going to try to hold out until i have more money.

Why:

I just wanted to upgrade, so i already bought a x570 MSI gaming edge wifi (for the watercooler promo that was a bit ago), but then she was having issues with her PC. In short: She wants to replace her CPU/MB/Boot drive, new for peace of mind.

 

She's currently using a 3570k and 1660ti, the latter doesn't need an upgrade yet. I'm using a 4790k and 980ti, the latter of which has been broken for years (kinda like having an unstable clock, frequently crashing in certain games, but i'm even underclocking it so idk what to do) and i really should have taken advantage of warranty (which should still last, at least i think it was 5 years, but i stupidly put an aftermarket cooler on it because the stock one was being really loud and running hot, bleh...).

We are both running a HDD bootdrive, I think a SSD would help stuff a lot, even when i'm running things on a separate HDD or even my small SSD (2 2tb HDD; 1 256gb Kingston SSD) what usually sits at 100% usage is my boot drive slowing everything down. I'm also an absolute data hog and i don't really want to deal with small boot drive struggles (running a 200gb partition as boot, which has been near full for years, i have all my stuff separately but since every program in existence puts stuff on C, along with some games storing mods there, i just kinda want to not have to deal with all that and just get a 1tb SSD).

 

Neither of us are the type of girl who flips things, so idk if we can make any money selling our old stuff, i'm planning to just give mine to a friend or something, but my friend circle is kinda upgrading in bulk, but i'm the computer expert so if anything i'd be expected to sell the old hardware (all 4000 intel stuff) and with University, minijob and upgrading stress, it's all really overwhelming and i don't think i could do it... I just don't know what to do here. It feels really limiting, any cent i spend on my stuff is money we can't use for hers so i have to find some balance and it's just hard. So any tips regarding getting good value, I'd be okay with buying 2nd hand stuff myself, etc. would be appreciated. Maybe it'd be wise to wait until next gen for my upgrade?

My idea so far:

https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/9kHVq4
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zY2qLJ

(Idk if the lists work, but it was basically 3700x, 860 EVO on both, B450 Tomahawk for her (i thought about getting a x570 for her for peace of mind especially since idk if her brother would know how to update bios without a cpu, but it'd just make me feel down for not doing it earlier and not taking advantage of the i love ryzen thing).

Ram: I tried to get 16 latency for both of us, since i read it's important. I only went with a 3200 for her because i thought 1600 1:1 would provide ample performance, especially since she cares less about FPS/Graphics and more about multitasking (though i might be completely off here and more hz is more important for that), but idk if the 3600 is really worth it being 70€ more expensive for me either. Also any ram recommendations would be nice, i basically picked these at random (limiting search to CAS 16 and 3600/3200 respectively)

3700x: It just seems like a good CPU for multitasking, idk if the 3900x might be worth it for one of us, but it's just soo expensive that i'm really not sure it's good. Was also considering the 3600, but since cores are the main concern, idk. It also seems to be not great on a 200€ motherboard to get a 200€ CPU.

 

Td:dr;

Budget 1400€ slightly flexible, but lower is better due to other buys down the line

Task: Heavy multitasking while gaming

DE: 1 Zen 2, 1 Ram, 1+tb SSD (planned on getting a 5700xt but with the budget i don't think i can make that work)

US: 1 CPU+MB+Ram+Boot SSD

[Animal901]

My main pc is running an i7 4770s in a biostar tb85, 16gb of ddr3 1600mhz ram with an adata 1tb ssd, and a gtx760 OC. Its plenty fast for me.  I think i want to get an m.2 adapter so i can go nvme. I feel 240gb to 256gb is acceptable. a gtx 1060 is of course better  but since i don't play anything newer than cs:go, why should i spend the money? I don't think you have to spend as much to get the performance you're looking for.  You'll probably get told to get a ryzen and rx570. 

[brob]

Updating the BIOS on a B450 Tomahawk motherboard is pretty painless. Essentially, download the BIOS onto a USB drive; rename the file; put the drive in the appropriate motherboard port; press the BIOS Flash button; wait.

 

You might consider an NVMe drive. Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME  is less expensive and faster than the 860 Evo.

 

I don't think DDR4-3600 memory is worth the added cost. The performance improvement in most applications is quite small. See https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-zen-2-memory-performance-scaling-benchmark/.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  (€343.48 @ Mindfactory) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  (€84.90 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Storage: Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  (€105.89 @ Mindfactory) 
Total: €534.27
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-09-03 16:03 CEST+0200

[Tsuyara]

35 minutes ago, brob said:

Updating the BIOS on a B450 Tomahawk motherboard is pretty painless. Essentially, download the BIOS onto a USB drive; rename the file; put the drive in the appropriate motherboard port; press the BIOS Flash button; wait.

 

You might consider an NVMe drive. Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME  is less expensive and faster than the 860 Evo.

 

I don't think DDR4-3600 memory is worth the added cost. The performance improvement in most applications is quite small. See https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-zen-2-memory-performance-scaling-benchmark/.

I considered the 660p, but bad reviews of it's performance crashing after doing large stuff and the fear of QLC dying earlier has kept me from it. I'd generally just prefer performance consistency and longevity over peak perf, but i'm not too sure. Though with only 2 m.2 slots on the x570 and only 1 on the Tomahawk i thought getting another sata would be better while waiting for a proper tlc NVMe.

 

Are you sure on the memory? Linus recommendation was 3600 and the performance in the link varies a fair bit by speed, the 3200 having absolutely stellar 14-14-14 timings also makes me unsure when the 3600 has a seemingly fairly meh one at 17-19-19. I'm just scared i'll get 3200 and then when i have frame drops i'll wonder if i had spend that extra 70€ for a good 3600.

47 minutes ago, Animal901 said:

My main pc is running an i7 4770s in a biostar tb85, 16gb of ddr3 1600mhz ram with an adata 1tb ssd, and a gtx760 OC. Its plenty fast for me.  I think i want to get an m.2 adapter so i can go nvme. I feel 240gb to 256gb is acceptable. a gtx 1060 is of course better  but since i don't play anything newer than cs:go, why should i spend the money? I don't think you have to spend as much to get the performance you're looking for.  You'll probably get told to get a ryzen and rx570. 

I personally am not happy with my 4790k, it's struggling to keep up hard.

240/256gb is definitely not enough for me, as i wrote in the OP, i have a 200gb boot partition and it's basically always near maxed and i have to scramble to delete things off it (atm it has 10gb free).

[brob]

25 minutes ago, Tsuyara said:

I considered the 660p, but bad reviews of it's performance crashing after doing large stuff and the fear of QLC dying earlier has kept me from it

 

Don't confuse the 660 with the 660p. The later is much improved.

 

As to fear of QLC endurance, every generation of ssd tech have had observers suggesting that they have limited lifetimes. While QLC has lower write endurance than other cells, if you do the math you will discover that they are usually rated at over 50GB write every day for 10 years. For most consumers that is more than enough. Because they are known to have limited endurance, they tend to fail quite gracefully giving a user lots of time to replace the unit.

 

24 minutes ago, Tsuyara said:

Are you sure on the memory? Linus recommendation was 3600 and the performance in the link varies a fair bit by speed, the 3200 having absolutely stellar 14-14-14 timings also makes me unsure when the 3600 has a seemingly fairly meh one at 17-19-19. I'm just scared i'll get 3200 and then when i have frame drops i'll wonder if i had spend that extra 70€ for a good 3600.

AMD did suggest DDR4-3600 as being optimal. The link generated test data. You will have to decide what to trust. I would point out that 70€ is quite a premium to pay.

[m777y]

girl
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  ($339.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: SilenX EFZ-120HA5 86 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler  ($37.57 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z390 Extreme4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($129.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($94.99 @ Adorama)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB EVOKE OC Video Card  ($429.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Lite 5 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Gigabyte 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  ($102.77 @ Amazon)
Monitor: AOC C24G1 24.0" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor  ($179.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1440.17
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-09-03 10:55 EDT-0400

you

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  (€390.89 @ Mindfactory)
CPU Cooler: SilenX EFZ-120HA5 86 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler  (€32.06 @ Mindfactory)
Motherboard: MSI Z390-A PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (€126.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  (€81.79 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Crucial MX500 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (€66.55 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Video Card: Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB GameRock Video Card  (€757.99 @ Mindfactory)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Lite 5 ATX Mid Tower Case  (€49.98 @ Alternate)
Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2018) 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€89.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €1596.24
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-09-03 17:23 CEST+0200

 

[Animal901]

1 hour ago, Tsuyara said:

I personally am not happy with my 4790k, it's struggling to keep up hard.

240/256gb is definitely not enough for me, as i wrote in the OP, i have a 200gb boot partition and it's basically always near maxed and i have to scramble to delete things off it (atm it has 10gb free).

You cannot have a bad video card and blame the cpu. Its not the 4790k that's slow. What speed is it running? Are you overclocking. What kind of cooler do you have. I prefer heat pipe radiators. There are still plenty of proud haswell i5 people pushing close 5ghz off a corsair closed loop liquid cooler....   100 mbps boot hard drive is what's slow. Definitely keep your hard drives for storage since you need them. Windows 10 can install a program on any drive.  Unlike 98, 2000, & xp.  I cannot find in your op how much ram you have or how fast it goes. Like i said before. You should move on to nvme and if your board doesn't have that socket get a pcie adapter off Ebay or Amazon. If you can't pull that off go 1tb sata ssd. You should not keep so much on your boot drive. Im not a fan of limiting a boot to a partition size smaller than the drive. So i can definatly see your peril.... Ssd gets slower the more you put on it. So a 1 tb sata ssd maxed out can still bog to 220mbps. Expect to see 385 mbps to 550mbps on sata ssd. Nvme will give you 900mbps and up. 240gb is 40gb more gigs than 200, and all the time that's everything on storage. Cs:go is like 16 to 18gb. I'm coming off the 1tb boot bangwagon. If you can manage to put all your photos,  music,  videos, and downloads on a separate drive. You can get by just fine on a 240 to 256gb. If that really freaks you out go 480 to 512gb. You just don't need all that on a boot unless you are limited for physical size. I guess playing doom zandronum can get out of hand downloading all the custom wad files through doom explorer. If you assemble all the files needed to play duke nukem 3d on win10 its just 634mb. Half life is like 972mb. Elder scrolls 3 morrowind is pushing 2gb. If you do tamriel rebuilt thats gona take up alot of space.  Ive only used 984gb of movies and music. That doom app data folder does get out of contol for me. What is the actual function? It sounds like an anime server.

[Tsuyara]

39 minutes ago, brob said:

 

Don't confuse the 660 with the 660p. The later is much improved.

 

As to fear of QLC endurance, every generation of ssd tech have had observers suggesting that they have limited lifetimes. While QLC has lower write endurance than other cells, if you do the math you will discover that they are usually rated at over 50GB write every day for 10 years. For most consumers that is more than enough. Because they are known to have limited endurance, they tend to fail quite gracefully giving a user lots of time to replace the unit.

 

AMD did suggest DDR4-3600 as being optimal. The link generated test data. You will have to decide what to trust. I would point out that 70€ is quite a premium to pay.

I guess it's still reliable, though the TBW of the 860 evo is still 3x as much (600 vs 200) and since i don't think any of my stuff could really take advantage of NVMe (except moving games around maybe, but doesn't the 660p hit it's cache limit then?), it's sacrificing 2/3 durability (yeah that's probably not how TBW works, but still), TLC and 100% of the M.2 slots for no performance gain. At least looking at timings on youtube didn't really make it look tempting. But then I also didn't think a SSD would be worth it as a boot drive a year ago, so if i'm missing something, you probably know better.

 

True, it is a lot. Not really sure. I guess it is the easiest way to shave off a fair bit of money. It's just hard to not fear regretting things down the line.

5 minutes ago, Animal901 said:

Its not the 4790k that's slow. What speed is it running? Are you overclocking. What kind of cooler do you have. I prefer heat pipe radiators. There are still plenty of proud haswell i5 people pushing close 5ghz off a corsair closed loop liquid cooler....   100 mbps boot hard drive is what's slow. Definitely keep your hard drives for storage since you need them. Windows 10 can install a program on any drive.  Unlike 98, 2000, & xp.  I cannot find in your op how much ram you have or how fast it goes. Like i said before. You should move on to nvme and if your board doesn't have that socket get a pcie adapter off Ebay or Amazon. If you can't do that go 1tb ssd. You should not keep so much on your boot drive. You are just going to have to work on that if you want to live without the misery. Ssd gets slower the more you put on it. So a 1 tb sata ssd maxed out can still bog to to 220mbps. Expect to see 385 mbps to 550mbps on sata ssd. Nvme will give you 900mbps and up. 240gb is 40gb more gigs than 200, and all the time that's everything on storage. Cs:go is like 16 to 18gb.

I tried overclocking but the thing spiked to over 90° immediately so i gave up. Not really sure what to say, my poor 4790k just really struggles in my day to day use. I do a lot at once and pretty much 80% of the time, what's struggling is the CPU (aside from the HDD, that thing struggles 24/7).

Got 16gb DDR3 (friend is at 8gb DDR3), often hitting the 16gig limit but no way i can afford 32 ddr4. Idk the speed of the top of my head, unfortunately.

 

I'm not choosing to keep stuff on my boot partition, it's all the logs, mods, etc. that need to be there at least from what i can tell. Diagnosing what part is using how much isn't fun and exactly the kind of fiddling around I want to avoid (like having to decide what stuff to delete when i want to keep it). I just use a lot of data, even with 2 2tb HDDs I have less than 800gb free space and that's after a spring cleaning and uninstalling a lot of games (and regretting it later when i had to fiddle with mods again).

[Animal901]

I swear if you just get a giant heatpipe cooler, or closed loop radiator. More fans. Some good thermal paste, any sata ssd that is at least 960gb in capacity, and a new fancy gpu. Look into larger capacity hard drives. Like 3 and 4tb, or more. Get the overclock right, and stop worrying about ssd life expectancy.  This adapter paired with a nvme m.2 is faster than sata. Doing that would feel real snappy and have power. Ryzen is going thru too many changes and its definitely something im going to wait out. Ive still got a great phenom 2 x4 955 8gb ddr2 480gb sata ssd gtx 645. It's old but it runs great

 Bulldozer was a flop. wait till ryzen has comfortably hit its mark. I know haswell is thought of as old but it would be a mistake to completely decommission the machine. Its not like its a dual core opteron 1218he, or athlon xp 2400+. There are core 2 duo 6mb cache 3.3ghz wolfdales that still deserve to be used.

 

I'm about to put one on my pc after i just tried one out on the home server. I'm loving it.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NVMe-PCIe-x4-x2-M-2-NGFF-SSD-to-PCIe-x1-converter-card-adapter-PCIe-x1-to-M-2EC/362705267025?_mwBanner=1&ul_ref=https%3A%2F%2Frover.ebay.com%2Frover%2F0%2F0%2F0%3Fmpre%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F362705267025%26rvr_id%3D0%26rvr_ts%3Df80df70216c0a4e967b5fc3cffce9374&ul_noapp=true&pageci=5039cb06-ff98-46c2-bfde-4ae61e5c4d14