Upgrading PC - Finalizing parts (mainly choosing CPU)

[Tagara]

Hi! I feel like it is long overdue for me to get some new parts added to my PC, as some of them are sitting on their 6th or 7th year at this point. One of the main reasons that I am upgrading is because of my 8 gigs of RAM, I'd like to get more, mainly for when I work with Photoshop and Illustrator. In addition to this the PC is also my gaming rig, for a while now I have felt like the RAM has been limiting the performance of my system in certain games and applications.

 

Seeing as my motherboard is one of the oldest components at this time I'd like to replace it. When I'm first getting more RAM I'd rather not get old bricks.

 

My current system:

 

CPU: Intel Core i5 3750K @ 3.8GHz (OC'd to 4.2GHz)

Cooler: Corsair H100i (The older square design one)

GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GDT5

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 4GB DDR3 1600MHz (Two sticks)

Motherboard: Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3

PSU: Corsair CX500 (500W)

 

Planned upgrades:

 

CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X

Cooler: Included cooler

Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz 8GB (Two sticks)

Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming, S-AM4

Storage: Corsair Force Series MP510 480GB M.2 SSD

 

Concerns:

 

1. Unsure if which CPU to go for. Do I grab a R5 instead or keep the R7, or potentially even grab an i7 9700K if I shuffle my budget around? What I have listed under upgrades is as high as I'd like to go for now. I mainly play games with this PC so that's the main focus with some work on the said. Mainly Photoshop + Illustrator.

 

2. Regarding my choice of CPU. Should I say with AMD and a mobo with the X570 chipset at all due to PCIe 4.0 for future-proofing? As you might see I don't go around upgrading all that often. As an example I went from an 680Ti to the 970. Seeing as I'd like to upgrade now and Intel boards don't support PCIe 4.0 yet(?)

 

3. Cooler, if I run with AMD I'm most likely going to use the stock cooler. At the very least for now as my AIO is likely on it's fifth or so year by now. I've heard that's around their expected / recommended lifespan. I'd rather not have it stop working or worse. Going with Intel I also have to budget in a new cooler unless I keep going with my AIO. It's also super noisy, must be something going on but at this point I'm used to it anyways.

 

4. Quality of my PSU, mine is likely around 6 years old at this point. Bought a while after I got my initial desktop config. I have heard that there might be issues in terms of quality for these if the text is green on them? I have to open up and check tomorrow to make sure, though. It's also not modular at all. But from what I've gathered it shouldn't be much of a problem except potentially my final point.

 

5. 8-pin power supply to my selected motherboard. My current one is 4-pin, but I can add on to make it 8-pin. On the motherboard of my choice there's a 8-pin + 4-pin, and from what I have heard I might not be able to plug the 4-pin. But at the same time, from my understanding, I only need that if I'd like to do extreme overclocking, etc.

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, Tagara said:

 

Get one of the $200 motherboards and use the saved cash to get 3600mhz CL 17/18 memory.

Not sure if that SSD has cache as it's not listed anywhere on it's store page.

The extra 4 pin on motherboard is just for marketing, a single 8 pin is fine. I'd replace the PSU if it's old in any event. Though prices are inflated right now.
 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xfLq6s

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  ($327.89 @ B&H)
Motherboard: Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI) ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($194.79 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory  ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Patriot VPN100 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Cooler Master MWE Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  ($74.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $757.65
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-09-08 21:58 EDT-0400

[Turtle Rig]

36 minutes ago, Tagara said:

Hi! I feel like it is long overdue for me to get some new parts added to my PC, as some of them are sitting on their 6th or 7th year at this point. One of the main reasons that I am upgrading is because of my 8 gigs of RAM, I'd like to get more, mainly for when I work with Photoshop and Illustrator. In addition to this the PC is also my gaming rig, for a while now I have felt like the RAM has been limiting the performance of my system in certain games and applications.

 

Seeing as my motherboard is one of the oldest components at this time I'd like to replace it. When I'm first getting more RAM I'd rather not get old bricks.

 

My current system:

 

CPU: Intel Core i5 3750K @ 3.8GHz (OC'd to 4.2GHz)

Cooler: Corsair H100i (The older square design one)

GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GDT5

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 4GB DDR3 1600MHz (Two sticks)

Motherboard: Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3

PSU: Corsair CX500 (500W)

 

Planned upgrades:

 

CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X

Cooler: Included cooler

Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz 8GB (Two sticks)

Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming, S-AM4

Storage: Corsair Force Series MP510 480GB M.2 SSD

 

Concerns:

 

1. Unsure if which CPU to go for. Do I grab a R5 instead or keep the R7, or potentially even grab an i7 9700K if I shuffle my budget around? What I have listed under upgrades is as high as I'd like to go for now. I mainly play games with this PC so that's the main focus with some work on the said. Mainly Photoshop + Illustrator.

 

2. Regarding my choice of CPU. Should I say with AMD and a mobo with the X570 chipset at all due to PCIe 4.0 for future-proofing? As you might see I don't go around upgrading all that often. As an example I went from an 680Ti to the 970. Seeing as I'd like to upgrade now and Intel boards don't support PCIe 4.0 yet(?)

 

3. Cooler, if I run with AMD I'm most likely going to use the stock cooler. At the very least for now as my AIO is likely on it's fifth or so year by now. I've heard that's around their expected / recommended lifespan. I'd rather not have it stop working or worse. Going with Intel I also have to budget in a new cooler unless I keep going with my AIO. It's also super noisy, must be something going on but at this point I'm used to it anyways.

 

4. Quality of my PSU, mine is likely around 6 years old at this point. Bought a while after I got my initial desktop config. I have heard that there might be issues in terms of quality for these if the text is green on them? I have to open up and check tomorrow to make sure, though. It's also not modular at all. But from what I've gathered it shouldn't be much of a problem except potentially my final point.

 

5. 8-pin power supply to my selected motherboard. My current one is 4-pin, but I can add on to make it 8-pin. On the motherboard of my choice there's a 8-pin + 4-pin, and from what I have heard I might not be able to plug the 4-pin. But at the same time, from my understanding, I only need that if I'd like to do extreme overclocking, etc.

Well Corsair is good with PSU's no worries.  Everything looks good.  Glad you choose the x570 so later on you can upgrade video card and it will work fine.

[Herman Mcpootis]

59 minutes ago, Tagara said:

2. Regarding my choice of CPU. Should I say with AMD and a mobo with the X570 chipset at all due to PCIe 4.0 for future-proofing? As you might see I don't go around upgrading all that often. As an example I went from an 680Ti to the 970. Seeing as I'd like to upgrade now and Intel boards don't support PCIe 4.0 yet(?)

 

4. Quality of my PSU, mine is likely around 6 years old at this point. Bought a while after I got my initial desktop config. I have heard that there might be issues in terms of quality for these if the text is green on them? I have to open up and check tomorrow to make sure, though. It's also not modular at all. But from what I've gathered it shouldn't be much of a problem except potentially my final point.

 

5. 8-pin power supply to my selected motherboard. My current one is 4-pin, but I can add on to make it 8-pin. On the motherboard of my choice there's a 8-pin + 4-pin, and from what I have heard I might not be able to plug the 4-pin. But at the same time, from my understanding, I only need that if I'd like to do extreme overclocking, etc.

GPUs now still don't get bottlenecked when dropping to pci-e 2.0, so it's going to be a very long time before pci-e 4.0 is actually necessary.

get a better PSU, a bitfenix formula is pretty good for $70 at newegg.

the extra 4-pin is unnecessary.

[Turtle Rig]

4 minutes ago, Herman Mcpootis said:

GPUs now still don't get bottlenecked when dropping to pci-e 2.0, so it's going to be a very long time before pci-e 4.0 is actually necessary.

get a better PSU, a bitfenix formula is pretty good for $70 at newegg.

the extra 4-pin is unnecessary.

Sorta a gimmick right now in a way.

[LukeSavenije]

5 hours ago, Turtle Rig said:

Well Corsair is good with PSU's no worries

well... the cx500 is still the old, 2012 version. this cwt design is a group reg, which i certainly wouldn't use on modern systems personally

[Tagara]

14 hours ago, Streetguru said:

Get one of the $200 motherboards and use the saved cash to get 3600mhz CL 17/18 memory.

Not sure if that SSD has cache as it's not listed anywhere on it's store page.

The extra 4 pin on motherboard is just for marketing, a single 8 pin is fine. I'd replace the PSU if it's old in any event. Though prices are inflated right now.

Thanks! Grabbed that other motherboard instead, didn't see that it had built-in wifi as that will come in handy as I'm unable to go wired for now. Which will also let me scrap my cheap wifi card.

 

Just a few followup questions if you don't mind. As I've not been keeping up / paying much attention to PC parts in ages. As I've been looking around I've seen XMP come up everywhere, should I be bothered to enable this on my new system? Also what advantages do I get from having an SSD with a cache? Had a quick look around myself and it seems like my selected SSD does not have this.

 

Having looked through a few benchmarks and all that I'm actually wondering how big of an upgrade going from my current i5 3750K to the Ryzen 7 3700X will be. You wouldn't be able to come up with some super rough number for that, would you?

[Streetguru]

18 minutes ago, Tagara said:

 

There's game benchmarks above, and it shows the scaling to 3600mhz in some games. XMP just automatically sets your memory frequency/timings in the bios.

Cache just helps keep an SSD fast as it fills up and lets it live longer. Can just sort by cache size on the part picker

 

 

[Tagara]

19 hours ago, Streetguru said:

Cache just helps keep an SSD fast as it fills up and lets it live longer. Can just sort by cache size on the part picker.

 

Gotcha, going to find one with cache then for sure. Thanks again! I noticed that the one I selected have way higher read / write than others with a similar amount of storage, however I haven't had the chance to take a proper look yet. Do you happen to know of good read / write speeds to have a look for. Without totally blowing the budget?