Budget or Upgradability?

[Mikkelgbc]

I am building my first gaming pc and have come to a dilemma.

 

I am planning on getting a GTX 1660 Super, but am unsure on the CPU.

 

Should i get the i5-9400F with a B365 motherboard and 2666 MHz RAM or the Ryzen 5 3600 with a B450 motherboard and 3200 MHz RAM (which is about 105 US$ more expensive)?

 

I know the 3600 is probably to powerful compared to the GPU, but this would make it cheaper and easier to upgrade in the future (just the graphics card compared to motherboard, CPU and possibly RAM)

[Spaceman_Wil]

I'd recommend upgradability. What I'd ask myself is would I rather be stuck with an ok machine or slowly get a great machine. 

 

Plus if you went budget and then a year or two down the road want to go for something better, you'd have to start from scratch, probably paying more. 

[Whiro]

44 minutes ago, Mikkelgbc said:

I know the 3600 is probably to powerful compared to the GPU, but this would make it cheaper and easier to upgrade in the future (just the graphics card compared to motherboard, CPU and possibly RAM

What is your budget? And where you from.  I would go witn AMD, best way atm. More cores , plus you can oc that cpu. 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor	$114.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Asus TUF B450M-PRO GAMING Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$98.98 @ Newegg
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	$69.98 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$283.95
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-10 16:04 EST-0500

If you stretch budget I would get better mobo (not that this is bad) Tomahawk Max is the king recently 

[Midnitewolf]

I really think people get way to hung up on CPU/GPU bottlenecks.  There is really no major issue with using a 3600 with a 1660 Super so I wouldn't let that worry you.  Also I tend to feel a GPU upgrade is about the easiest upgrade you can do with a system so there is that to consider as well. 

 

As far as focusing on budget or upgradability.  Obviously, you have to stay within your budget but I think the worst thing to do is cheap out just to save a few bucks. For example, I bought a cheap B350 MB on my last build to pair up with a Ryzen 1600 and it worked great but just wasn't good enough to allow me to upgrade to the Ryzen 3000 chip I wanted so I had to replace the MB.  If I would have spent maybe $50-$75 more then and got a decent B450 MB, I would have been golden.  With that in mind I try to at least think about what I might want to do with my PC 2-3 years down the road and build accordingly.

 

 

[MadAnt250]

1 hour ago, Mikkelgbc said:

Should i get the i5-9400F with a B365 motherboard and 2666 MHz RAM or the Ryzen 5 3600 with a B450 motherboard and 3200 MHz RAM (which is about 105 US$ more expensive)?

Can you list the parts with the prices you have?

 

It all depends on what your budget is, you can have have close performance to a i5 9400f by going with a Ryzen 2600x and the cost of the setup should also be close in price depending on which low budget parts you choose, but in my opinion based on how the market is right now the better option is AMD because there are probably more better value upgrade options in the future as far as CPU's go. 

 

 

[Mikkelgbc]

I live in Denmark, so price are a bit higher compared to the US. My budget is about 1000-1200 US$.

 

This is my go-to parts list at the moment:

Part	Name	Price in US
Case	Phanteks Eclipse P400A - RGB	$    117,56
Motherboard	MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC	$    156,10
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600	$    236,46
CPU Cooling	Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition	$      41,96
RAM	CORSAIR Vengeance RGB PRO 16 GB 3200 MHz	$    105,21
GPU	Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Super OC	$    283,63
Storage	Kingston A2000 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD	$      81,70
Power Supply	Corsair RM550x Modular	$    111,46
Total price for Parts		$ 1.134,08

Remarks:

Case: Good airflow and 3 fans (With RGB!)

Motherboard: Has an extra 4-pin ATX connecter, which my PSU doens't have. I think i should be fine as i aren't going to do any extreme overclocking. It's basically a Tomahawk Max with integrated WiFi and Bluetooth(!), better audio and Intel LAN and it is only 24 US$ extra.

CPU Cooler + RAM: I think i am good on RAM clearance to the CPU cooler, but not entirely sure.

PSU: I would like a good quality modular PSU.

 

You are welcome to critic my build.

 

[Analog]

I would go Ryzen 3600 instead of investing in an old platform, which isn't going anywhere. Additionally, the Ryzen 3600 should be totally fine with a GTX 1660 Super, unless you are playing at an incredibly low resolution at low settings. I doubt that you will see any bottlenecking in any modern titles at 1080p or higher res with sensible in-game settings. 

[Mister Woof]

On 1/10/2020 at 1:20 PM, Midnitewolf said:

I really think people get way to hung up on CPU/GPU bottlenecks.  There is really no major issue with using a 3600 with a 1660 Super so I wouldn't let that worry you.  Also I tend to feel a GPU upgrade is about the easiest upgrade you can do with a system so there is that to consider as well. 

 

As far as focusing on budget or upgradability.  Obviously, you have to stay within your budget but I think the worst thing to do is cheap out just to save a few bucks. For example, I bought a cheap B350 MB on my last build to pair up with a Ryzen 1600 and it worked great but just wasn't good enough to allow me to upgrade to the Ryzen 3000 chip I wanted so I had to replace the MB.  If I would have spent maybe $50-$75 more then and got a decent B450 MB, I would have been golden.  With that in mind I try to at least think about what I might want to do with my PC 2-3 years down the road and build accordingly.

 

 

 

They also deal in some kind of magical static fps caps....even if you most of the time get enough frames for your gpu, when you hit a CPU minimum (which tends to happen in multiplayer games) the stronger CPU help keep your framerate out of the gutter.

 

Play a game like WoW with a slow cpu and in heavily populated areas, you'll see how little the fps "average" matters.

 

Going from a 4ghz 1600 and a 5ghz 8700k in the same raid/settings (wife and I played together) neither GPU was maxed out but the 1600 frames were in the low 50s and the 8700k was happily pushing 70s.

 

[Lakobrija]

I'm really suggesting you upgradibility. You can get some b450 mobos for very cheap and buy 2600 and later you can go with 4600 since it's pretty sure that 4th series of Ryzen will also be on am4 socket. You got mobo that can run extremely good cpu while not spending too much money on it and in meanwhile be able to have a good cpu (talking about 2600 before getting 4th gen). Also, try to get best CL ram you can, don't go higher in number than CL 16, because ram is really important for ryzen

[Zberg]

3600 IMO.  

 

In the future if you get some more bucks and want to upgrade you could swap in a better AM4 socket CPU (of which you have many options).  Not to mention it is probably the best value CPU out there right now.  

 

Additionally, if you have more money for GPU upgrades in the future, the 3600 will be good for pretty much any GPU (especially if that GPU leads to a resolution upstep to 1440p/4k in which case it will handle anything there).

 

Overall a better platform, more upgradability, especially if you are building a new from scratch I think its a no brainer

[Bravo1cc]

5 minutes ago, Zberg said:

3600 IMO.  

 

In the future if you get some more bucks and want to upgrade you could swap in a better AM4 socket CPU (of which you have many options).  Not to mention it is probably the best value CPU out there right now.  

 

Additionally, if you have more money for GPU upgrades in the future, the 3600 will be good for pretty much any GPU (especially if that GPU leads to a resolution upstep to 1440p/4k in which case it will handle anything there).

 

Overall a better platform, more upgradability, especially if you are building a new from scratch I think its a no brainer

I agree with this statement, i have a 2080Ti pared with a 3600X stock that i run at 4k and it runs so well. I have never had any bottle necking so please don't worry about that.

[Mikkelgbc]

Thank you all for the responses. I did prefer going with the 3600, but i was thrown of by the fact, that i could get very similiar performance (today) at a lower price. I will probably go with the 3600 as it will last longer and it would be easier and cheaper to upgrade in the future.

[Zberg]

2 hours ago, Bravo1cc said:

I agree with this statement, i have a 2080Ti pared with a 3600X stock that i run at 4k and it runs so well. I have never had any bottle necking so please don't worry about that.

When I still had my 2600 at my house and was building my work ITX pc, I threw my 2080ti in that box with the 2600.  At 1440p it's still GPU bottlenecked, CPU had room.  1080p high refresh that would obviously not be the case, but 1440p and especially 4k the midrange CPUs can handle just fine since itll be a guaranteed GPU bottleneck.  Might be some exception with esports at 1440p being that those can run in the 165 and beyond, but the people in the market for those frame rates know what they want.

[boggy77]

5 hours ago, Mikkelgbc said:

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition

you cans ave some money by not getting this. it's not a very significant upgrade over the stock cooler and you can always get one later if you find your system is too noisy/hot.

[Mikkelgbc]

2 hours ago, boggy77 said:

you cans ave some money by not getting this. it's not a very significant upgrade over the stock cooler and you can always get one later if you find your system is too noisy/hot.

That was also my thought. I will probably end up doing that. 

[Mister Woof]

Personally I'd upgrade the cooler over the stealth.

 

It's one less chance of bending pins when removing an old cooler lol