Older x299 VR build, upgrade or replace on a limited budget

[Burnmaester]

Budget (including currency): $500-$1000 USD, I really prefer to keep the budget lower than higher

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Primarily HTPC with casual VR, HTC Vive, although I prefer quality visuals over frame rates, as long as the frame rates are reasonable. Primary gaming is in VR, Fallout4 VR.

Other details  

Monitors: Currently plugged into my 1080p 60hz 55" TV through my home theater surround sound. Also have my HTC Vive plugged in.

Overclocking: I have never delved into overclocking. Primarily because I would not have the funds to replace anything I broke.

Time frame for decision: I prefer to make a decision during Summer 2020

 

Original build from 2017

Original build intent was to build a budget VR rig with the most graphics horsepower I could afford. At the time with coupons, sales, and reusing case etc. I was able to build it for under $1700 including the cost of the HTC Vive.

 

MB: Asus TUF X299 Mark 2

CPU: Intel Core i5-7640X Kaby Lake-X

GPU: Nvidia GTX1080 Founders Edition

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 2800

SSD: WD Black 256GB NVMe

SSHD: Seagate Firecuda 1TB 7200rpm

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master RR-212X-20PM-R1

PS: Corsair CX750

 

The Issue

In VR I have always had consistent "Frame Timing Spikes", finally decided time to do something about it. It seems the internet consensus is the primary cause is CPU performance. At the time I though the Kaby Lake i5 was a great budget build. Now I know it was a bit of a compromise.

 

The options

So my options are upgrade, replace, or keep it as it is and wait another few years.

Keep it as is is certainly the cheapest option.

 

Upgrade:

The "best part" about my older x299 is that my motherboard can support new processors?

I could replace my i5-7640x with an i9-10900x

 

I could also find an old used or new old stock i7-7740x 

 

New build for same price

I have not been keeping up to date with the new processor, motherboard and performance standards over the past few years. If you think I could new build and reuse as much hardware as possible to keep the price down. Let me know.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

[Jurrunio]

X299, why....Yes you have access to big core counts, but Skylake-X and Cascade Lake X's mesh bus interconnect is inferior to LGA115x CPUs' ring bus interconnect for gaming. Combined with the more expensive CPUs and mobo....

 

Yes 7640x and 7740x are just rebranded 7600k and 7700k on a more expensive platform so they do use ring bus, but with only 4 cores they are limiting by today's standard

 

Check CPU, GPU and RAM usage in game first. HWinfo (sensor mode) and RTSS can do this when combined (dont need Afterburner even tho this guide uses it) http://afixerofsorts.blogspot.com/2017/03/osd-with-rtss-and-hwinfo.html. Not sure if it will work with VR headset so you may need to keep your eyes on the monitor looking at HWinfo on the TV instead.

[Zando_]

If you want to stay on X299, then one of the 10c chips is your best bet. The 7740X is a 7700K jammed into a 2066 package, it doesn't support many of the HEDT features your mobo has. 

If you can get a decent price for the mobo and a bit for the chip, you could hop on over to a new Intel or AMD Ryzen setup, since you can probably get a mobo + CPU combo for a similar price to the HEDT chip alone, if not less. If you're looking to go on the lowest budget possible, and don't care about upgrading to next gen stuff when that drops, a Ryzen 5 3600 + a B450 motherboard would be around $300 or so, pretty unbeatable on value. 

 

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

X299, why....Yes you have access to big core counts, but Skylake-X and Cascade Lake X's mesh bus interconnect is inferior to LGA115x CPUs' ring bus interconnect for gaming. Combined with the more expensive CPUs and mobo....

I was confused on that too, especially for a budget build

 

3 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Check CPU, GPU and RAM usage in game first.

Frametime spikes would be CPU or RAM related. 4c/4t is rough if you're running anything in the background. 4c/8t can still do pretty well but not worth buying one of those chips when 6c/12t chips are so cheap rn. 

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

Frametime spikes would be CPU or RAM related. 4c/4t is rough if you're running anything in the background. 4c/8t can still do pretty well but not worth buying one of those chips when 6c/12t chips are so cheap rn. 

But it could just need more single core speed. 7640x stock runs around 4-4.2GHz so certainly room to improve further.

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

But it could just need more single core speed. 7640x stock runs around 4-4.2GHz so certainly room to improve further.

"I have never delved into overclocking. Primarily because I would not have the funds to replace anything I broke."

If they're down to try OCing now then yeah, definitely worth a shot. 

[Burnmaester]

2 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

Ryzen 5 3600 + a B450 motherboard would be around $300 or so, pretty unbeatable on value. 

I had not realized the price for performance had come down so far!

I will definitely look into those as an option.

[Zando_]

7 minutes ago, Burnmaester said:

I had not realized the price for performance had come down so far!

I will definitely look into those as an option.

Oh yeah, the new Ryzen stuff has been killer on pure price/performance for a while. The curren-gen stuff actually competes on performance with Intel's offerings as well. An R5 3600 is about the equivalent of an 8700K. Also, since you don't manually OC, Ryzen is even nicer (my main beef with them is I don't find them fun to manually push). AMD's PBO feature pulls most of the performance out of the chip for you, you can get a few % when manually tuning, but really it's close to the limit out of the box.