3070 mobo and cpu pair

safarihunter · September 4, 2020

I am building a PC for a friend of mine who doesn't know much about them, but loves to game of course. The budget is 2K with a need for a whole new system, keyboard, and monitor to fit into that budget. I am really excited to build something with the new 3070 GPU but I'm not sure which mobo and CPU to pair with the new gen of GPU to squeeze all that juicy performance out of it.

A friend of mine mentioned that the AMD CPU's have a technology that the Intel ones don't yet, and they have a much better price to performance ratio.

I have heard that the newer mobo's have PCI-E 4 which the new GPU series takes advantage of, but which is suggested to pair with it? Planning on taking this person to the world of 1440p at 144hz from the 1080p that she is used to.

Thank you!

Mateyyy · September 4, 2020

If this is strictly intended for gaming:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i5-10600K 4.1 GHz 6-Core Processor	$289.99 @ B&H
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-U12S chromax.black 55 CFM CPU Cooler	$70.00
Motherboard	Gigabyte Z490 AORUS ELITE ATX LGA1200 Motherboard	$179.99 @ Amazon
Memory	Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory	$74.99 @ B&H
Storage	Team MP34 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$109.99 @ Amazon
Case	Corsair 275R Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case	$79.98 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Fractal Design Ion+ 660 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$119.99 @ Newegg
Monitor	LG 27GL850-B 27.0" 2560x1440 144 Hz Monitor	$499.99 @ Best Buy
Custom	RTX 3070 Founders Edition	$499.00
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1923.92
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-09-04 02:10 EDT-0400

Intel's kind of the way to go. Granted the CPU is not quite as important as it is at 1080p for gaming, but depending on the title it'll still make a difference.

Alternatively, you could wait for Zen 3, which should be coming in the following months, though a release date still hasn't been set in stone as of yet.