GPU Upgrade from GTX1070 to RTX3080

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

Hello LTT Forum, first time poster here.

 

Introduction:

In the half of 2018 I finally had the budget to upgrade my 7 years old PC. I'm pretty much a function over form guy, so my system is as messy as it gets and has no RGB (for horrors, look at the picture attached). It costed me about 2000€ (bitcoin craze + ddr cartel + more expensive parts in Italy).
Current Specs:

• Screen: 2X 16:9 1080p 60FPS TN panel HDMI. 1XPortrait + 1XLandscape.
• GPU: GTX 1070 with blower cooler (stock configuration)
• CPU: i7 8700 with Noctua tower cooler (non k, stock configuration)
• RAM: 2x8GB 3200 kit (XMP enabled in the bios)
• MOBO: Gigabyte Z370 HD3
• Case: Random case with SD card reader and side fan intake. In hindsight, I should have invested in a better case.
• OS Drive: SATA3 128GB SSD with Dram cache
• M.2: 1X empty slot. 1X32GB Optane drive ready to install
• Storage Drives: 2X SATA3 1TB 7200RPM HDD (steam drive + data)
• Backup Drive: USB3.0 HDD enclosure with 5000RPM 6TB drive
• PSU: 2x650W gold modular. I bought a spare and overspecced it. I have never seen the PSU fan turn on.

Hardware wise I'm happy with the performance. The system handled everything I needed from games to CADs and boots in 4s flat.

The system is also quite silent, but temps get in the 80°C range, which I'm not happy with. With this build I got the case and the cable management wrong and I have not installed any dust filters. In hindsight it would have been better to ask for advice, which is what I'm doing now.

 

Problem:

I have a first world problem. I play Satisfactory at Ultra settings, and I'm running into a GPU bottlneck. I only get about 25FPS with stutters (afterburner screenshot attached). I could lower the graphic options, but the game looks beautiful in Ultra. Later this year I also plan to play Cyberpunk 2077, and I would like to enjoy the RTX graphics at it might offer, if the trailers are anything close to truth.

 

Plan:

My system is serving me well, so I'm not planning a brand new build. I plan to change as few components as possible for this upgrade. I buy parts from Italy in Europe.

My current problem is a GPU bottlneck and bad thermals, so my plan is (see picture attached):

• GPU: Upgrade from GTX1070 to RTX3080 (probably about 800€ to 900€ in my region)
• FANS: Add dust filters and three additional fans (50€ to 100€)
• Case: Move the HDDs, cut out for the GPU and holes in the front panel to add two front intake fans (2h of tooling)

My PSU was grossly overspecced to begin with. I should be using 400W at most right now, certanly the PSU never felt the need to power its fan. The GPU upgrade adds about 170W, and I'm not planning to overclock my GPU, so I likely get away with my current 650W power supply. Nvidia advise a 700W PSU.

On the software side, I plan to format my drives in GPT to make use of a M.2 32GB Optane drive to accelerate my HDD Steam drive, and do a clean install of the OS.

 

I expect this upgrade to cost me about 1000€. My limit for this upgrade is about 1100€.

 

Compromises:

1. Everything should fit in the current case. With additional fans and a different fan layout, I hope thermals will improve despite the beefier GPU. Cable management will still be horrible, which doesn't bother me.
2. I plan to use Optane to accelerate an HDD Steam drive.  I only have one M.2 slot. The upgraded build won't take advantage of RTX IO that requires an NVME storage steam drive.
3. I won't be using the 3080 to its full potential at 1080p 60FPS for quite some time. Considering the price difference between the 3070 and the 3080 and that I plan to stick with this card for at least another two years, I like the idea of having performance headroom for later in the life of my system. It also leaves the option to just upgrade the CPU and the Mobo later, and extract the full performance for the 3080 if/when it gets bottlnecked by the CPU.
4. The 3000 series is unproven. Both the 1000 series and the 2000 series had their price only increase with time in my region and never sold even close to MSRP. I'm going to buy one asap and save some money since I want to upgrade anyway. I'm going to trust Nvidia to get things right with the series 3000, and hopefully not get burnt.

Conclusions:

I got more than a few things wrong with my 2018 build. Nothing broke and my system worked very well for me, but I could have done better with just some more research and a few advices.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about my upgrade plan, as there might be things that I got wrong, or there might be cheap upgrades I'm not considering.

[narrdarr]

Skip optane. Get another small SSD you can use it as cache for the hdd.

I would get a better monitor and wait for the 3080 super or whatever it's going to be. If you think your game looks good now an ips panel will blow you a way. 

[Enderman_Vm_Gaming_Pc_Win_]

By the way if you want a cheap gpu (with real time ray traying ) get RTX 3070

[Enderman_Vm_Gaming_Pc_Win_]

Just now, Enderman_Vm_Gaming_Pc_Win_ said:

By the way if you want a cheap gpu (with real time ray traying ) get RTX 3070

The price is $499 good deal NVIDIA

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

50 minutes ago, narrdarr said:

Skip optane. Get another small SSD you can use it as cache for the hdd.

I would get a better monitor and wait for the 3080 super or whatever it's going to be. If you think your game looks good now an ips panel will blow you a way. 

You can use a regular M.2 PCI-E SSD as HDD cache? Does it require a special bios option?

 

Upgrading the monitor to get even better image is a compelling idea! It would blow my budget, but having three screens would benefit even when I do programming. I watched a few monitor review, the LG 27GL850 seems a good upgrade from 1080p60Hz TN to 1440p 144Hz IPS. Are there more recent options you can advise for a 1440p IPS display?

[narrdarr]

3 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

You can use a regular M.2 PCI-E SSD as HDD cache? 

 

Yes 

 

4 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

 Does it require a special bios option?

No

 

5 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

 

 

Upgrading the monitor to get even better image is a compelling idea! It would blow my budget, but having three screens would benefit even when I do programming. I watched a few monitor review, the LG 27GL850 seems a good upgrade from 1080p60Hz TN to 1440p 144Hz IPS. Are there more recent options you can advise for a 1440p IPS display?

Off the top of my head no but I can let you know tomorrow. Or maybe someone else can recommend one.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

First part of the upgrade, the monitor has arrived. It is glorious :O @narrdarr Your advice to upgrade the screen to get better visuals and smoothness was on point!

 

My good TN panel, a Philips 273V5, doesn't look bad, but the colors are another thing altogether on the LG 27GL850. The smoothness seems amazing too, but I'll have to test on high refresh rate games to know for sure.

 

With this I have a bad portrait 1080p 60Hz TN panel, a good landscape 27'' 1080p 60Hz TN panel and a gorgeous landscape 27'' 1440p 144Hz IPS display with gsync

Surprisingly the GTX1070 can push 70FPS lowering the options a bit.

 

I'm waiting for a three display VESA support to tidy up the triple monitor setup.

I'm waiting for fans to upgrade the thermals of the case

I'll get the RTX3080 as soon as I can, hopefully at launch, if I can bet the scalpers.

 

I haven't been this hyped for an upgrade in a long time :3

[narrdarr]

Glad you like it. Nothing worse then having a good system that's not enjoyable because of the display.

 

As for fans if you have not ordered yet I would recommend arctic p12 (120mm)  or p14 (140mm) they come in packs of 5 for 30$ and are kick ass. High static pressure, move a lot of air, and are very quiet.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

On 9/9/2020 at 7:31 PM, narrdarr said:

As for fans if you have not ordered yet I would recommend arctic p12 (120mm)  or p14 (140mm) they come in packs of 5 for 30$ and are kick ass. High static pressure, move a lot of air, and are very quiet.

I went for noctua fans. Much more expensive at 20€/fan, but I had cheaper fans lose their bearings and make whiny noises. The noctua fans that came with the CPU cooler still work flawlessly 2.5Y after. Hopefully the fans will outlast the lifetime of the system and serve in the next one as well without failing.

Step 2: Vesa mount

The screens are now mounted on a three pronged vesa arm. I'll modify the layout later and try to put two in landscape, but for now there is a LOT of screen real estate, and I like it!

 

Step 3: Case Thermals

To handle a RTX 3080 I need to deal with about 600W of heat.

Online airflow calculator

Some quick math yield a minimum of 180 m3/h to get a case DeltaT over ambient of 10°C

I put 2x140mm and 1x120mm intake fans with dust filter, for a maximum of 370m3/h. In reality a lot less due to dust filters and occlusion, but should be above my target of 180.

Exhaust is the GPU blower fan, the case 120mm fan and the PSU 120mm fan. This should give positive pressure inside the case and further help with dust, which was a real problem with my previous configuration.

Thermals have improved a lot. I gained 12°C on the GPU and 10°C on the CPU. The system feels slightly noisier at idle, but quieter when fans ramp up.

 

Step 4: GPU

Now, I wait and hope I can get my hands on a 3080!

 

 

[narrdarr]

Thumbs

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

I got lucky and managed to get an Asus RTX3080 TUF

 

Before the delivery I updated the bios, made a fresh install of windows 10 and configured my optane module to accelerate my steam HDD.

I modified the case to fit the card, managed to get a post and now and I'm installing the drivers. I'm going to have a fun week end finally completing the upgrade.

I'm almost finished!

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

Step 5

•     Bios update for the motherboard from F10 to F14b and reconfigured XMP profile
•     Configure the SATA controller in Intel Rapid Storage mode
•     Install the 32GB Optane Module in the M.2 Slot
•     Backup, download fresh image from microsoft and fresh install of Win10 Pro V2004
•     Configure the OS for speed, Windows debloater, driver install, install utilities and windows update

Boot time got somewhat worse, at about 10s compared to the previous install.

Step 6: Install Asus RTX 3080 TUF

•     Modified the case to fit the new enormous GPU
•     Changed the 140mm fan as exhaust because air was getting stuck at the GPU with a triple fan design.
•     My 650W Gold PSU seems to have no problem with RTX 3080 at 60% GPU load

Step 7: Satisfactory

My original goal was to get better performance on Satisfactory, and I got that. The game looks amazing on the 1440p IPS display, and is a lot smoother and higher FPS.

The game still stutters due to CPU spikes. FPS range from 80 to 144, and thanks to G-Sync there is no tearing even with Vsync disabled. GPU load in game went down from 100% to 55%, so I'm no longer GPU bound. CPU load too is at 30%, so the remaining stutters are likely due to optimization issues I can do little about.
Thermals have seen the best uplift, GPU is down from 68° to 51°, a delta of 17°C. CPU temperature remained unchanged at 51°C.

 

 

Rise of the Tomb Raider at very high preset without motion bleur gives 250fps on the menu at 100% GPU use. benchmark below. The system looks stable at max load as well!

Conclusions

I went 200€ over my original budget of 1200€. I saved on the GPU since I was able to get it at launch and close to MSRP 740€. For comparison my GTX 1070 bought at the height of mining in 2018 set me back 580€... The better display was worth every cent :3

I was worried about the PSU, but all seems fine for now at 60% load. I still lowered the power limits to 95% for peace of mind. I'm going to try more demanding games like Total War Warhammer 2 and Rise of Tomb Raider later on to push the GPU and make sure, but I expect the system to be stable at full load.

I'm also going to try RTX and more demanding games later on, and I'll be playing Cyberpunk 2077 at launch.

 

This configuration will last me at least a couple of years. I'll likely upgrade the CPU once DDR5 hits the market.

 

It's been useful to get advice and fun to document the upgrade on the LTT Forum. Maybe some of this will be useful to others seeking to upgrade.

See you on the next upgrade!