Upgrade to what?

[AXXXX]

Hello, 

I have a PC with RTX 3080 (recently upgraded from GTX 1070), i5-8400, B360 motherboards (since Im not a fan of overclocking), and 16 GB of RAM with 2666Mhz speeds.

 

By those specs, you would probably say that the CPU and the RAM are not adequate to unleash full potential of 3080. And yes I agree. There have been several gaming moments where I think that my GPU performance wasnt fully utilized due to the older version of CPU and RAM's slow latency.

 

Thus it comes to my question, if I am going to have my PC upgraded, which CPU and how much of RAM speeds should I go with? 

 

PS : I am an Intel fanboy hahahaha

 

Thank you in advance

[RONOTHAN##]

Because you said you're a fanboy, I say you should try Ryzen. It is good and stuff. 

 

All kidding aside, a 9700k is a great CPU that should still be compatible with your motherboard with a BIOS update. You can find them for about $200 on craigslist, and for that they are unbeatable for just gaming CPUs. It's to the point that I've recommended them for budget builds (friend did an $800 build that has one of these in it). As for RAM, 3200MHz should be fine. Faster is better, but that's about the lowest I'd recommend. If you find faster for within $10, sure, go with that, but otherwise that's probably fine. 

[SavageNeo]

46 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Because you said you're a fanboy, I say you should try Ryzen. It is good and stuff. 

 

All kidding aside, a 9700k is a great CPU that should still be compatible with your motherboard with a BIOS update. You can find them for about $200 on craigslist, and for that they are unbeatable for just gaming CPUs. It's to the point that I've recommended them for budget builds (friend did an $800 build that has one of these in it). As for RAM, 3200MHz should be fine. Faster is better, but that's about the lowest I'd recommend. If you find faster for within $10, sure, go with that, but otherwise that's probably fine. 

200$ for 8c/8t cpu, not the best really. but for @AXXXXit is the cheapest upgrade. Would get something better really.

 

for reference used 3700x is usually just little more expensive than 9700k and is better.

[RONOTHAN##]

8 minutes ago, SavageNeo said:

200$ for 8c/8t cpu, not the best really. but for @AXXXXit is the cheapest upgrade. Would get something better really.

 

for reference used 3700x is usually just little more expensive than 9700k and is better.

The 9700k does have better single threaded, and for a pure gaming CPU, it is better than a 3700x. For productivity, sure, it's worse, but he never said anything about needing to have a productivity chip. I still say it will be fine. Remember, the price competitor is a 3600, which most people say is about as low end as you can go for a 3080, and a 9700k will outperform it in basically every metric. If you are concerned about hyperthreading, sure, get a 9900k, but it's waisted money for anyone who isn't an avid content creator.

 

Edit: Probably should point out that I am a Ryzen user, and the 9700k is the only Intel CPU I've recommended to anyone in the past 3 years for a good bang for the buck system

[SupaKomputa]

9600k should be a great upgrade.

Don't bother with the ram speed, it won't drastically improve anything on intel.

[AXXXX]

30 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The 9700k does have better single threaded, and for a pure gaming CPU, it is better than a 3700x. For productivity, sure, it's worse, but he never said anything about needing to have a productivity chip. I still say it will be fine. Remember, the price competitor is a 3600, which most people say is about as low end as you can go for a 3080, and a 9700k will outperform it in basically every metric. If you are concerned about hyperthreading, sure, get a 9900k, but it's waisted money for anyone who isn't an avid content creator.

 

Edit: Probably should point out that I am a Ryzen user, and the 9700k is the only Intel CPU I've recommended to anyone in the past 3 years for a good bang for the buck system

What about Intel 10th, 11th, or even 12th Gen? Are they out of the considerations in terms of best-pairing bud with the next gen GPU? Or do you think that their performances would only be slightly better than what you just reccomended?

 

[AXXXX]

31 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

9600k should be a great upgrade.

Don't bother with the ram speed, it won't drastically improve anything on intel.

Jeez, I almost forgot. Yeah, I ve read somewhere that its AMD that needs higher RAM speeds. Therefore, 3200/3600Mhz would be enough I guess. Cheers pal

[AXXXX]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Because you said you're a fanboy, I say you should try Ryzen. It is good and stuff. 

 

All kidding aside, a 9700k is a great CPU that should still be compatible with your motherboard with a BIOS update. You can find them for about $200 on craigslist, and for that they are unbeatable for just gaming CPUs. It's to the point that I've recommended them for budget builds (friend did an $800 build that has one of these in it). As for RAM, 3200MHz should be fine. Faster is better, but that's about the lowest I'd recommend. If you find faster for within $10, sure, go with that, but otherwise that's probably fine. 

Well at first I did consider to upgrade it to intel 10th or maybe 11th Gen, but it seems that the 9th Gen is considered enough to pair with 3080. 

 

For 3200Mhz RAM, I think I will still be needing a new motherboard because my current one is only able to hold 2666Mhz max.

 

Thanks for the good advice, but aside from that, I ll just stick to Intel .

[papajo]

If you are from europe I could sell to you my delided i7 8700k (with professionally polished cooper lid and conductonaut instead of the cheap toothpaste intel TIM + conformal coating on the PCB to be 100% sure that even if it would have had dripped off a little nothing will happen)  it reaches easily 5GHz all 12 threads with low temps(depending on your cooler and mobo ofcourse). 

[linuxChips2600]

1 hour ago, AXXXX said:

What about Intel 10th, 11th, or even 12th Gen?

Honestly if you want to consider those options as well 12th Gen is your best bet as 12th gen (i.e. Alder Lake) is rumoured to be DDR5, although I'm sure that because of the faster RAM it'll also be pretty expensive for a while... 10th and 11th are a bit too incremental imo (i.e. 11th = ~+10% at best stock)

[SupaKomputa]

2 hours ago, AXXXX said:

What about Intel 10th, 11th, or even 12th Gen? Are they out of the considerations in terms of best-pairing bud with the next gen GPU? Or do you think that their performances would only be slightly better than what you just reccomended?

 

11th gen will beat Ryzen 5000, then Ryzen 6000 will beat 11th gen, on and on.

THe problem is we don't know what 12th gen will look like, alder lake is going to be 8 core, 4 fast core with 4 slow core, reason to make this, they want to beat apple M1 efficiency. If they bring this to the desktop, AMD gonna chew them up like a gummy bear.

 

So this is the AMD advantage, even if you're stuck with the current gen (5000), you still have the option to go higher core count in the future when you need one. Not so with Intel 10th gent (10 core max) or 11th gen (8 core max).