10700F + B460 for $310?

[aisle9]

Budget (including currency): $310

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Chrome, YouTube, oh and stuff like Photoshop, Premiere (learning this bad boy now), Skyrim, GTA V, Planet Coaster, Storm Chaser, eventually Flight Simulator

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): GTX 1070 FE, 16 or 32GB of RAM (might go for 4x8GB because it's capped at 2666 anyway)

 

Basic question: how good of a deal is an i7-10700F + MSI B460M Pro-VDH Wifi for $310 including tax? For someone coming from a Ryzen 5 1600 and a Gigabyte B450 Aorus M.

 

The goal here is to not need to upgrade again for at least 4-5 years, basically as long as my 1600 has been around. Overclocking isn't important to me. I overclocked the living hell out of my 4790K back in the day, but since then have gone through a R7 1700, and i7-8086K which I still have, but the used boards out there are sketchy, and now an R5 1600 without bothering to overclock them, so I don't see it as critical to me anymore.

 

Edit: Should mention that the 1600 was never meant to be a permanent solution. Last summer, the board on my 8086K literally went bang. I ended up going through several CPUs trying to replace it, then just settled on my HTPC's 1600 because I already owned it and the board, while sketchy, wasn't a huge liability. I looked at upgrades over the holidays and never saw a price I could justify, but this combo looks like it might be the lucky winner.

 

Edit again: Just saw in Anandtech's review that if you want the CPU to stay above base speeds for any length of time, it's going to draw more like 215W than 65W. Way to go Intel, shoving cores on top of cores on the Skylake architecture. My compact case, the compact cooler and the 450W PSU would struggle with that kind of demand to the point that I see it as quickly becoming either an unwelcome limitation or an unnecessary risk.

 

Short of a huge price drop on the R7 3700X (don't see that happening), I don't know that there's going to be a better deal out there anytime soon. Would you guys agree?

 

[Pixelfie]

That sounds good. usually this would cost 350-400 together.

[Nena Trinity]

Yes just do a 4x8GB or hell why not if you have money to burn go all the way with 4x16GB to get quad-rank but make sure the sticks ya get is actually dual-rank before buying them. ;D

[aisle9]

Just now, Nena Trinity said:

Yes just do a 4x8GB or hell why not if you have money to burn go all the way with 4x16GB to get quad-rank but make sure the sticks ya get is actually dual-rank before buying them. ;D

I already have 4x8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport. Otherwise no way would I spend that much lol. The board *does* go to 2933 MHz RAM, which might have just sent me back in the direction of my 2x8GB Corsair 3466MHz sticks instead, even if they'd cap at 2933. In a few years of trying, I've never been able to get all four Crucial sticks playing happily together above 2666. In single pairs, they can push 2800 pretty reliably, but not as a quad set...which is sort of what you'd expect.

[Nena Trinity]

Just now, aisle9 said:

I already have 4x8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport. Otherwise no way would I spend that much lol. The board *does* go to 2933 MHz RAM, which might have just sent me back in the direction of my 2x8GB Corsair 3466MHz sticks instead, even if they'd cap at 2933. In a few years of trying, I've never been able to get all four Crucial sticks playing happily together above 2666. In single pairs, they can push 2800 pretty reliably, but not as a quad set...which is sort of what you'd expect.

Yes if you have i7 the max speed is 2933MHz so 4x3000MHz sticks would work fine.