I want to upgrade my PC and would like to hear your opinions on what CPU, motherboard, and RAM I should get to suit my workload

[Gilgames]

Hi there!

 

I would like to spend at most 1000 EUR for CPU, mobo, RAM, SSD, and PSU (if mine isn't good enough). I live in Italy.

My current PC is roughly 8 years old, and I think this would be a good time to upgrade. I am a developer and usually run 1-2 IDEs simultaneously, chromium with quite a lot of tabs open, and I have to run automated tests using selenium/puppeteer which basically spawns a lot of headless chromium instances (with GPU acceleration disabled so basically all the load is on the CPU). Sometimes I also have to test/develop cross-platform stuff or apps and when I do so I have to run a Windows 10 VM alongside my IDEs as I'm using a *NIX system as my daily driver. My current setup is as follows:

- CPU: AMD FX 8350 @ 4.4GHz

- Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S

- Motherboard: ASRock 990FX Extreme 4

- RAM: 4x4GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance CL9 @ 1866MHz

- GPU1: MSI Nvidia GTX 660Ti (which I use on my host OS)

- GPU2: MSI Nvidia GTX 760 OC (which I passthrough to my Windows VM)

- PSU: XFX Pro 550W 80+ Bronze

- SSD: Samsung EVO 840 120GB

- HDD: Western Digital 7200rpm 1TB

 

Now, at first, when I bought this rig I didn't have this kind of workload at all, and things here are really starting to get not-so-good. As of now, I'm using all kinds of crazy tricks to keep my tests going, albeit slowly, like limiting the CPU utilization of the chrome processes and preventing it from loading parts of the UI which is not needed for the tests I'm running (like images/CSS/Fonts). When I'm not running these tests, I'm mostly building stuff, which kinda renders my PC unresponsive (especially the IDE) until it has finished. This situation clearly isn't optimal, hence why I want to upgrade at least my CPU+mobo+RAM.

 

So I've looked around a bit, but I've been out of the loop for a while and I'd like to hear out your opinion as well, guys. The CPUs I've spotted, with the best prices you can find 'em for in my country, are:

- i7 10700k — 295 EUR

- R5 5600x — 330 EUR

- i9 10850k — 355 EUR

- R7 5800x — 430 EUR

 

At first, I thought about going with the 10850k, but I read gen 10-11th Intel processors run hot as hell, are really power-hungry, and don't come with a stock cooler. I still have my NH-U12S, though, would it be a good fit? It never let me down while overclocking my FX 8350 (which apparently has the same TDP as the i9). Here I'm wondering if the 5800x is worth the extra money, or if even the 10850k is overkill and I'm better off with the cheaper 10700k/5600x options. The 5600x surely looks appealing considering it should run much cooler and costs a bit less than the 10850k, but I'm worried 6c/12t won't be enough in the future (or right now even?). I'm also open to suggestions if you think there are better CPUs that I might've missed!

 

Also, I have no clue about what motherboard I should pick, considering that I usually try to overclock my components whenever it is possible, to squeeze out as much performance as I can as years go by and the hardware starts to get outdated (yes, I plan to keep this new rig for many years, as I did with my current one).

 

I'd like to get 32GB of RAM since 16GB seems a bit tight with all the stuff I have open, and I'm always at 80%+ RAM usage. What RAM would you suggest? Is 3200MHz enough? Also, I'm not sure about going 2x16GB vs 4x8GB.

 

Then for the PSU, I wonder if mine which is 550W is enough for anything other than the 5600x? Probably a bit tight.

 

Last but not least, I'm thinking about buying a 1TB SSD. Are NVMe SSDs worth the extra money over SATA ones?

 

I also play some games from time to time and the few I play run just fine with my current setup. As of now, I don't need to upgrade my GPU(s). If I were to pull the trigger on the i9 I'd probably use the iGPU for my host OS and passthrough the GTX 760.

 

Thanks in advance. Cheers!

Edited April 20, 2021 by Gilgames
fix typo