upgrading mobo/cpu/ram. 11th or 12th Gen?

[xhuppe]

Budget (including currency): 800-1000$ CAD

Country: Canada

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming (Escape from Tarkov is CPU heavy)

Other details: I only need to buy new mobo, cpu and ram (plus probably a good noctua brown cooler). I'm upgrading from a i5-2500k... That thing was a beast. I have a 1070 and all the other parts. The thing is I'm thorned between grabing 12th Gen or sticking with safe bet 11th Gen. 12th has some bad press right now and ddr5 memory is really expensive for seemingly not much more power. Should I buy 11th gen now? If so, what mobo/cpu combo? Or is it a good idea to go 12th Gen right now? I'm willing to overclock.

 

[porina]

Don't know that game and what hardware it might like or not.

 

If you don't mind Windows 11 requirement for best performance then 12th gen with DDR4 can be an option. I'd really like DDR5 if I was buying myself, but who knows how long you have to wait before it is generally available.

 

If you don't mind not being on latest platform 10th or 11th gen is still great too, and you can stick with Windows 10. I'm running 11th gen with 500 chipset mobo for the PCIe 4.0 support. Didn't have a good experience mixing 11th gen with 400 series chipset. Zen 2/Zen 3 is also an option there if you're willing to consider AMD.

 

IMO forget overclocking. Above CPU generations all run so close to the limit the potential gains are minimal. Just save yourself the effort and stability testing.

[xhuppe]

Thanks for your reply. I also never really liked overclocking, tbh. The overclocking part came from this chart, where we can see a notable difference on the 11600k.

 

If I was going for that cpu, those would be my parts, what do you think?

• ASRock Z590 PRO4 LGA 1200 Intel Z590
• Intel Core i5-11600K
• CORSAIR Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600
• Noctua NH-D15 SSO2 D-Type Premium CPU Cooler

The cooler might be overkill, I choose it with overclocking in mind. I could scale it down.

[Mister Woof]

Get a 12600k on a ddr4 motherboard like the msi z690-a pro

 

Overclocking is only really worthwhile if you want to have fun, or if you buy a lower tier CPU as they generally all have the same wall every generation.

 

Example: there's more OC "room" in a 10600k then there is in a 10900k because the 10600k starts off way lower. While the 10900k might have better silicon worth a couple hundred mhz, it already starts off near the limit. The 10600k has more to "gain" from OC.