Upgrading my main PC, should I build a second from the old parts?

[invaderSnarf]

Budget (including currency): $1400-1600

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: OBS, Steam, Adobe Creative Cloud Suite (Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects)

Other details Want to be able to easily stream PC games and wondering if building secondary PC out of my older parts is a good idea or if I should look into selling them instead.

 

Hi all, I am looking at upgrading my CPU and GPU in my current rig and have some questions. My current PC is the following:

 

CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X w/ NZXT Kraken X53 240mm AIO

GPU: Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti Turbo OC 11G (rev. 2.0)

MoBo: Gigabyte x570 Aorus Ultra

HDD: WD Blue 1TB m.2 SATA, Sabrent 1tb NVME m.2, and about 30tb in storage on 3.5" drives

Ram: 4 x 8GB DDR4 @3600

PSU: MSI 850 Watt 80+ Gold

Case: Lian Li o11 XL Dynamic

PCIe cards: ElGato 4k60Pro mk2, Elgato Camlink Pro, SoundBlaster Audigy FX Sound card

Peripherals: Samsung Odyssey Neo G9, AOC 34" curved QHD ultra wide, Gigabyte 32" curved QHD monitor, 4k 65" TCL series 6 (2018)

 

I am looking to upgrade my CPU to the Ryzen 9 5900X and my GPU to a RTX 3080 now that prices are coming down to semi reasonable. I like to stream games to Twitch, record high bitrate gameplay from consoles and PC, edit videos, play VR games, ect. I can do all of that with the above and have been, but encounter some slowdown in games and loss of bitrate in recording if I try to keep 3 monitors all running at 1440p/120fps. I have a spare motherboard, a Gigabyte x570 Gaming X, upgraded to my Aourus Ultra for more fan headers and USB compatability when I bought my Lian Li case. After upgrading my CPU and GPU, I would basically just be short the RAM, a PSU, and a case to build a whole new PC. 

 

Would I see significant performance increases moving streaming and gameplay capture all to a secondary PC? And those that are already running a dual PC streaming setup, would you consider the benefits of using 2 PC's worth it over doing everything on a single PC? Or would I be better off trying to sell my old CPU and GPU afterwards?

 

 

Thank you in advance for your advice and opinions!

 

[IPD]

Wants to upgrade from RTX 2080 TI to an RTX 3080.  In 2022.

 

I....I just don't have the words.

[An0maly_76]

OP -- I would just update the BIOS on the X570 board, plug in a 5900X with a Scythe Mugen 5 or similar, and have at it. If you're going to upgrade GPU, go for the gusto and get the 3090.

[invaderSnarf]

Hi IPD, 

 

I've come into some cashflow recently and decided to upgrade my PC with it. My interest in getting a 3080 is three fold as well. 

1 - Not looking to wait for the 4000 series just to see them get scooped up by bots and scalpers before I can even click "add to cart" like the 3000 series was (bought my 2080 ti for sub $1000 when the 3000 series actually first released due to that actually)

2 - My current setup with 4 displays gets choppy doing anything, I'm running all three monitors at their respective 1440p resolutions and all set to 120fps and the TV at 4k 60fps. Looking to get rid of this performance drop with the 3080 and be able to use 165 and 240 frame rate modes on my monitors

3 - The 2080 I have is a blower style cooler. As soon as I launch anything that needs the GPU it becomes louder than my PS4 trying to play a game. Hopeing that switching to a more typical Fan style cooled 3080 will decrease this noise significantly. 

 

7 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

OP -- I would just update the BIOS on the X570 board, plug in a 5900X with a Scythe Mugen 5 or similar, and have at it. If you're going to upgrade GPU, go for the gusto and get the 3090.

Unfortunately the 3090 is still outside of my budget. I'm seeing 3080's on StockX for around $1100 to $1300 and the 3090's are about $1800+, still too rich for me. 

[IPD]

I don't think you're going to get the silver-bullet fix for your "slowdown" issues with just a lukewarm upgrade.  Merely offloading tasks will probably help more with that--than a simple hardware upgrade.

 

And that's not 3x 1440p monitors; it's essentially 4--plus a 4k tv--all running off 1 GPU.  23 million pixels.  The rated max for the 2080 Ti (from what I can tell) is 7680 x 4320 at 60Hz.  33 million pixels.  So at least theoretically (to my lay-person brain), if you wanted 120hz support on all of that--you'd need no more than ~16.5 million pixels.

 

The 3080 is (again, from what I can see) listed at the same 7680x4320 @60 hz.  So you really aren't gaining anything from an upgrade--in this vein.

[invaderSnarf]

18 hours ago, IPD said:

I don't think you're going to get the silver-bullet fix for your "slowdown" issues with just a lukewarm upgrade.  Merely offloading tasks will probably help more with that--than a simple hardware upgrade.

 

And that's not 3x 1440p monitors; it's essentially 4--plus a 4k tv--all running off 1 GPU.  23 million pixels.  The rated max for the 2080 Ti (from what I can tell) is 7680 x 4320 at 60Hz.  33 million pixels.  So at least theoretically (to my lay-person brain), if you wanted 120hz support on all of that--you'd need no more than ~16.5 million pixels.

 

The 3080 is (again, from what I can see) listed at the same 7680x4320 @60 hz.  So you really aren't gaining anything from an upgrade--in this vein.

That is actually pretty helpful to know, thanks. 

 

Do you have any suggestions on what would be a decent GPU to put into a dedicated streaming PC that would have a Ryzen 7 3700x? I know the point of using a secondary stream PC is to take advantage of x264 from the CPU for encoding so I won't need a card with NVENC, but since my Ryzen has no onboard video I still need a GPU for video out. Would something as cheap as a GT card do? Or would you suggest to get something around the $200-300?

[IPD]

I'd have to defer to someone with experience/expertise in that vein.  But yeah, a 3 generation old card could likely still work the trick, no problem.