Hardware recommendations

globbert · August 24, 2022

Hey guys, so this whole story goes back a few months to a buddy saying "i have a 3090 i'll sell ya for a good deal".

well he did, and it was so i got a 3090...and then went and upgraded my airflow/cooling to ensure its survival in the form of a corsair 7000D Airflow case with 7 Noctua 140mm fans and a fresh power supply (newegg sale) to make sure it has enough juice.

Well now im looking at my I9-7900X, X299 Raider and 32gb DDR4 3200 questioning if i should upgrade them as well. I know the 7900X has atrocious thermals and theres nothing newer than 10th gen for 2066 sockets which im cool with especially as i no longer do all the rendering and design work that i once did.

So currently looking at the 12th gen CPU options and while i want a 12900K i dont think i need one unless something less would bottleneck my 3090. The 12600K and 12700K are both quite appealing if they would keep up with the 3090 in some high res gaming and a little photoshop but i honestly dont know how to figure out where a system would bottleneck without just assembling and testing.

After CPU considerations comes RAM as DDR4 is probably the way to go but i legitimately cant find enough direct comparisons of DDR4 to DDR5 to properly understand the benefits other than higher base clock speeds especially as i keep hearing that DDR5 is "unstable".

Finally if i can figure out ram a new motherboard is kinda required for a new CPU but they all seem to come in DDR4 or DDR5 specific offerings so that needs to be solved first but if anyone has good motherboard recommendations definitely post them up.

(Did i need a 3090, no, was it available locally for a good deal when it was hard to even find 3070's and 3080's for sale, yes which is the entirety of why i have it so yeah let the shit-talking begin.)

Ryuikko · August 24, 2022

13 minutes ago, globbert said:

So currently looking at the 12th gen CPU options and while i want a 12900K i dont think i need one unless something less would bottleneck my 3090. The 12600K and 12700K are both quite appealing if they would keep up with the 3090 in some high res gaming and a little photoshop but i honestly dont know how to figure out where a system would bottleneck without just assembling and testing.

I'll assume you're playing at a high resolution, so no there won't be a noticeable bottleneck on most cpus if you plan to upgrade, I'm sure even a 12400 would be fine. With that being said, I'd wait for am5 release to see reduced prices on am4 and go from there since your planning a platform swap anyways

13 minutes ago, globbert said:

After CPU considerations comes RAM as DDR4 is probably the way to go but i legitimately cant find enough direct comparisons of DDR4 to DDR5 to properly understand the benefits other than higher base clock speeds especially as i keep hearing that DDR5 is "unstable".

Ddr5 is unstable in the sense that it's a pain to run with pretty much all cpus in a 4x config, high speeds, and roughly more than 64gb.without much of a perfromance benefit, i dont have much reason to reccommend it. If am5 or 13th gen can make running ddr5 less of an annoyance (and I'd have to assume so with am5 being ddr5 only) then it might be a bit better. Personally I'd stick to ddr4 for now

13 minutes ago, globbert said:

Finally if i can figure out ram a new motherboard is kinda required for a new CPU but they all seem to come in DDR4 or DDR5 specific offerings so that needs to be solved first but if anyone has good motherboard recommendations definitely post them up.

Assuming you're going down the am4 line, the b550 taichi is a great board and one that I usually reccommend.

Can't predict any 7000 series boards though as much as I'd like to.

globbert · August 24, 2022

4 minutes ago, Ryuikko said:

I'll assume you're playing at a high resolution, so no there won't be a noticeable bottleneck on most cpus if you plan to upgrade, I'm sure even a 12400 would be fine. With that being said, I'd wait for am5 release to see reduced prices on am4 and go from there since your planning a platform swap anyways

Ddr5 is unstable in the sense that it's a pain to run with pretty much all cpus, without much of a perfromance benefit, so I usually steer away from it. If am5 or 13th gen can make running ddr5 less of an annoyance (and I'd have to assume so with am5 being ddr5 only) then it might be a bit better. Personally I'd stick to ddr4 for now

Assuming you're going down the am4 line, the b550 taichi is a great board and one that I usually reccommend.

Can't predict any 7000 series boards though as much as I'd like to.

thanks for the info.