Upgrade from my old i7-4790 and gtx 970

[Powesedor (Pedro Pereira)]

Budget (including currency): 2000€

Country: Portugal

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Honestly all sorts of games. Some streaming and recording with OBS, ocasional use of Premier Pro, After Effects and Photoshop

Other details: For now I would like to keep the case, fans and storage, and upgrade them down the line (if needed, because I honestly love the case ). I'll be buying my parts from PCDiga which seems to be the best local option, and also recommended a lot by my friends.

This is what I'm upgrading from:

 

CPU: Intel core i7-4790

Motherboard: Asus z97-c

GPU: Gtx 970 Strix

Memory: 16GB HyperX Fury Red 1766MHz (2x8)

PSU: Corsair cx600M

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 64MB SATAIII
              Crucial bx100 120GB

              970 Evo Plus 500GB

Case: Cooler Master Master Case Pro 5

Fans: 6x Corsair AF-140-LED Red

 

Since I've been a bit out of the pc building game for a while and I've built my pc 8 years ago I just wanted to know if I'm making the right choices here. If there's any information I can provide please ask me in the comments since I haven't done one of this in a while and I«m a bit rusty ahah.

 

Thanks in advance for tour opinions! 

[jamie.three]

Looks like a good build to me.

I would maybe go for some DDR4 3600 (cl18 or lower) RAM rather than 3200 if its not too much more expensive

If a bigger CPU cooler will fit in your case then that might be worth going for, the 13600k runs hot (they boost up to 181w) so a twin tower CPU cooler is usually a good idea e.g. Noctua NH-D15, Be quiet dark rock pro 4, or deepcool AK620 are some of the most popular options, the noctua NH-D15 is the best but also the largest and most expensive of the three. bigger fans can generally run at lower RPM with the same cooling performance so something with 120mm or 140mm fans will be quieter that the 92mm fan on the NH-U9s

[Powesedor (Pedro Pereira)]

3 minutes ago, jamie.three said:

Looks like a good build to me.

I would maybe go for some DDR4 3600 (cl18 or lower) RAM rather than 3200 if its not too much more expensive

If a bigger CPU cooler will fit in your case then that might be worth going for, the 13600k runs hot (they boost up to 181w) so a twin tower CPU cooler is usually a good idea e.g. Noctua NH-D15, Be quiet dark rock pro 4, or deepcool AK620 are some of the most popular options, the noctua NH-D15 is the best but also the largest and most expensive of the three. bigger fans can generally run at lower RPM with the samecooling performance so something with 120mm or 140mm fans will be quieter that the 92mm fan on the NH-U9s

I think a better cooler is a good call for sure. I firstly was thinking of getting 3600 Ram but I read the mobo I chose had problems runing 3600 Ram dunno why.

[jamie.three]

Just now, Powesedor (Pedro Pereira) said:

I think a better cooler is a good call for sure. I firstly was thinking of getting 3600 Ram but I read the mobo I chose had problems runing 3600 Ram dunno why.

Says on their website that it supports up to 5333 so i'd be very surprised if you had any issues running 3600

[Powesedor (Pedro Pereira)]

4 minutes ago, jamie.three said:

Says on their website that it supports up to 5333 so i'd be very surprised if you had any issues running 3600

Yeah, probably nonsense! I mean, it's not CL16 but I can get Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3600MHz CL18 for literally the same price 

[Powesedor (Pedro Pereira)]

Now that I think about it, if I'm going with a NH-D15 there's no point on having RGB RAM since I won't be able to see it if I mount the cooler pushing air from

the front of the case, I think 

[jamie.three]

8 minutes ago, Powesedor (Pedro Pereira) said:

Now that I think about it, if I'm going with a NH-D15 there's no point on having RGB RAM since I won't be able to see it if I mount the cooler pushing air from

the front of the case, I think 

I have an NH-D15 on the PC im typing this on right now and i cant see my RAM at all.

If you want to make the whole build look a bit better and get some more RGB in there, upgrading the case to something like a lian li lancool 215 or 216 (both come with 2x200mm RGB fans) wouldnt be a bad idea, but you really wont gain any performance at all so up to you if you want to spend the extra money

edit: the advantage of upgrading the case as well is that you can then give the old build to someone else or sell it etc. by just adding an SSD and you dont have to bother taking everything out of your old case either

Edited January 10, 2023 by jamie.three

[Powesedor (Pedro Pereira)]

One other thing that was thinking about is that I don't have a 12th gen cpu to boot the pc and then update the bios. I'm not sure of this, but I think I need to have one in order to be able to update the BIOS to support 13th gen cpus. On top of that, since this is my first upgrade, instead of buying a fully built and new pc, I'm not sure what to do with my storage. Do I need to format everything, what happens to windows since I'll be swaping motherboards, do I have to reinstall every program, etc.

[jamie.three]

29 minutes ago, Powesedor (Pedro Pereira) said:

One other thing that was thinking about is that I don't have a 12th gen cpu to boot the pc and then update the bios. I'm not sure of this, but I think I need to have one in order to be able to update the BIOS to support 13th gen cpus

In theory since the motherboard claims to support 13th gen CPUs, it should come already updated, and if it dosent then you should be able to return it and ask for one which is already updated, but its usually easier to just go for a motherboard that supports bios flashback (allows you to update the bios without a CPU, there should be a little buton that says bios next to a USB port on the motherboards rear IO). Or you can go for a motherbord with a B760 or Z790 chipset which will support 13th gen with the default bios. B760 has all the same fetures other than manual CPU overclocking (but you can still change power limits)

29 minutes ago, Powesedor (Pedro Pereira) said:

I'm not sure what to do with my storage. Do I need to format everything, what happens to windows since I'll be swaping motherboards, do I have to reinstall every program, etc.

Windows should do a windows recovery thing where it fixes the windows install so that it will work on the new hardware, and all you should need to do is get some new drivers, but make sure you back up anything important first because it can go wrong (in which case you can just format the drive and reinstall windows but you will have to reinstall every program that was on that drive if that happens). since your current bios on your PC is also UEFI, it isnt very likely that you will have any issues, it should just work.

Start off by only plugging in the drive that has the windows install on it, and then only plug in the other two once you have everything working.

For the two drives that don't contain the windows install they should just work without any changes.

 

Is the windows install currently on one of the SSDs or the HDD? bacuse if it is on the HDD then you should probably do a fresh install of windows on one of the SSDs for your new PC

[Powesedor (Pedro Pereira)]

9 minutes ago, jamie.three said:

In theory since the motherboard claims to support 13th gen CPUs, it should come already updated, and if it dosent then you should be able to return it and ask for one which is already updated, but its usually easier to just go for a motherboard that supports bios flashback (allows you to update the bios without a CPU, there should be a little buton that says bios next to a USB port on the motherboards rear IO). Or you can go for a motherbord with a B760 or Z790 chipset which will support 13th gen with the default bios. B760 has all the same fetures other than manual CPU overclocking (but you can still change power limits)

Windows should do a windows recovery thing where it fixes the windows install so that it will work on the new hardware, and all you should need to do is get some new drivers, but make sure you back up anything important first because it can go wrong (in which case you can just format the drive and reinstall windows but you will have to reinstall every program that was on that drive if that happens). since your current bios on your PC is also UEFI, it isnt very likely that you will have any issues, it should just work.

Start off by only plugging in the drive that has the windows install on it, and then only plug in the other two once you have everything working.

For the two drives that don't contain the windows install they should just work without any changes.

 

Is the windows install currently on one of the SSDs or the HDD? bacuse if it is on the HDD then you should probably do a fresh install of windows on one of the SSDs for your new PC

Yeah, I went for the z790 version of the same board to make it a bit more safe.

I also have the Windows installed on one of the ssds. (It's on the older sata ssd, which isn't great, but I can always try to upgrade to an m.2 down the line)

Another change I did was instead of going with the Gaming X Trio I swapped to an Eagle OC. Not sure how much do I lose with this swap, but it helped a lot with being able to allocate the extra cash on the motherboard, cooler and 3600 ram