Workstation PC Help, Which CPU or APU?

[SALEEN961]

Hello, I’m planning to upgrade my work computer as the laptop that’s currently being used is showing its age and having trouble handling the workload. My workload mainly consists of using a shop management program that links all of our work computers and updates invoices and repairs orders in real time as they are edited on each machine, online ordering, transferring files to and from a local server, 1080p video playback, and running proprietary software to program control modules (not heavily threaded software). My current i5-4200M 8GB DDR3 SSD laptop has trouble running smoothly while all the applications are open and live information tends to not load for a while and then load all at once after the application becomes unresponsive.

 

The proposed PC has to run Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit for software compatibility reasons, will run a single 1080p monitor, and I plan to retain my current Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD. The build options I’ve outlined all use 16GB of 3200MHz ram, along with the same Node 202 case and power supply from Fractal Design. This is a thin mini-itx build due to space limitations and while unlocked K-sku processors may not be needed, the local pricing makes them a much better value than lower clocked locked CPUs. I’ve chosen a RX550 to go with the Ryzen CPUs that lack integrated graphics as they seem like a good budget option at $85 without really scrapping the bottom of the barrel or buying something questionable. I think that integrated graphics will be fine on the chips that include it as that's all my current setup is using, but if you disagree please say so.

 

My big question is which CPU/CPU+GPU would you buy for my workload and why?

 

Ryzen 3 1200, RX 550 $685

4 Cores, 4 Threads

 

Ryzen 5 1400, RX 550 $740

4 Cores, 8 Threads

 

i5-7600K, Integrated Graphics, $755

4 Cores, 4 Threads

 

Ryzen 5 1600, RX 550 $790

6 Cores, 12 Threads

[bughtoo]

23 minutes ago, SALEEN961 said:

Hello, I’m planning to upgrade my work computer as the laptop that’s currently being used is showing its age and having trouble handling the workload. My workload mainly consists of using a shop management program that links all of our work computers and updates invoices and repairs orders in real time as they are edited on each machine, online ordering, transferring files to and from a local server, 1080p video playback, and running proprietary software to program control modules (not heavily threaded software). My current i5-4200M 8GB DDR3 SSD laptop has trouble running smoothly while all the applications are open and live information tends to not load for a while and then load all at once after the application becomes unresponsive.

 

 

 

The proposed PC has to run Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit for software compatibility reasons, will run a single 1080p monitor, and I plan to retain my current Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD. The build options I’ve outlined all use 16GB of 3200MHz ram, along with the same Node 202 case and power supply from Fractal Design. This is a thin mini-itx build due to space limitations and while unlocked K-sku processors may not be needed, the local pricing makes them a much better value than lower clocked locked CPUs. I’ve chosen a RX550 to go with the Ryzen CPUs that lack integrated graphics as they seem like a good budget option at $85 without really scrapping the bottom of the barrel or buying something questionable. I think that integrated graphics will be fine on the chips that include it as that's all my current setup is using, but if you disagree please say so.

 

 

 

My big question is which CPU/APU/CPU+GPU would you buy for my workload and why?

 

 

 

Pentium G4560, Integrated Graphics, $585

 

2 Cores, 4 Threads

 

 

 

AMD A12-9800 APU, Integrated Graphics, $600

 

4 Cores, 4 Threads

 

 

 

i3-7350K, Integrated Graphics, $675

 

2 Cores, 4 Threads

 

 

 

Ryzen 3 1200, RX 550 $685

 

4 Cores, 4 Threads

 

 

 

Ryzen 5 1400, RX 550 $740

 

4 Cores, 8 Threads

 

 

 

i5-7600K, Integrated Graphics, $755

 

4 Cores, 4 Threads

 

 

 

Ryzen 5 1600, RX 550 $790

 

6 Cores, 12 Threads

 

It seems that your workload would benefit from an SSD but in long term the ssd will be degrading fast, since SSD memory is not meant for rewriting data all day long. For that an HDD is needed. 

As for the CPU, from what you written you have a lot of applications which have to run a lot of tasks at the same time, therefore i would suggest go for rzyen for sure, Hyperthreading will be your savior + the more cores the better. So its up to you. At least 4 cores are a must and also hyperthreading is a must. Maybe even consider some XEON if zou can find them REALY cheap, but ryzen should be the best choice. I would go for the 1600 if i could afford it.

 

As for the GPU if wont be gaming or videoediting at all just buy something like 1030/550 for 50$ as a graphics driver (which is cheaper, but i think the 1030 should be cheaper)

[Russy]

I agree holey with bughtoo, you may benefit from an ssd but it will degrade quickly. Consider maybe a 10k NAS SATA drive?

[Colexd]

ryzen 1600 should be the best choice among those

[Jurrunio]

Intel cheap i5s like 6400, 7400, 6500 and 7500.

 

Ryzen doesnt officially support Windows 7 so you take the risk of things not working properly with Windows 7.

 

I'm not sure whether G4560 can handle these work smoothly, so go for i5s to be safe. You dont need K CPUs for these kinds of work (as well as saving some money on not buying a Z mobo) and the i3-7350k is stupid no matter what you plan on doing.

[SALEEN961]

17 minutes ago, Russy said:

I agree holey with bughtoo, you may benefit from an ssd but it will degrade quickly. Consider maybe a 10k NAS SATA drive?

SSD degradation is something that I was initially concerned with but after running several Samsung SSDs over the past few years I haven't seen any appreciable "wear" when checking them in the Samsung Magician software, and I've had plenty of HDD failures over the years; it might just be bad luck I don't view them as reliable after multiple drive failures across different brands. To be honest I feel the performance difference is worth the added long term cost even if I have to replace them down the road. Plus right now the SSD is free as I already own it and going with something else would mean just letting this one sit unused.

 

I got rid of my last HDD earlier this year, I found it hard to jump between systems with and without them without getting frustrated. Hopefully they'll be cheaper when they're due for replacement, I just had to put a 1TB 850 EVO in my wife's work laptop, that hurt, but her workload demanded it.

 

I should mention that everything of importance is stored on the server so the risk of data loss is very minimal and I always keep a spare drive image on hand, just in case, like I said multiple HDD failures over the years.

3 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Ryzen doesnt officially support Windows 7 so you take the risk of things not working properly with Windows 7.

 

I'm not sure whether G4560 can handle these work smoothly, so go for i5s to be safe. You dont need K CPUs for these kinds of work (as well as saving some money on not buying a Z mobo) and the i3-7350k is stupid no matter what you plan on doing.

I wasn't aware of the lack of Windows 7 support, that was a big oversight on my part. A quick search seems to indicate that it's mainly an issue of needing an old PS/2 mouse and keyboard to get running to install the needed Win7 USB drivers, but this is something I'll need to look into in great detail, thank you very much for bringing this to my attention.

 

I agree that the i3-7350K generally doesn't make much sense, but the K-skus are always on sale locally and are typically cheaper than non-K CPUs until you get to the sub 3.0GHz ones, this is the only reason I'm looking at K-skus.

 

It seems the consensus might be to avoid 2C/4T CPUs in favor of 4C/4T CPUs or better with slightly lower clock speeds and I'm totally fine with avoiding the i3-7350K and G4560 if they aren't appropriate for my workload.

[bughtoo]

1 hour ago, SALEEN961 said:

Bla bla bla

What about a similarly priced XEON? Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1230 v6 f.e. 

It has compatibility with win 7. Should be similarly priced as the 7600k, has 4 cores 8 threads (very helpfull for multipple running application at once)

[Jurrunio]

1 hour ago, SALEEN961 said:

I agree that the i3-7350K generally doesn't make much sense, but the K-skus are always on sale locally and are typically cheaper than non-K CPUs until you get to the sub 3.0GHz ones, this is the only reason I'm looking at K-skus.

K chips dont come with a Intel stock cooler from the box, so make sure your purchase comes with one

[SALEEN961]

11 minutes ago, bughtoo said:

What about a similarly priced XEON? Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1230 v6 f.e. 

It has compatibility with win 7. Should be similarly priced as the 7600k, has 4 cores 8 threads (very helpfull for multipple running application at once)

With the lack of an integrated GPU I would have to buy a dedicated GPU which would make it the most expensive option, but the Xeon E3-1225 v6 does have a IGPU. It's something to consider, the E3-1225 v6 would be just about the same price as an i5-7600K and offer 4 extra threads, but it would run 500MHz slower. I'm not sure which would benefit me more, the extra threads or the extra clock speed. Obviously I don't want a 10GHz single thread or a 1GHz 16 thread CPU, but the middle ground seems like more of a grey area. Pretty much every program I use isn't heavily threaded as they were developed for single core and dual core laptops running Windows XP with Win7 compatibility added later, but I use several programs at once.

 

I'm having trouble finding anything online that definitively states which CPUs are compatible with Windows 7 and which ones aren't, I know it was a pain to get Win7 updating properly on my i7-6700K Z170 setup, but everything worked fine once I jumped that initial hurdle. Can you recommend a resource for checking what's compatible, what works with a few tweaks, and what just plain will not work with Win7?

[SALEEN961]

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

K chips dont come with a Intel stock cooler from the box, so make sure your purchase comes with one

Very good point, I plan on running a low profile Noctua Cooler with all of the setups listed. This PC will be sitting in a metal hutch behind my monitor and any excessive noise, say from the stock cooler, will get amplified terribly. Plus this PC will often be subjected to 115*F (46*C) ambient temps so I feel like a better cooling solution is needed.

[bughtoo]

1 minute ago, SALEEN961 said:

With the lack of an integrated GPU I would have to buy a dedicated GPU which would make it the most expensive option, but the Xeon E3-1225 v6 does have a IGPU. It's something to consider, the E3-1225 v6 would be just about the same price as an i5-7600K and offer 4 extra threads, but it would run 500MHz slower. I'm not sure which would benefit me more, the extra threads or the extra clock speed. Obviously I don't want a 10GHz single thread or a 1GHz 16 thread CPU, but the middle ground seems like more of a grey area. Pretty much every program I use isn't heavily threaded as they were developed for single core and dual core laptops running Windows XP with Win7 compatibility added later, but I use several programs at once.

 

I'm having trouble finding anything online that definitively states which CPUs are compatible with Windows 7 and which ones aren't, I know it was a pain to get Win7 updating properly on my i7-6700K Z170 setup, but everything worked fine once I jumped that initial hurdle. Can you recommend a resource for checking what's compatible, what works with a few tweaks, and what just plain will not work with Win7?

Its a shame u cant go Ryzen, it would be the best alternative of those listed above. But maybe tehre is a solution: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11182/how-to-get-ryzen-working-on-windows-7-x64

[SALEEN961]

1 hour ago, bughtoo said:

Its a shame u cant go Ryzen, it would be the best alternative of those listed above. But maybe tehre is a solution: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11182/how-to-get-ryzen-working-on-windows-7-x64

Thanks for the link, between that and the drivers listed on Asrock's website specifically for Win7 64 for the board I'd be using it looks like Ryzen is still an option, I'll just have to dig up an old PS/2 mouse and keyboard.

[SALEEN961]

Ok so after doing a lot of research into the overclocking potential of each processor given my cooling solution or lack there of given the mini-itx form factor and very high ambient temps (115*F/46*C), I'm a little stumped. It seems that I could probably get a 7600K to run at 4.2GHz without throttling. On Ryzen the cooling limitations I have will probably limit a Ryzen 5 1600 to 3.6GHz on all 6 cores, while a Ryzen 5 1400/1500x could reach 3.7GHz.

 

So the big question is 4C/4T at 4.2GHz, 4C/8T at 3.7GHz, or 6C/12T at 3.6Ghz.

 

It seems that the 7600K would offer roughly 26% more single threaded performance at the given clock speeds and as such it often trades blows with the Ryzen 5 1400/1500x in some applications that favor multiple threads despite having half the thread count. The Ryzen 5 1600 while lacking single threaded performance always comes out on top in multi-threaded benchmarks, but would be the worst option for single threaded performance.

 

Is there a good way for me to monitor my workload to determine whether it favors single threaded performance or increased thread count without actually buying both setups and testing them? The shop management software is a bit of an unknown at the moment and is my main concern as running it is the primary purpose for this PC, but with it excluded this is basically a glorified internet machine that is also used to run some specialized software that predates consumer quad core CPUs.

[brob]

@SALEEN961,

 

Use the Performance tab of Task Manager. It will show the activity level of each hyperthread. If all cores have the same, or very similar sustained loading, then the software is making use of multiple hyperthreads (logical processors). OTH, if one or two hyperthreads shows markedly higher sustained activity while the remaining hyperthreads show short bursts of activity, the software is single or lightly threaded.

 

Before considering Ryzen you have to decide if it should be used for the described situation. As @Jurrunio mentioned, AMD has said it will not support Ryzen on Windows 7. Microsoft has discontinued support for Windows 7. As a result, while one can install and run 7 on Ryzen platforms (see http://www.anandtech.com/show/11182/how-to-get-ryzen-working-on-windows-7-x64), it may not be wise. The particular problems I anticipate would be finding drivers that work reliably.

 

An i5-7600K would be a significant improvement. But the hyperthreading of an i7-7700 makes a system much more responsive. This added responsiveness is, IMO, worth the added cost. 

 

[SALEEN961]

I was looking on the motherboard vendor's website and for each platform they seems to have good driver support for Windows 7, but without trying them I'd have no idea how well they work and having driver support today is no guarantee of continued support. I had considered just swapping my personal PC to a i5-7600K and moving the i7-6700K into this new build to avoid Windows 7 support issues as I've heard Kaby Lake chips aren't fully supported in Windows 7 either. I really don't need the 6700K in my personal rig and even have hyper threading turned off to get a higher overclock out of it as having HT enabled at a lower clock speed didn't seem to benefit me as much.

 

I just worry about cooling a 6700K at any reasonable clock speed in a Node 202 with 115*F ambient temps. With a better air cooler and 70*F ambient temps I see peak core temps of 72*C while running 4.5GHz with hyper threading disabled under normal use and under AID64 load is see 82*C core temps.

 

If I keep the 6700K in my personal rig I'll eventually swap to a modern case and go with a better liquid cooling solution to bump up the overclock and re-enable hyper threading. I'm still using the case and few other items from an old socket 775 build from 2007 that died unexpectedly at the end of 2016 and forced me to spec and build a new PC within a few hours to get back up and running.

[brob]

3 hours ago, SALEEN961 said:

I was looking on the motherboard vendor's website and for each platform they seems to have good driver support for Windows 7, but without trying them I'd have no idea how well they work and having driver support today is no guarantee of continued support. I had considered just swapping my personal PC to a i5-7600K and moving the i7-6700K into this new build to avoid Windows 7 support issues as I've heard Kaby Lake chips aren't fully supported in Windows 7 either. I really don't need the 6700K in my personal rig and even have hyper threading turned off to get a higher overclock out of it as having HT enabled at a lower clock speed didn't seem to benefit me as much.

 

I just worry about cooling a 6700K at any reasonable clock speed in a Node 202 with 115*F ambient temps. With a better air cooler and 70*F ambient temps I see peak core temps of 72*C while running 4.5GHz with hyper threading disabled under normal use and under AID64 load is see 82*C core temps.

 

If I keep the 6700K in my personal rig I'll eventually swap to a modern case and go with a better liquid cooling solution to bump up the overclock and re-enable hyper threading. I'm still using the case and few other items from an old socket 775 build from 2007 that died unexpectedly at the end of 2016 and forced me to spec and build a new PC within a few hours to get back up and running.

 

Switching in your i7-6700K is a decent idea. If one uses the integrated gpu it is possible to mount an AIO in a Node 202. The discreet-gpu riser mount needs to be removed to allow for the hoses to cross over to the cpu. Given the high ambient temperatures one might even consider something like an H100i v2.

 

If temps are a real problem it is should be possible to undervolt the cpu, reducing its thermal output.