Best MOBO, CPU , RAM combo for the money 2018

[pabloottawa]

Hi there,

 

My first post and I am considering upgrading from my  2011 17 3930K, ASUS P9X79 DELUXE and 24 gigs DDR3 to something more modern and powerful. Currently my system is stable and running very well with two 980's in SLI. My question is; Should I upgrade at this time, and if I did what would give me the best bang for the buck? There's sooo much out there and it seems that AMD is the better solution these days in regards to both performance and value. Can anyone help me decide?

 

Cheers and Thanks

[tp95112]

If its running fine and well, just save that money for rainy day

[Phentos]

The 3930K is still a pretty good CPU even now. Any bottlenecking it may have is moot with 2 980s. Maybe if you had 2 1080s or 1080 TIs, then it would be a small bottleneck.

 

Wait to see what Zen 2 or Intel's Z390/X399 brings.

[Brooksie359]

Honestly I would wait for Zen 2 before upgrading. It's the first major update to the Zen architecture and should see pretty good performance gains. 

[epsilon84]

7 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly I would wait for Zen 2 before upgrading. It's the first major update to the Zen architecture and should see pretty good performance gains. 

Hmmm, and Zen 2 in 12 months *might* just catch up to current Intel levels of gaming performance? I say *might* because right now a 8700K @ 5.0GHz+ is miles ahead of any Ryzen CPU from a gaming POV. AMD will need to bridge the IPC gap (especially apparent in gaming) and also the clockspeed gap, currently overclocked Intel chips are ~1GHz faster than overclocked AMD chips. I'm sure we will see gains with Zen 2, but is it worth waiting a year for? When we have guaranteed performance today that is already significantly faster than what the OP has. Granted, I agree that a 3930K is still no slouch, but Coffee Lake is about 25% faster clock for clock than Sandy Bridge, plus it clocks higher, you'll struggle to get a 3930K to 5.0GHz like a 8700K can.

 

 

[SupremeGOAT]

looks like you have a solid setup. Wait for zen 2 next year or cannon lake...whenever cannon lake comes out

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, epsilon84 said:

Hmmm, and Zen 2 in 12 months *might* just catch up to current Intel levels of gaming performance? I say *might* because right now a 8700K @ 5.0GHz+ is miles ahead of any Ryzen CPU from a gaming POV. AMD will need to bridge the IPC gap (especially apparent in gaming) and also the clockspeed gap, currently overclocked Intel chips are ~1GHz faster than overclocked AMD chips. I'm sure we will see gains with Zen 2, but is it worth waiting a year for? When we have guaranteed performance today that is already significantly faster than what the OP has. Granted, I agree that a 3930K is still no slouch, but Coffee Lake is about 25% faster clock for clock than Sandy Bridge, plus it clocks higher, you'll struggle to get a 3930K to 5.0GHz like a 8700K can.

 

 

Why upgrade when there isn't the need to? Unless it is negatively impacting the performance of the system I wouldn't upgrade. If by the time Zen 2 comes out they upgrade their gpu then it would make sense to upgrade the cpu. Also Zen 2 has a pretty high possibility of being a major improvement. It's a node shrink from 12 to 7 which is really big and could provide higher clocks and better power consumption. Also global foundries went on record saying that their 7nm process can produce 5ghz cpus. They wouldn't say this if they didn't have some sort of cpu that is capable if doing that. On top of that Zen is a fresh architecture so there is alot of places that they can make improvements on versus a very refined architecture where most of those improvements have already been made. The performance difference between the i7 and the r7 is around 15%. That gap could be closed easily with Zen 2. There is even the possibility that it could surpass it. I mean nothing is guaranteed but it is still worth waiting if there isn't a need to upgrade. Also they asked the best bang for your buck. That's ryzen hands down. 

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, epsilon84 said:

Hmmm, and Zen 2 in 12 months *might* just catch up to current Intel levels of gaming performance? I say *might* because right now a 8700K @ 5.0GHz+ is miles ahead of any Ryzen CPU from a gaming POV. AMD will need to bridge the IPC gap (especially apparent in gaming) and also the clockspeed gap, currently overclocked Intel chips are ~1GHz faster than overclocked AMD chips. I'm sure we will see gains with Zen 2, but is it worth waiting a year for? When we have guaranteed performance today that is already significantly faster than what the OP has. Granted, I agree that a 3930K is still no slouch, but Coffee Lake is about 25% faster clock for clock than Sandy Bridge, plus it clocks higher, you'll struggle to get a 3930K to 5.0GHz like a 8700K can.

 

 

Also the i7 isn't miles ahead of the r7. When both at stock they pretty much trade blows and the differences are negligible. When overclocked the i7 get around a 8% to 10% lead which is pretty small especially when considering the use case and how at 100 plus frames it is really hard to tell that 10% difference. Not only that but the i7 would require you to buy a more expensive motherboard a more expensive cooler and a more expensive gpu. At the end of it all you are spending well over 100 dollars more for a 10% lead in gaming and a sizeable deficit in productivity. I mean the i7 is a good cpu and all but the places where I would recommend it are niche. If you have a 240hz monitor and a 1080ti and really want to play all your games at the highest fps possible then yeah you might want to get the i7. Even then it's still a hard decision to say if it's worth it. I guess the only other use case that would have the i7 make sense would be playing csgo and needing the highest fps possible but can't do that with ryzen because source engine is really bad.

[epsilon84]

11 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Why upgrade when there isn't the need to? Unless it is negatively impacting the performance of the system I wouldn't upgrade. If by the time Zen 2 comes out they upgrade their gpu then it would make sense to upgrade the cpu. Also Zen 2 has a pretty high possibility of being a major improvement. It's a node shrink from 12 to 7 which is really big and could provide higher clocks and better power consumption. Also global foundries went on record saying that their 7nm process can produce 5ghz cpus. They wouldn't say this if they didn't have some sort of cpu that is capable if doing that. On top of that Zen is a fresh architecture so there is alot of places that they can make improvements on versus a very refined architecture where most of those improvements have already been made. The performance difference between the i7 and the r7 is around 15%. That gap could be closed easily with Zen 2. There is even the possibility that it could surpass it. I mean nothing is guaranteed but it is still worth waiting if there isn't a need to upgrade. Also they asked the best bang for your buck. That's ryzen hands down. 

All I see is a whole lot of speculation and hypotheticals on your part. Right now, your guess is as good as mine as to where Ryzen 2 will sit in the grand scheme of things. All I am saying is that if the OP actually wants to upgrade right now, from a gaming perspective nothing comes close to a 8700K. Is it the absolute best value? Probably night, I'll give the nod to the 8400 or Ryzen 2600 for that. The only problem is that neither will be much of an upgrade over a 3930K, realistically only a 8700K will provide a noticeable improvement for gaming 

[Brooksie359]

7 minutes ago, epsilon84 said:

All I see is a whole lot of speculation and hypotheticals on your part. Right now, your guess is as good as mine as to where Ryzen 2 will sit in the grand scheme of things. All I am saying is that if the OP actually wants to upgrade right now, from a gaming perspective nothing comes close to a 8700K. Is it the absolute best value? Probably night, I'll give the nod to the 8400 or Ryzen 2600 for that. The only problem is that neither will be much of an upgrade over a 3930K, realistically only a 8700K will provide a noticeable improvement for gaming 

But my point is even the 8700k seems like a underwhelming upgrade until they upgrade the gpus.

[App4that]

34 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

But my point is even the 8700k seems like a underwhelming upgrade until they upgrade the gpus.

But the 8700k is the best gaming upgrade at the moment, is the point. If the OP decides to replace their 2 980tis with an 1180ti, the 8700k has the headroom, a 2700x doesn't.

[epsilon84]

49 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

But my point is even the 8700k seems like a underwhelming upgrade until they upgrade the gpus.

2 GTX 980s in SLI is actually still pretty powerful, in games that scale well with SLI it would come close to a 1080 Ti, or at least a 1080.

 

There aren't many comparisons between the 8700K and 3930K because we are comparing a modern CPU vs one that is 7 years old, but still performs well for it's age. But as someone who upgraded from a 3770K to a 8700K, I can say that the improvement is certainly noticeable - not in every single game, but the ones that crave additional CPU power like BF1 MP64 benefit greatly.

 

At the end of the day, if a 8700K is underwhelming then any other upgrade will be even more so. I understand your point about upgrading the GPUs first, but that is an easy upgrade to make that the OP can do at any time, and its not like the 8700K will suddenly become a lesser gaming CPU once next gen GPUs like the GTX 1180 launch. In fact I would expect it to do even better than today since a faster GPU will also require a faster CPU to avoid bottlenecks, and you will see a bigger spread between a 8700K and slower CPUs that will limit the newer GPUs to a certain extent.

[pabloottawa]

Thanks everyone foe the advice. I agree that the 3930K for it's age is still pretty fast and strong. Actually I bought it for around 500 CDN and it's not reatiling brand new for around 600 so that's weird lol. Anyhoo. I'm not planning on upgrading anytime soon but I do want to start doinng the research. Hearing some great things about AMD over intel these days and right now I just bought a Mavic Pro Drone so money is not really available. 

[epsilon84]

27 minutes ago, pabloottawa said:

Thanks everyone foe the advice. I agree that the 3930K for it's age is still pretty fast and strong. Actually I bought it for around 500 CDN and it's not reatiling brand new for around 600 so that's weird lol. Anyhoo. I'm not planning on upgrading anytime soon but I do want to start doinng the research. Hearing some great things about AMD over intel these days and right now I just bought a Mavic Pro Drone so money is not really available. 

Yeah fair enough, like I said earlier a 3930K is still a very capable processor, especially if you overclock it to 4.5GHz or more, which these chips are definitely capable of with good cooling. 

 

For $500 I think you made a very investment, considering the age of the chip and that it takes a flagship i7 CPU from today to show any meaningful gains for gaming.

 

AMD has indeed made great strides lately, and are a lot more competitive compared to a few years ago. They both have their strengths, as it stands right now Intel has the higher per core performance, but provide less cores / threads at the same pricepoint as AMD. So generally speaking, applications that can make full use of the multi threaded capabilities of Ryzen will run better on a Ryzen chip compared to a similarly priced Intel chip ie. 2700X vs 8700K in 3D rendering, for example. 

 

Conversely, for more lightly threaded tasks that rely more on IPC and clockspeeds, such as Adobe Phoroshop and Lightroom, or gaming, Intel is still ahead due to its better per core performance, which is due to a combination of higher IPC and clockspeeds.

[Brooksie359]

7 hours ago, App4that said:

But the 8700k is the best gaming upgrade at the moment, is the point. If the OP decides to replace their 2 980tis with an 1180ti, the 8700k has the headroom, a 2700x doesn't.

They didn't ask for the best gaming cpu. They asked for the best bang for your buck. So let me be abundantly clear. The i7 is a good cpu and the best for gaming right now but is a bad value when you consider the cost difference and the performance difference. The best thing to do would be to wait anyways but if they really wanted to upgrade right now and wanted the most value that would the the r7. 

[Brooksie359]

7 hours ago, epsilon84 said:

2 GTX 980s in SLI is actually still pretty powerful, in games that scale well with SLI it would come close to a 1080 Ti, or at least a 1080.

 

There aren't many comparisons between the 8700K and 3930K because we are comparing a modern CPU vs one that is 7 years old, but still performs well for it's age. But as someone who upgraded from a 3770K to a 8700K, I can say that the improvement is certainly noticeable - not in every single game, but the ones that crave additional CPU power like BF1 MP64 benefit greatly.

 

At the end of the day, if a 8700K is underwhelming then any other upgrade will be even more so. I understand your point about upgrading the GPUs first, but that is an easy upgrade to make that the OP can do at any time, and its not like the 8700K will suddenly become a lesser gaming CPU once next gen GPUs like the GTX 1180 launch. In fact I would expect it to do even better than today since a faster GPU will also require a faster CPU to avoid bottlenecks, and you will see a bigger spread between a 8700K and slower CPUs that will limit the newer GPUs to a certain extent.

2 980s do not scale to a 1080 let alone a 1080ti and that's in games that can utilize them in sli. Anyways my whole point was that they wouldn't see any noticeable performance gains until they upgraded their gpu anyways so they should wait. 

[epsilon84]

37 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

2 980s do not scale to a 1080 let alone a 1080ti and that's in games that can utilize them in sli. Anyways my whole point was that they wouldn't see any noticeable performance gains until they upgraded their gpu anyways so they should wait. 

 

You are wrong. And a 3930K to a 8700K is definitely a noticeable upgrade if you are already CPU bound in games:

 

[App4that]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

They didn't ask for the best gaming cpu. They asked for the best bang for your buck. So let me be abundantly clear. The i7 is a good cpu and the best for gaming right now but is a bad value when you consider the cost difference and the performance difference. The best thing to do would be to wait anyways but if they really wanted to upgrade right now and wanted the most value that would the the r7. 

Paying for a CPU that limits your performance, isn't a value. AMD offers an excellent *all around* value, not a gaming value. Per say. 

[epsilon84]

20 minutes ago, App4that said:

Paying for a CPU that limits your performance, isn't a value. AMD offers an excellent *all around* value, not a gaming value. Per say. 

Exactly. The value you derive from an upgrade is determined by the improvement you get over your current system.

 

Let's do a rough comparison, for example:

1) 8700K upgrade, $400 for CPU + HSF, $150 Z370 motherboard, $200 DDR4 3200, total cost of upgrade $750

2) 2700X upgrade, $330 for CPU (will use stock HSF) + $150 X470 motherboard, $200 DDR4 3200, total cost of upgrade $680

 

Now the 2700X platform is cheaper, mainly due to not needing an aftermarket HSF, the stock HSF is decent and can handle moderate 4.0 - 4.1GHz overclocks.

Yes, the 8700K platform costs an extra $70, which is roughly 10% higher than the Ryzen platform, but will overclock to 5.0 - 5.1GHz, a whole 1GHz higher than Ryzen. Not to mention, it also has higher IPC as well, so 5.0GHz on Intel is 'worth' ~5.5GHz on AMD, due to superior Intel IPC.

 

Yes, the 2700X is 8C/16T vs 6C/12T on the 8700K, but games can't take advantage of that, so the core / thread count advantage counts for nothing, and can't be utlised.

 

Now the sealer, the 8700K, as can be seen on that video, performs anywhere between 20% - 40% faster than the 3930K in gaming, sometimes even 50% higher. The 2700X would likely only be 10 - 20% faster, tops. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there were cases where it doesn't even outperform an overclocked 3930K.

 

So, we are looking at a $750 upgrade for Intel for a 20 - 40% gain in gaming, vs $680 for AMD for a 10 - 20% gain. Which is the better value upgrade? Seems pretty obvious to me.

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, epsilon84 said:

Exactly. The value you derive from an upgrade is determined by the improvement you get over your current system.

 

Let's do a rough comparison, for example:

1) 8700K upgrade, $400 for CPU + HSF, $150 Z370 motherboard, $200 DDR4 3200, total cost of upgrade $750

2) 2700X upgrade, $330 for CPU (will use stock HSF) + $150 X470 motherboard, $200 DDR4 3200, total cost of upgrade $680

 

Now the 2700X platform is cheaper, mainly due to not needing an aftermarket HSF, the stock HSF is decent and can handle moderate 4.0 - 4.1GHz overclocks.

Yes, the 8700K platform costs an extra $70, which is roughly 10% higher than the Ryzen platform, but will overclock to 5.0 - 5.1GHz, a whole 1GHz higher than Ryzen. Not to mention, it also has higher IPC as well, so 5.0GHz on Intel is 'worth' ~5.5GHz on AMD, due to superior Intel IPC.

 

Yes, the 2700X is 8C/16T vs 6C/12T on the 8700K, but games can't take advantage of that, so the core / thread count advantage counts for nothing, and can't be utlised.

 

Now the sealer, the 8700K, as can be seen on that video, performs anywhere between 20% - 40% faster than the 3930K in gaming, sometimes even 50% higher. The 2700X would likely only be 10 - 20% faster, tops. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there were cases where it doesn't even outperform an overclocked 3930K.

 

So, we are looking at a $750 upgrade for Intel for a 20 - 40% gain in gaming, vs $680 for AMD for a 10 - 20% gain. Which is the better value upgrade? Seems pretty obvious to me.

It would cost over 400 for the cpu plus the cooler if you want to hit 5ghz which if you aren't doing that then there really isn't a point in getting a z370 and k sku. A 8700k cost around 350 bucks and a decent cooler that will cool it enough to 5ghz cost around 80 plus dollars. That 430 dollars vs 330. Also if you look at ipc benchmarks Zen + and coffelake are essentially identical with about 1% difference between them. So that would make coffelake 5.0 ghz on Intel be 5.05 ghz ryzen 2. The lead Intel has currently is almost entirely clock speed. 

[maartendc]

On 5/10/2018 at 12:42 AM, pabloottawa said:

Hi there,

 

My first post and I am considering upgrading from my  2011 17 3930K, ASUS P9X79 DELUXE and 24 gigs DDR3 to something more modern and powerful. Currently my system is stable and running very well with two 980's in SLI. My question is; Should I upgrade at this time, and if I did what would give me the best bang for the buck? There's sooo much out there and it seems that AMD is the better solution these days in regards to both performance and value. Can anyone help me decide?

 

Cheers and Thanks

 

I would wait for AMD Zen 2 if your current system is still sufficient.

 

Ryzen has proven to be a solid platform so far, and the new Zen 2 architecture will build on that success.

 

If you feel like upgrading right now, the Ryzen 2600X is a really solid choice both for gaming and productivity. Ryzen 2700X is also great if you need more cores.

 

I would NOT bother with Intel  Coffee Lake at this time. They still charge their blood money for OC'ing and Hyperthreading (i5 vs i7 and K vs non-K), so I don't care for it.

 

So yes, if you are talking about "value" for money, we are back in the good old days that AMD is better value

- you can OC all the CPU's

- you get Hyperthreading on all CPU's

- you get more physical cores for the same money with the 2700 series

- You get a solid cooler stock, Intel stock coolers suck badly

 

The only downside is you need to buy fast enough RAM, but that might go for Intel as well, not sure.

[epsilon84]

5 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

It would cost over 400 for the cpu plus the cooler if you want to hit 5ghz which if you aren't doing that then there really isn't a point in getting a z370 and k sku. A 8700k cost around 350 bucks and a decent cooler that will cool it enough to 5ghz cost around 80 plus dollars. That 430 dollars vs 330. Also if you look at ipc benchmarks Zen + and coffelake are essentially identical with about 1% difference between them. So that would make coffelake 5.0 ghz on Intel be 5.05 ghz ryzen 2. The lead Intel has currently is almost entirely clock speed. 

Uhhh... not true at all. I have my 8700K @ 5.0GHz on a Hyper 212, which costs $30. Temps are in the 60s max during gaming. 

 

I was being generous there and assumed $60 for a good HSF for the 8700K. Reality check: you don't need an AIO for 5GHz, not even 5.1 if you have a good chip that doesn't need a lot of volts.

 

Why do you keep making up BS to try to validate your views?

 

Gaming IPC is clearly superior for Intel, and I'll provide proof of that.

[epsilon84]

Please go to 6:00 for the gaming IPC benchmarks and stop embarassing yourself further...

[Onboard87]

later this year i going to try to do a custom wall build not sure how that's going to go but was wondering is it better to stay with an AM3+ motherboard and keep my FX - 8350 chip or upgrade to the new AM4?

[epsilon84]

5 hours ago, maartendc said:

 

I would wait for AMD Zen 2 if your current system is still sufficient.

 

Ryzen has proven to be a solid platform so far, and the new Zen 2 architecture will build on that success.

 

If you feel like upgrading right now, the Ryzen 2600X is a really solid choice both for gaming and productivity. Ryzen 2700X is also great if you need more cores.

 

I would NOT bother with Intel  Coffee Lake at this time. They still charge their blood money for OC'ing and Hyperthreading (i5 vs i7 and K vs non-K), so I don't care for it.

 

So yes, if you are talking about "value" for money, we are back in the good old days that AMD is better value

- you can OC all the CPU's

- you get Hyperthreading on all CPU's

- you get more physical cores for the same money with the 2700 series

- You get a solid cooler stock, Intel stock coolers suck badly

 

The only downside is you need to buy fast enough RAM, but that might go for Intel as well, not sure.

An 'upgrade' from a 3930X to a 2600X? Seriously? That barely constitutes a sidegrade, the only true upgrade is in the platform side of things. The OP clearly wants better gaming performance and an UPGRADE over his 3930X, which is already quite a fast CPU, so a 8700K is the only real upgrade from a gaming perspective. All you guys pushing Ryzen have no idea what you are talking about because all you care about is your agenda and bias.

 

Bottom line: For gaming, nothing from AMD comes close to a 8700K. Stop making up reasons why Ryzen is 'better' for gaming. It isn't. 

 

Is it a good productivity CPU? Of course. Does it suck at gaming? No. Is it the best for gaming? No. And that is my whole point. If the OP wants to do more work that can max out all cores, then I would have recommended a 2700 or 2700X. He clearly mentioned his 980 SLIs so the intention here is obviously better GAMING performance. Why is that so hard to understand for you guys?