Upgrade or new build

[Stevay_b]

Hi all, really just looking for some guidance please 

 

1. Budget & Location

Budget <£1000, based in the UK so prices are slightly inflated

2. Aim

System will be used for: Unreal engine development, programming/compiling, video/sound/photo editing, Blender, and some gaming (I prefer to use my laptop these days) 

3. Monitors

Currently running 2 monitors at 1080p, looking to upgrade in the future to a single curved monitor, ideally at 4k

4. Peripherals

No need for any peripherals, and I have a windows 10 code ready to go.

5. Why are you upgrading?

My current system is running an i5 2500k, GTX 670 windforce (with a mighty 2GB ram) and 24GB DDR3, now while I accept it still has some life left in it yet I've put off any upgrades for the last 3-4 years and I'm finally starting to see some slowdowns here and there. My initial thoughts were to try and pick up an i7-3770k and a GPU upgrade to save on a motherboard and RAM replacement, but I'm unsure on the overall benefit of doing this when the Ryzen 7 1800x can now be picked up for £190 

 

Thanks in advance for any advice

[Zyndo]

7 minutes ago, Stevay_b said:

Snip

I'm unsure exactly the requirements of your workload.... but it looks mostly CPU and RAM driven rather than GPU based. If you were a gamer i'd just recommend upgrading your GPU and nothing else (especially if you wanted to go to 4k) but probably selling this system and then using your budget + the money gained from your system to build a new system Ryzen based is the way to go here... The only real issue you may have with that is DDR4 is currently quite pricey, so depending on your local pricing you may not be able to have that much capacity in your system, although not many applications really truly need more than 16GB for most users.

[Taf the Ghost]

25 minutes ago, Stevay_b said:

Hi all, really just looking for some guidance please 

 

1. Budget & Location

Budget <£1000, based in the UK so prices are slightly inflated

2. Aim

System will be used for: Unreal engine development, programming/compiling, video/sound/photo editing, Blender, and some gaming (I prefer to use my laptop these days) 

3. Monitors

Currently running 2 monitors at 1080p, looking to upgrade in the future to a single curved monitor, ideally at 4k

4. Peripherals

No need for any peripherals, and I have a windows 10 code ready to go.

5. Why are you upgrading?

My current system is running an i5 2500k, GTX 670 windforce (with a mighty 2GB ram) and 24GB DDR3, now while I accept it still has some life left in it yet I've put off any upgrades for the last 3-4 years and I'm finally starting to see some slowdowns here and there. My initial thoughts were to try and pick up an i7-3770k and a GPU upgrade to save on a motherboard and RAM replacement, but I'm unsure on the overall benefit of doing this when the Ryzen 7 1800x can now be picked up for £190 

 

Thanks in advance for any advice

A Ryzen 1700/1800X build with a Nvidia 1060 sounds about what you need. Let's see what I can toss together in the UK.

[Taf the Ghost]

30 minutes ago, Stevay_b said:

Hi all, really just looking for some guidance please 

 

1. Budget & Location

Budget <£1000, based in the UK so prices are slightly inflated

2. Aim

System will be used for: Unreal engine development, programming/compiling, video/sound/photo editing, Blender, and some gaming (I prefer to use my laptop these days) 

3. Monitors

Currently running 2 monitors at 1080p, looking to upgrade in the future to a single curved monitor, ideally at 4k

4. Peripherals

No need for any peripherals, and I have a windows 10 code ready to go.

5. Why are you upgrading?

My current system is running an i5 2500k, GTX 670 windforce (with a mighty 2GB ram) and 24GB DDR3, now while I accept it still has some life left in it yet I've put off any upgrades for the last 3-4 years and I'm finally starting to see some slowdowns here and there. My initial thoughts were to try and pick up an i7-3770k and a GPU upgrade to save on a motherboard and RAM replacement, but I'm unsure on the overall benefit of doing this when the Ryzen 7 1800x can now be picked up for £190 

 

Thanks in advance for any advice

Do you have HDDs and/or SSDs to move over? That's both a money savings and need to look at the cases to make sure everything fits.

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yd688Y

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6GHz 8-Core Processor  (£199.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Motherboard: Asus - STRIX B350-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£95.20 @ Aria PC) 
Memory: Patriot - Viper 4 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  (£149.98 @ Ebuyer) 
Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£88.79 @ Aria PC) 
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£47.94 @ Aria PC) 
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card  (£240.00 @ Novatech) 
Case: NZXT - S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  (£61.90 @ Aria PC) 
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£96.96 @ Ebuyer) 
Total: £980.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-08-23 20:19 BST+0100

 

If you can just move storage, I'd probably roll that back into another 16 Gb of memory.

[Zyndo]

21 minutes ago, Stevay_b said:

Snip

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Hzy4ZR

If you're willing to overclock, the 1700 is a much better investment than the 1800x. It comes with a stock cooler (the 1800x does not) and on top of not having to buy a cooler it saves you an additional $30 in cost outright (I know it's not dollars but my keyboard doesn't have GBP on it). You don't even need to try that hard for an OC either... a 3.6 or 3.7GHz OC should be very attainable and not warm up your chip too much on a stock cooler and be very close in performance to the 1800x. Though if you're uncomfortable with overclocking, then the 1800x is a pretty sensible purchase as well just keep in mind you'll also need to get a cooler for it.

 

I chose the motherboard I did because it seems to be on for a pretty good deal and it's (arguably) the best Ryzen board out there. You could save a ton of money by getting an X370 board which much cheaper (Like the X370 MSI SLI PLUS). Keep in mind this Asus board is an EATX board which means it's slightly wider than most ATX boards and it may not fit in all cases

32GB of RAM is easy. solid RAM, fast enough for Ryzen to benefit from it (if you remember to set XMP when you plug it in for the first time). Could easily save money by stepping down to a 16GB kit if you don't need the capacity.

No storage devices as I don't know what you need or what you already have. There is enough budget leftover in this build that you should be able to get some if you need it.

 

Your choice of GPU, since you're not a gamer, should be fairly straightforward. For your needs and price preferences I might recommend selling your current PC, and then using whatever funds you can get out of that to buy a used GPU. Everyone will be dumping their Pascal stuff now to buy Turing, so there should be a bunch of reasonably priced 1070's or 1070ti's on the market which you could easily get for the same price (or less, depending on the local used market) as you should be able to get from selling your PC.

Left the case blank because that's mostly personal taste. just know that if you wish to use the recommended motherboard that it will need to support EATX motherboards, which is fairly common of ATX cases.

[django_keyes]

13 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Do you have HDDs and/or SSDs to move over? That's both a money savings and need to look at the cases to make sure everything fits.

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yd688Y

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6GHz 8-Core Processor  (£199.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Motherboard: Asus - STRIX B350-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£95.20 @ Aria PC) 
Memory: Patriot - Viper 4 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  (£149.98 @ Ebuyer) 
Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£88.79 @ Aria PC) 
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£47.94 @ Aria PC) 
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card  (£240.00 @ Novatech) 
Case: NZXT - S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  (£61.90 @ Aria PC) 
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£96.96 @ Ebuyer) 
Total: £980.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-08-23 20:19 BST+0100

 

If you can just move storage, I'd probably roll that back into another 16 Gb of memory.

I like this build but what about the cooler? Maybe a dark rock 4 or 4 pro?

[django_keyes]

14 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Hzy4ZR

If you're willing to overclock, the 1700 is a much better investment than the 1800x. It comes with a stock cooler (the 1800x does not) and on top of not having to buy a cooler it saves you an additional $30 in cost outright (I know it's not dollars but my keyboard doesn't have GBP on it). You don't even need to try that hard for an OC either... a 3.6 or 3.7GHz OC should be very attainable and not warm up your chip too much on a stock cooler and be very close in performance to the 1800x. Though if you're uncomfortable with overclocking, then the 1800x is a pretty sensible purchase as well just keep in mind you'll also need to get a cooler for it.

 

I chose the motherboard I did because it seems to be on for a pretty good deal and it's (arguably) the best Ryzen board out there. You could save a ton of money by getting an X370 board which much cheaper (Like the X370 MSI SLI PLUS). Keep in mind this Asus board is an EATX board which means it's slightly wider than most ATX boards and it may not fit in all cases

32GB of RAM is easy. solid RAM, fast enough for Ryzen to benefit from it (if you remember to set XMP when you plug it in for the first time). Could easily save money by stepping down to a 16GB kit if you don't need the capacity.

No storage devices as I don't know what you need or what you already have. There is enough budget leftover in this build that you should be able to get some if you need it.

 

Your choice of GPU, since you're not a gamer, should be fairly straightforward. For your needs and price preferences I might recommend selling your current PC, and then using whatever funds you can get out of that to buy a used GPU. Everyone will be dumping their Pascal stuff now to buy Turing, so there should be a bunch of reasonably priced 1070's or 1070ti's on the market which you could easily get for the same price (or less, depending on the local used market) as you should be able to get from selling your PC.

Left the case blank because that's mostly personal taste. just know that if you wish to use the recommended motherboard that it will need to support EATX motherboards, which is fairly common of ATX cases.

I am still rocking my Gigabyte G1 980ti from three years ago and it is a beast dude. You can scoooop one up for like 200-300 on Ebay. I get 230 fps in Fortnite. 

 

Edit: I may have gotten a really good one idk

[Taf the Ghost]

7 minutes ago, django_keyes said:

I like this build but what about the cooler? Maybe a dark rock 4 or 4 pro?

Good point. Forgot the 1700X & 1800X don't have coolers. 

 

Can work out the storage/memory issues and then change things around as he finds use for.

[django_keyes]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

Good point. Forgot the 1700X & 1800X don't have coolers. 

 

Can work out the storage/memory issues and then change things around as he finds use for.

Yeah 

[django_keyes]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

Good point. Forgot the 1700X & 1800X don't have coolers. 

 

Can work out the storage/memory issues and then change things around as he finds use for.

Now that I think of it, I have a kit of 16gb of ram lying around. If the guy wants to buy it hit me up I will make a ebay listing. It is Crucial Ballisk sport 2400mhz. 

[Zyndo]

9 minutes ago, django_keyes said:

I am still rocking my Gigabyte G1 980ti from three years ago and it is a beast dude. You can scoooop one up for like 200-300 on Ebay. I get 230 fps in Fortnite. 

 

Edit: I may have gotten a really good one idk

I also have a 980ti. there isn't really such a thing as a "really good one". I mean there are better binned chips and cards which are slightly faster than others, but even if you have the be st 980ti on the planet and I have the worst the performance difference isn't all that significant... maybe 8-10%.

and fyi the 980ti is nearly identical in performance to the 1070 (with the 1070ti being about 15-20% better)... so that's the kind of pricerange and performance range I was recommending to him.

[django_keyes]

1 minute ago, Zyndo said:

I also have a 980ti. there isn't really such a thing as a "really good one". I mean there are better binned chips and cards which are slightly faster than others, but even if you have the be st 980ti on the planet and I have the worst the performance difference isn't all that significant... maybe 8-10%.

and fyi the 980ti is nearly identical in performance to the 1070 (with the 1070ti being about 15-20% better)... so that's the kind of pricerange and performance range I was recommending to him.

Yeah my chip overclocks like a beast so thats why. I would still go with the 1070ti, or the 2070, but I would have to wait to see benchmarks, and it seems like he doesnt need the horsepower. 

[Zyndo]

1 minute ago, django_keyes said:

Yeah my chip overclocks like a beast so thats why. I would still go with the 1070ti, or the 2070, but I would have to wait to see benchmarks, and it seems like he doesnt need the horsepower. 

the 2070 would eat up nearly half his budget on its own lol. a used Pascal is probably the way for him to go. maybe even used Maxwell like a 980 or 970 is the price is right.

[Stevay_b]

Thanks for the responses guys and sorry for the slow response! 

 

In terms of storage I have a few SSDs and HDDs I plan to utilise, along with a H100i V2 as a cooling option (if I replace the current machine I'll throw the stock cooler back in) so barring any mounting issues I have cooling sorted. Case might be an issue if I choose to upgrade the existing build as it's a fractal design R2. 

 

Thanks for the proposed builds, in terms of GPU I'd be happy with the 1060 6gb as that's what I have in my laptop, I have seen a 1080 for £380 tonight in a sale so I guess it all depends at the time of ordering! 

 

I think I need to stop putting myself off as I have for the last few years and just bite the bullet, especially with so many financing options available these days

[Stevay_b]

38 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

the 2070 would eat up nearly half his budget on its own lol. a used Pascal is probably the way for him to go. maybe even used Maxwell like a 980 or 970 is the price is right.

Had a gander at the RTX cards and cried salty tears at the prices, rule britannia...