Upgrade Time

[Achtung Englander]

Had a quick browse and it does seem that their component selection is a little more restrictive than Cyberpower. Anecdotally I've heard that both are decent companies to go through, so it'll be down to which has the most suitable components stocked at the time as to which I go with.

I'm going down the sensible route and putting money away for it each month rather than just blow a huge chunk of savings all in one go, so it'll be a few months before I take the plunge. A quick build on Cyberpower looks like I'll need between £2,500 and £3,000, not counting the 1440p g-sync monitor I've had my eye on for a while.

I'm not hugely in the loop on the tech scene at the moment though, so are there any glaring issues that I would need to consider with something tentatively like this:

MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Plus: ATX
Intel® Core™ i5-10600KF - 6-Core 4.10GHz
MSI GeForce® RTX 3080 10GB
32GB (2x16GB) DDR4/3200mhz HyperX Fury
1TB (1x1TB) Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD

I'll broadly be aiming to future proof myself for a long time and to beast pretty much everything I can currently throw at it at 1440p 120hz.

superb machine. Congrats

[Raid]

Forgive my possible ignorance on Intel's offerings, but isn't that CPU a bit of a bottleneck? I have a 3700X matched with the same 3080, and I already know my CPU is the bottleneck in my system, and benchmarks have it a good 50% more powerful than that 10600KF.

[Sly Boots]

Forgive my possible ignorance on Intel's offerings, but isn't that CPU a bit of a bottleneck? I have a 3700X matched with the same 3080, and I already know my CPU is the bottleneck in my system, and benchmarks have it a good 50% more powerful than that 10600KF.

From what people were telling me (and from what I then gleaned from my own research), Intel chips have been rather left behind by AMD these days. I'd always been an Intel user before, but in this latest build went for a Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core CPU.

[Mantis]

You're probably right actually. I've always been averse to AMD CPUs due to various horror stories, but the 5900x looks incredibly beefy for only a modest increase in price.

[Achtung Englander]

[DjchunKfunK]

A bit late but AMD's chip are mostly ahead or at least level with Intel on gaming performance and their productivity performance is miles ahead so really no reason to go with Intel unless you get a really good deal price wise.

[Achtung Englander]

https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-radeon-rx-6 ... erformance

[DjchunKfunK]

Reviews I have seen for that card say performance at 1080p appears to be good but the pricing isn't. £380 for a card that performs worse than a 3060ti, supply issue aside.

This from the PCGamer review is pretty damming.

It's also not like the RX 6600 XT is really moving things along any either. It's practically the same price as the RX 5700 XT, and only single digit figures faster on average. Taking our entire benchmarking suite into account, this new card delivers average 1080p frame rates only 7% higher than the first-gen Navi card, while only being 5% cheaper than the RX 5700 XT's $399 MSRP.

[Hatredsheart]

particularly

[Achtung Englander]

Interesting conclusion - I wonder if AMD and Nvidia will now purposely cut back production to keep prices high given China has banned bitcoin mining and the market in the far east is being flooded with cards.

I only managed to pick up my 3060Ti at what I thought was a reasonable price of £380 and that was waiting for more than a year. Even if I had the budget of over a £1k to buy a 3080 I still wouldn't buy one at that price.

[eny]

Right, it is time to bite the bullet, raid the rainy day fund I've been keeping for the last decade, and rebuild my 2010 i5 760 (!) comp. Can you offer any thoughts on the following please, the cooler is a placeholder until I refine the list:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/aeny/saved/64Mh99

I have my old Coolermaster Centurion case, CX750 PSU, an MSI GTX 1050Ti and other drives to go with it all, thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[Raid]

The CPU is higher spec than the one I'm using (I have the i5-13500) and I'm happy with it, but I'd be concerned about being GPU bound. The 1050Ti only has 4GB VRAM, and modern games struggle on more than twice that.

[eny]

That's a fair point, GFX would have to be a future upgrade I think though, they are still crazy expensive, although my current is getting to end of life...

[Wrathbone]

A few thoughts:

- I went back and forth with the 12700k and the 13700k when I built my PC earlier this year, and I eventually settled on the 12700k for two reasons: first, the performance difference likely won't be noticeable outside of things like intensive video editing; and second, 13th gen Intel CPUs run much hotter than 12th gen, to the extent that air coolers aren't necessarily suitable for 13th gen.

- The Dark Rock Pro 4 is a great cooler, but I ended going with the Thermalright Peerless Assassin, which has very similar performance for less than half the price. It's extraordinary value and it keeps my 12700k nice and cool even under stress. As I write this, it's idling at 20c, which is barely above room temperature.

- As Raid says, the 1050Ti is going to be a significant bottleneck. Overall system performance will be great, but with gaming the benefits are probably going to be marginal. GPU prices are plummetting, so a bargain may not be too hard to find if you keep an eye out.

[eny]

Thank you, advice I will take on board. I will factor in a different chip and look for something else on the GFX front then. Any cheaper/more effective options re mobo?