Time for a PC Upgrade

[Raid]

...and when I say upgrade, I mean basically replacing the guts of the thing.

I'm currently using a PC built in 2014 that the denizens of Preys World helped me with (although I upgraded the GPU a few years later). It has an Intel i5-4670, 16gb of 2400mhz RAM and an AMD Fury X GPU. It's woefully inadequate for the PC game I play the most of, DCS World, as the game is pathetically optimised, doesn't use multiple CPU cores, and I run it in VR, to the point where I can barely play any longer. It doesn't fair *too* badly in other games, but it really chugged in certain sections of Doom Eternal and Borderlands 3.

I want to end up with a PC that's mid-high end, but I want to do it in stages. My intention is to grab a new CPU and motherboard, and then a new GPU a little later (reason being DCS is very much CPU bound and it'll be ages before I can afford to do both in one go). At the moment I'm eyeing an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, and will probably go for a 2070 Super (as I believe NVidia tend to have better VR performance and I've not had the best of experiences with AMD's GPU drivers), the exact model of which I'd decide closer to the time. I honestly don't know how to pick a motherboard (to fit an ATX case) so I'd need some advice there.

I'm currently thinking of keeping my Corsair Hydro H60 cooler and 750W Corsair Builder Series CX750M unless there's a need to replace them.

[Drarok]

Did I read somewhere that there's some weird bottleneck issue when running Nvidia cards on AMD chips, or was that some hogwash?

Edit: is your old RAM compatible, or will you need to get new with the CPU and mobo?

[Raid]

Honestly I'm not sure, I haven't really looked into the RAM situation, but as the stuff I have is 6 years old there's a good chance it won't be. The stuff I have is DDR3, and apparently a mixture of 1866 and 2400mhz (I grabbed an extra 8gb after the initial buy, I don't think I realised they were different specs).

Edit: Is the performance difference between the 3600X and 3700X worth an extra £80-100?

[DjchunKfunK]

You should get new ram, you want to be upgrading to DDR4. Additionally you should think about the board you are getting, ideally you want one that supports PCIE4.0 as although graphics cards are not yet using that format, NVMe drives will be and with the new consoles getting the fastest drives will become more important. The B550 boards that are coming out soon support PCIE4.0 and I think the x570 does as well.

As for CPU, they are both pretty comparable gaming performance wise as no games really take advantage of the 3700x's extra cores but that could change when we start getting next gen games. The 3700x comes into it's own when doing productivity tasks as the extra cores really help in that area. The 3700X is probably more future proof (if games start taking real advantage of the extra cores) with the 3600x providing similar gaming performance for much less right now. One thing I will say is that their are rumours of a slight refresh to the AMD line on the 16th so you might want to wait for that as you could either get one of those slightly faster chips or the 3600x/3700x for slightly less.

[Snowy]

I'm currently thinking of keeping my Corsair Hydro H60 cooler and 750W Corsair Builder Series CX750M unless there's a need to replace them.

I had to do a rebuild a few months back as my CPU went pop and took the mobo with it. Two things from that build:

1) My old Corsair Hydro cooler did not fit the new CPU. Had to replace it with an H100x model

2) While there was nothing wrong with the Corsair PSU that I had, I was not comfortable leaving it in-situ with such a £-value of new gear, knowing as we all do that when a PSU gives up the ghost there is a strong chance it will take the rest of the rig down with it. I bit the bullet and bought a new PSU at the same time (Corsair RM850i).

[Mantis]

Would you recommend water cooling, Ian? It's something I always liked the sound of in terms of efficiency and reducing noise, but it seemed like a huge pain to set up and I was always worried about leakages.

I'm waiting for the new CPU architecture from Intel to drop in a year or two along with something from AMD to kick Nvidia into gear price on the GPU front. I think we're at a stage now where a lot of existing tech is iterating on older chips, so there should be some decent advancements in the near future.

[Raid]

One of the things I've always done with my PC builds is buy more expensive components with upgradability in mind. Not once have I ever been able to upgrade just my CPU as the sockets have always been different, meaning I needed a new motherboard, and frequently new RAM too. I'm tempted to just go with a more cost effective build this time (especially given I now need RAM and a new CPU cooler which is going to add £200 to the cost), perhaps stick with the 3600X.

I'll wait until the middle of the month and see what happens with AMD's chip lineup. The B550 motherboards apparently launch on the 12th, which may bring the motherboard price down significantly (the z570 boards all seem to be around the £200 mark, which is the same price as the CPU which just seems a bit pricey).

Thanks for all the help so far, folks.

[Drarok]

My old PC had a Corsair H60 which I added after the initial build for cooler temperatures and quieter operation. Never had an issue with it.

My current PC has the NZXT equivalent with a double-wide radiator and has been similarly flawless. Temperatures are good, noise is excellent (with the caveat that I wear over-ear headphones when playing and am also a little deaf…) – I'd recommend both to anyone interested.

I do have some concerns about longevity since this build is only a little over 2 years old at this point, but I figure if anything leaks it'll be dielectric. I had a leak many many years ago in a custom-built water cooling solution, but it was distilled water so nothing shorted.

[Raid]

Probably worth mentioning that both my current CPU and GPU are water cooled. The Fury X was the one that came with a closed-loop water cooler as standard (one of the reasons I went for it in fact), and I too have a Corsair H60 for the CPU. You can hear that the fans spin up when under load, but even at full tilt it's barely louder than when it's idling. If GPUs with water coolers as standard were common, I'd definitely get another one.

[DjchunKfunK]

From what I have seen when looking into water cooling the closed loop systems are fairly safe but don't actually offer much better cooling than a good air cooler and often cost more. This video nicely sums it up. It's a fairly inflammatory headline, they actually go through the pros and cons.

[Raid]

I'll bear that in mind, but I'm not seeing as large a price discrepancy between a good air cooler and a closed-loop water cooler as they are.

I've been watching a fair few LTT videos over the last few days, and they have me questioning whether it's worth going for the 3600X or going for the significantly cheaper 3300X (not much over half the price), but at this point it's possible I'm bleeding off too much capability in the pursuit of price efficiency.

[Drarok]

I figure that the larger thermal mass of the water systems means that temperatures are less changeable when the CPU ramps up, without needing to change the fan speed.

Plus, having two massive fans spinning slowly on a rad should be quieter than a smaller fan spinning more quickly? And a really daft point is that the water systems look way nicer than the massive blocks needed for air.

[Raid]

I think the overall volume is perhaps less important than the consistency as we're only talking about a few decibels. I notice fans throttling up, I can easily ignore consistent noise, and I think for that reason the closed-loop water cooler is preferable. It seems like I can get a suitable one for £80, whereas an air cooler is around the £70 mark anyway.

[Alan]

Is that the PC that we both built at the same time, separately and built basically the same one? Weirdly enough I was looking at upgrading a few weeks ago I'm just going the cheaper route of just getting a better graphics. I think the i7-4790K has enough life left in it but I don't think any of my stuff is massively CPU intensive. I also had it in my mind I had a 400w PSU that would cause probs but after checking its a 700w so woot, that should power whatever card.

[Raid]

I don't remember there being a similar build at the same time, but it was six years ago. I know I basically asked for suggestions with a price point in mind, as I just didn't know anything about contemporary PC hardware having been a Mac user for the best part of ten years.

I'm second guessing myself now on what hardware to aim for. I looked up the single-core performance of my current CPU and compared it to the 3600 I've been looking at, and the increase in performance seems to be barely 20% if I'm reading this correctly. Obviously across the whole chip the performance is wildly better (to the tune of 3 or 4 times), but as one of the main use cases relies on single-core performance, I reckon I'll likely be disappointed with the results. The 3300X is actually stronger than the 3600X in this regard.