Time for a PC Upgrade

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DjchunKfunK
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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by DjchunKfunK » Wed Jun 10, 2020 4:01 pm

I wouldn't go down to a 3300x.
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.
Disagree, I love a big block on my CPU. :)

Just a heads up, Overclockers and Scan are running an AMD promo until the 30th where you get Horizon Zero Dawn for free when you buy a 3600 or higher CPU.

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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by DjchunKfunK » Wed Jun 10, 2020 4:16 pm

Raid wrote:
Wed Jun 10, 2020 3:39 pm
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.
The big thing to think about is that Xbox One and PS4 have limited multi-thread capabilities, the next generation of consoles will not be limited in the same way so the 3600x will be a better long term upgrade. I'd also be wary of looking at CPU benchmarks like that, you want to look at gaming performance primarily.

EDIT: The single thread performance of the top chip on that list is only 30% better than the i5 4670 which shows you how little that score matters in the real world. The overall CPU mark for the 3600x is 60% better than the i5 4670

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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by Maturin » Wed Jun 10, 2020 4:54 pm

It's amazing how much longevity those i5's are still providing. My 4570 I got 7 years ago and it has no real negative impact on modern games - Borderlands 3 is as smooth as anything for me.

It's still well above minimum specs on new games. With a decent GPU I expect it to be more than capable for another 2 years at least, especially since I don't do any additional CPU-heavy stuff alongside gaming.

Sure, if I had a bit more disposable income than my current predicament then I'd replace it I guess, but for those who are on a budget like me it's proving to be a great investment.

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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by Raid » Wed Jun 10, 2020 5:16 pm

DjchunKfunK wrote:
Wed Jun 10, 2020 4:16 pm
EDIT: The single thread performance of the top chip on that list is only 30% better than the i5 4670 which shows you how little that score matters in the real world. The overall CPU mark for the 3600x is 60% better than the i5 4670
Unfortunately this isn't the real world, it's DCS World. The game engine has its roots in 2003 before multi-core processors were standard; basically the entire sim runs on only a single thread, with a separate thread used for sound. All of the advancements in multi-core technology have little bearing on how well the game runs, hence why I'm looking at single-thread performance. Yes, none of this is a hardware problem and whichever new chip I pick I'll end up with a vastly better system as a whole for everything else, but I think I'm just going to have to wait for Eagle Dynamics to finally fix these major issues to see significant gains.

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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by Snowy » Thu Jun 11, 2020 8:52 am

Mantis wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:23 pm
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 have had no issues Dave, although to be fair that only references a single unit. I was trying to remember the age of my PC, must be 5 or 6 years old I guess, and the old system was absolutely fine. It could have carried on if it weren't for the difference in CPU socket, when I removed it the hoses were all still absolutely fine, no signs of any perishing at all. Given that the hoses don't move at all once you have it installed, that probably helps.

I had no cooling issues whatsoever with the old Hydro unit, nor do I expect any with the new one. It is closed loop, so leaks would be the result of a fairly catastrophic failure. It is also very quiet and I suspect that not having a walloping great CPU cooler helps with the airflow in the case.
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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by DjchunKfunK » Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:13 am

Maturin wrote:
Wed Jun 10, 2020 4:54 pm
It's amazing how much longevity those i5's are still providing. My 4570 I got 7 years ago and it has no real negative impact on modern games - Borderlands 3 is as smooth as anything for me.

It's still well above minimum specs on new games. With a decent GPU I expect it to be more than capable for another 2 years at least, especially since I don't do any additional CPU-heavy stuff alongside gaming.

Sure, if I had a bit more disposable income than my current predicament then I'd replace it I guess, but for those who are on a budget like me it's proving to be a great investment.
Not sure I agree there, I have a 4670K that I have overclocked to 3.8ghz and it is starting to be a real limiting factor in games if I want high framerates and decent visuals. Looking at stuff like Control and Doom Eternal it's still hitting the minimum specs so yeah it's still playable but I don't expect that to carry on for much longer. Most games I play default to high or above settings because of my 2060 Super but I often find I have to turn them down if I want a good framerate especially as I have a 144hz monitor.

I get what you are saying Raid but I'm not sure you should be letting one game dictate the CPU you buy.

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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by Raid » Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:23 am

So here's where I am so far:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£157.05 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100x 57.2 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£79.98 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME X570-P ATX AM4 Motherboard (£169.98 @ Box Limited)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£79.98 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £486.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-06-11 12:16 BST+0100
That price is fairly accurate, though I'm not grabbing the motherboard from Box Limited; Amazon has it for the same price. It's still cheaper buying from Amazon than from dedicated PC hardware shops, so I'm forgoing the Horizon offer.

From everything I've read, the B550 motherboards aren't going to be substantially cheaper than the lower-end x570s, and this way I know I'm getting something tried and tested. The x570 will allow me to upgrade to a Ryzen 4 if in a couple of years I decide that the 3600 is a bit too mid-range for my tastes, as well as giving me the option of PCI-E 4.0, hence why I've picked that chipset over the current mid-range AMD boards.

The plan is still to wait to upgrade my GPU; there are new options coming later this year that I may be able to hang on for, but the plan is to go for whatever the equivalent of a 2070 Super is. I do want to grab a M.2 storage solution to replace my aging 240gb boot SSD, but that can wait.

My main outstanding question is RAM. I've just stuck a suitably cost effective set of Corsair DDR4-3200 sticks in there, but I don't really know if there's any advantage on higher clock speeds.

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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by DjchunKfunK » Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:27 am

Seems OK to me but I would wait for the rumoured AMD chip refresh in a few days time as even if the chips are not that much better it will lead to price cuts for the current line. Higher RAM clockspeeds are mainly useful for overlocking so if you are not going to do that I'm not sure it is worth going for super fast RAM.

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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by Raid » Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:54 am

Valid point. The 3600XT would be the only real option from the rumoured refresh, I don't really see the price of the current 3600 coming down much lower.

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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by Raid » Fri Jun 12, 2020 5:16 pm

Amazon accidentally launched the page for the 3600XT a few days early.
Image
(this is my screenshot, but the page has vanished now)

That's the same RRP as the 3600X, which currently sells for £199. The page did list the chip as having a clockspeed just 100mhz higher than the existing 3600X. I think if the price for the 3600X drops on tuesday when the page should be launched for real, I may step up to that, but I'm likely to just keep to the 3600.

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Re: Time for a PC upgrade

Post by DjchunKfunK » Sat Jun 13, 2020 8:58 am

That's not much of a boost, will have to see what benchmarks are like but my guess would be it is probably meant to replace the 3600x so those will probably come down in price to clear stock.

EDIT: Just been reading up on these chips and apparently they will have a boost to overclocking and the 3600XT might have a base clock speed of 4ghz which would be a significant bump.

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Re: Time for a PC Upgrade

Post by DjchunKfunK » Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:28 pm

New chips have been officially announced, same price just higher boost speed. So you might be able to pick up a cheap 3600x as they clear stock.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digi ... processors

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Re: Time for a PC Upgrade

Post by Raid » Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:37 pm

Yeah, about that... I've decided to go back to my original idea of getting a 3700X, and I'm ditching the CPU water cooler and sticking with the one that comes in the box to bring the price back down (I'll consider replacing it later if it's too noisy). As we're going into a console era of 8 core processors (strictly speaking we already are, but they run at like 2ghz whereas the new ones are much closer to the 3700X clock speed), I think having an 8 core CPU will be better for future proofing, plus the 3700X is seemingly quite a step up from the 3600 in performance anyway. This is my parts list:

ASUS TUF Gaming B550M-Plus
AMD Ryzen 3700X
HyperX FURY RGB 16GB (2x 8GB) 3200MHz DDR4 RAM

I know you can buy the 3700X for marginally less elsewhere, but the motherboard comes with a cashback promotion where I'll get £65 back so long as I buy both it and the CPU from the same vendor (and leave a review, apparently). This brings everything back down to roughly the same price as I was expecting to pay for the 3600 system.

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Re: Time for a PC Upgrade

Post by Raid » Fri Jun 19, 2020 2:24 pm

So everything's in, and while it was a relatively straightforward installation (honestly the only difficult bit was getting the motherboard risers out of the holes appropriate for an ATX board and getting them in the mATX ones. I tried the CPU fan at 100% via the bios and I don't think it's any louder than it was with the water cooler on the old chip.

I'm a bit concerned about CPU temperatures though. I did slip a bit when installing the CPU cooler and the contact patch maybe touched the CPU more than once, and I'm worried that it maybe didn't apply the paste correctly. Granted, each CPU core seems to be reporting the same temperature, and if the paste were missing in some areas I would have thought they'd differ. At the moment it's idling between 50 and 60 degrees, but when I played Borderlands 3 for ten minutes the temperature didn't climb above 75, so it's not like it was bouncing off the thermal throttling mark (although I suspect the system is now very much GPU bound so it may not have been a proper workout). I've tried with the case open and it doesn't vary all that much, so I'm reasonably confident that it's not the new fan config.

Incidentally I can link the motherboard software to my house's hue lights for added RGB control, which is about the most ridiculous feature I can think of for a motherboard. I've not managed to work out how to sync the CPU cooler RGB to the rest of the board yet; it's possible I've used the wrong controller cable (it comes with two). RGB lighting was hardly a priority, but the CPU came with it in the box and the RAM barely cost any more, so I figured I'd go for it in case I change my mind later.

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Re: Time for a PC Upgrade

Post by Maturin » Fri Jun 19, 2020 2:36 pm

If I were you, I'd do some checking around on reddit and other places with the '3700X idle temps' search term. It seems pretty high to me, but these new chips can often run hotter than the old ones - so it might not be that much higher than it should be.

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