Ready to pull the trigger on an upgrade... but do I really need to?

[Alex Townsend]

As you may infer from the title of this post, I'm at a bit of a crossroads in my thought process with regards to an upgrade that I'm literally hovering over the big fat buy button...

I currently have the following machine
I7 3770k OC'd to 4.3Ghz for daily sim use mainly. I don't do any work on it, just sim racing
8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz XMP
Asus P8Z77-V LX2 board
Palit GTX1070 Game Rock
Screen is an old Samsung HDTV, one day I'll get the money to upgrade to a 144hz ultrawide but not any time soon.

I've thought about streaming more and more lately so I need a system upgrade that I can do that on... potentially.

So, I've been buying in stages and currently have;
ASRock Z370 Extreme4 MB
16GB (2x8) 3200Mhz Kingston Predator RAM

Now my problem is, do I go with the i7 9700k, i7 8700k, i5 9600k or i5 8600k?

I know the pros and cons of each but I'm on a massive roundabout where I literally don't know which way to go.

I7 9700k or i5 9600k, due to solder heatsink etc. (Great for me as I live in a very hot country) and hopefully have the same sort of longevity that my last major build gave me, (the i7 3770k).
I5 8600k or i7 8700k as I wont fully utilise the 9 series CPUs, as the motherboard I chose a while back, is better suited to 8 series processors... or does that not matter as much with this gen?

Or don't bother, sell the motherboard and RAM and wait for something newer and better to come along.... the 3770k will last a while longer yet...

 

[David Turnbull]

I wouldnt bother with an Asrock board with the Z300 series chipset, by all accounts their VRMs arent very good, Gigabyte have solid VRMs on their board and can be had fairly cheap, the Aorus boards get great reviews (I myself have the Gigabyte Z390 Gaming X).

regards CPU, the 3770k at 4.5ghz will still be a very good CPU in most things even now but if your dead set on an upgrade then I can recommend the 9600k as a solid gaming CPU and it runs pretty cool too with the soldered heatspreader also overclocks well (I had mine to 4.8ghz per core with a tiny vcore boost), the 9700k is probably the sweet spot for gaming and productivity but the price is still fairly high on these at the moment.

I dont think I'd bother with the 8600k or the 8700k right now with the performance you can get with the 9600k with better thermals (not soldered 8th gen), but then theres always Ryzen 3 around the corner so might be better waiting on that before you take the plunge, like I said the 3770k will do you for a bit yet.

EDIT: oh I see you already purchased the board and ram, in this case you'd need to update the bios to the latest on the Asrock site to support the 9th gen series on the Z370 boards.

 

[RasmusP]

Motherboard: since you are fine with overclocking, it doesn't matter. You might not get the same level of automatic turbo oc per core blah blah stuff.
But putting all cores to 4.9 GHz and be happy shouldn't be a problem

CPU:
I5 doesn't have enough cores to be future proof and stream.
I7 is the perfect middle, i9 is overkill and too expensive.
8700k would be the best middle ground with 6 cores and HT but at least here in Germany, it's the same price as the 9700k but lacks raw fps in the games!

Only thing you could do if you don't want to splash out on a 9700k would be to wait for the ryzen 3xxx to hit the market. Not sure that's a good plan though since you already got a few parts

 

[David Turnbull]

Theres also the 8086k floating around which would be perfect for what you need and for the board you have.....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-i7-8...ocphy=9046866&hvtargid=pla-494091823883&psc=1

 

[RasmusP]

Theres also the 8086k floating around which would be perfect for what you need and for the board you have.....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-i7-8...ocphy=9046866&hvtargid=pla-494091823883&psc=1

Yep, although it's just a higher clocked 8700k. If you overclock it anyway, you can save the money and go with the 8700k. They all go up to 5 GHz from what I've seen

 

[David Turnbull]

on a slight side note, I bought my 9900k from Ebay, item condition new/tested, I paid £440 and works like a charm, overclocks to 5ghz on all cores at 1.265v which is pretty good for the 9900k, that was only £40 more expensive than the 9700k in the UK.

 

[David Turnbull]

Yep, although it's just a higher clocked 8700k. If you overclock it anyway, you can save the money and go with the 8700k. They all go up to 5 GHz from what I've seen

Yeah just a pre-binned 8700k, the 8th gen and 9th gen are near enough the same architecture so most clock around the same levels only real diffrence is the use of TIM on the 8th gen compared to solder on the 9th.

 

[Alex Townsend]

I wouldnt bother with an Asrock board with the Z300 series chipset, by all accounts their VRMs arent very good, Gigabyte have solid VRMs on their board and can be had fairly cheap, the Aorus boards get great reviews (I myself have the Gigabyte Z390 Gaming X).

regards CPU, the 3770k at 4.5ghz will still be a very good CPU in most things even now but if your dead set on an upgrade then I can recommend the 9600k as a solid gaming CPU and it runs pretty cool too with the soldered heatspreader also overclocks well (I had mine to 4.8ghz per core with a tiny vcore boost), the 9700k is probably the sweet spot for gaming and productivity but the price is still fairly high on these at the moment.

I dont think I'd bother with the 8600k or the 8700k right now with the performance you can get with the 9600k with better thermals (not soldered 8th gen), but then theres always Ryzen 3 around the corner so might be better waiting on that before you take the plunge, like I said the 3770k will do you for a bit yet.

EDIT: oh I see you already purchased the board and ram, in this case you'd need to update the bios to the latest on the Asrock site to support the 9th gen series on the Z370 boards.

Yeah, already bought as got it cheap, and it already has BIOS 3.10 which I've checked is for the new 9 series CPUs. But in hindsight I should have waited as the Gigabyte Aorus Z390 isn't much more. Gonna try sell this ASRock board and get the Gigabyte instead j think.

Motherboard: since you are fine with overclocking, it doesn't matter. You might not get the same level of automatic turbo oc per core blah blah stuff.
But putting all cores to 4.9 GHz and be happy shouldn't be a problem

CPU:
I5 doesn't have enough cores to be future proof and stream.
I7 is the perfect middle, i9 is overkill and too expensive.
8700k would be the best middle ground with 6 cores and HT but at least here in Germany, it's the same price as the 9700k but lacks raw fps in the games!

Only thing you could do if you don't want to splash out on a 9700k would be to wait for the ryzen 3xxx to hit the market. Not sure that's a good plan though since you already got a few parts

Same here in Malaysia. The 8700k is actually a few ringgit more than the 9700k at most online retailers...
I was leaning towards the i7 9700k as being the chip to keep me going for another 7 years. Although I could also get the 9600k now, OC it for a bit and then swap out to a 9700 or even a 9900 later once the prices come down.
Thing is the 3770k has been doing me proud for years now, it's just my P8Z77-V Pro died on me and I could only source a cheap LX2 instead so I've lost a bunch or ports and features.
Maybe I need to wait for Ryzen 3. Any ideas on when we'll see them hit the market?
And will they still take DDR4 Ram?

Theres also the 8086k floating around which would be perfect for what you need and for the board you have.....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-i7-8...ocphy=9046866&hvtargid=pla-494091823883&psc=1

Would love one of these, just for the geek out reference number of the CPU. We don't really see them out here in Malaysia, at least I've never seen them for sale nor anyone selling second hand.

 

[RasmusP]

Maybe I need to wait for Ryzen 3. Any ideas on when we'll see them hit the market?
And will they still take DDR4 Ram?

There was a release date update this week. 3rd quarter of this year so July to September.
Can be only 1.5 months or still almost half a year sadly...
Yes they will take ddr4 but ryzen 1xxx and 2xxx needed special "Samsung b-die" to run high frequencies.
There are lists in forums to know which sticks are b-die inside.
With non b-die it's luck to reach more than 2400 MHz.
The problem with this is that the ryzen CPUs are a bit different to Intel and gain a lot of performance with higher ram speeds.
That's due to Intel having the memory controller and cpu in sync whereas amd CPUs are independent on this so a quicker memory speed actually speeds up a big part of the processor.
Don't ask me for details. Only read about this!

Honestly I would just see if you can swap the mobo for a better one without paying much on top and if so, buy a 9700k and enjoy the enormous fps boost
It's only speculations and a tech demo that didn't show any details that let us think ryzen 3xxx will be on the same level as the 9th gen Intels.
I also doubt that the 9700k will drop a lot in the future. The big drop already happened compared to release prices

 

[Alex Townsend]

There was a release date update this week. 3rd quarter of this year so July to September.
Can be only 1.5 months or still almost half a year sadly...
Yes they will take ddr4 but ryzen 1xxx and 2xxx needed special "Samsung b-die" to run high frequencies.
There are lists in forums to know which sticks are b-die inside.
With non b-die it's luck to reach more than 2400 MHz.
The problem with this is that the ryzen CPUs are a bit different to Intel and gain a lot of performance with higher ram speeds.
That's due to Intel having the memory controller and cpu in sync whereas amd CPUs are independent on this so a quicker memory speed actually speeds up a big part of the processor.
Don't ask me for details. Only read about this!

Honestly I would just see if you can swap the mobo for a better one without paying much on top and if so, buy a 9700k and enjoy the enormous fps boost
It's only speculations and a tech demo that didn't show any details that let us think ryzen 3xxx will be on the same level as the 9th gen Intels.
I also doubt that the 9700k will drop a lot in the future. The big drop already happened compared to release prices

And this is why I read the posts and value the answers in this forum. Thanks for the input guys. Its greatly appreciated

 

[Miguel Batista]

What Rasmus said. If you go Ryzen be mindfull of the memory you buy. If you go intel a 9600 or a 9700 will serve you fine. Just check prices and availibility. Finally, with a 3770k you have quite a powerful chip already so you can wait and check for some ryzen 3 benchmarks before you make your decision.

 

[Alex Townsend]

Just out of curiosity, as I'm in the process of selling the ASRock Z370 board. Which Z390 would you guys recommend?

 

[RasmusP]

Just out of curiosity, as I'm in the process of selling the ASRock Z370 board. Which Z390 would you guys recommend?

I know a few guys with asrock throughout the generations. Okay boards but just not great.
Over the years I missed more and more features as my needs and knowledge grew.
A few friends have gigabytes. Good boards but a bit weird and you have to look for the good ones which are specific ones.
Asus has a whole range and I have to say, every Asus board I've ever came across was just awesome.
More expensive, but awesome. And sind you gonna keep it again for multiple years I would simply read up about the different Asus boards and go for one between 170-230 euros.

But I'm not really up to date regarding the specific boards for the 9th gen. That's just my overall knowledge and experience about mobos

 

[David Turnbull]

Gigabyte Aorus Pro or Gigabyte Aorus Master would be my choice if I had to choose again.

I bought the Gigabyte z390 Gaming X as it was fairly cheap and had good VRMs for overclocking, and although it is good for what I do with it, the Aorus boards have even better VRMs and features.

 

[Alex Townsend]

Thanks guys. I usually buy Asus boards but this ASRock was going cheap and seemed to have ok reviews.
I liked the look of the Aorus as they have tons of USB ports which I need for all the sim racing attachments... plus the VRMs would definitely help with the required OC

 

[Miguel Batista]

You can't go wrong with ASUS. That being said, Gigabyte and MSI are not bad either. When I bought my mobo, I ended up going with an MSI gaming 7 as it had a promotion where they offered a 70 pound AIO watercooler. It has everything i need including good OC potential due to good VRMs. Bear in mind though that silcon lotery will play a much larger role when OCing than any kind of mobo features. 150 to 250 pound/euro range will set you up good. Don't spend more than that as you gain nothing and intel changes its chipset every 2 generations.

 

[Durge Driven]

Yep, although it's just a higher clocked 8700k. If you overclock it anyway, you can save the money and go with the 8700k. They all go up to 5 GHz from what I've seen

Or he could buy a 8700 which will run only marginally slower and handle RTX2080 no worries
At my store 8700 is 499 ( $16 off like wow lol ) 8700K is 599 so 20% dearer
Then add the cost of very good motherboard ( like David said ) tight memory to have more latitude in timings, very good PSU for best voltage and best cooling like Noctua or liquid which is even dearer again

When you add all that up tower is upwards of 40% dearer build for like 20% fps
8700 only needs decent PSU, basic board good memory and Hyper cooler that way you can spend more on GPU .of course if money is no object forget I mentioned it

On upgrades I like to grab parts as I can afford them as well
Always grab your Tower, Cooling and PSU before the rest

 

[Alex Townsend]

Or he could buy a 8700 which will run only marginally slower and handle RTX2080 no worries
At my store 8700 is 499 ( $16 off like wow lol ) 8700K is 599 so 20% dearer
Then add the cost of very good motherboard ( like David said ) tight memory to have more latitude in timings, very good PSU for best voltage and best cooling like Noctua or liquid which is even dearer again

When you add all that up tower is upwards of 40% dearer build for like 20% fps
8700 only needs decent PSU, basic board good memory and Hyper cooler that way you can spend more on GPU .of course if money is no object forget I mentioned it

On upgrades I like to grab parts as I can afford them as well
Always grab your Tower, Cooling and PSU before the rest

8700 here is RM1295
8700K is RM1575
So it's not really that much more expensive RM280 which is about 50 quid.

Sorry, about my system, I should have mentioned that I have a Corsair H100i v2 as it's so hot here in Malaysia that i needed it to be able to OC at all. My PSU is a Corsair HX750 I think. Installed years ago and it was decent enough then so hope it's still ok now...
Memory I just bought is 16GB HyperX Predator 3200Mhz which i think is ok. Just trying to see if I can sell the ASRock board I bought and pick up an Asus or Giga instead