More gaming upgrade sanity checking

Associate
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26 Mar 2020
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Hiya
I posted here before and got some great advice, but ended up not upgrading for various reasons - back on it again now largely driven by having some time to physically make the upgrades and also for MS flight simulator launch fast approaching..

So here's my current ageing rig:

cpu - Intel Core i5-4690K
cooling - Cooler Master Seidon 120V
motherboard - MSI Z97-GAMING 5 ATX LGA1150
memory - Patriot Viper 3 Red 8 GB 4 x 4
GFX - MSI GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB VENTUS OC
case - Aerocool DS 200 ATX Mid Tower Case
ssd - Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (current main drive)
hd - Seagate Barracuda 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
psu - SeaSonic 520 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular Fanless ATX Power Supply

Based on the v helpful advice of this forum I have a basket here with some upgrades, updated by me as time has moved on already, which is why I need to run it by you guys :)

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £685.42 (includes shipping: £10.50)​

Some questions: do I need a better cooler? - is the one that comes with the cpu not up to scratch?
Also unsure about the SSD - is that a good choice to work as my main boot + games drive?

Main uses are games + VR (rift S currently although im interested in the new reverb) - I have a 2560 x 1080 widescreen monitor which I may upgrade as well.

I have some budget but don't want to spend on things I don't need, but any degree of future proofing is also good.

Thanks for any advice/suggestions.
 
Man of Honour
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The stockcooler is good but can get noisy something like the arctic e34 sports is a good choice.

WD BLUE SN550 1TB Is £10 will give you more read/write speed but wont be very noticeable.
If your not to fussed a normal ssd 1tb can be had £85.
 
Associate
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Stock cooler is fine if noise isn't a concern, it functions and keeps the chip cool enough. I skipped it completely and went for a Dark Rock 4 Pro and that is virtually silent. A quiet PC is important for me, hence my also massively overspecced power supply.

But your choices are good.
 
Associate
OP
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Thanks for the feedback seems like I've got it it about right - dilemma now is just whether to wait for new cpus i guess.. I don't really know much beyond they're supposed to be good.. thanks again
 
Associate
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If you do go for the B550 Tomahawk, it's a great board but has one or two BIOS things that need ironing out. For example, if I don't switch my monitor on before booting up, the board does not sense a display being present and will do one long beep and two short ones indicating a graphics card problem. However, monitor switched on it boots every time, this is using DisplayPort, not sure if this is the same with HDMI.

Also every now and then, a boot debug LED will stay lit but everything will work fine. A reboot will get rid of it if it annoys you. I'm not bothered about either of these two, I'll just update the BIOS maybe a BIOS or two further as these aren't deal breakers. Aside from that, great board.
 
Associate
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Hiya
I posted here before and got some great advice, but ended up not upgrading for various reasons - back on it again now largely driven by having some time to physically make the upgrades and also for MS flight simulator launch fast approaching..

If you are gonna be using FS2020 much, you want to be looking at 32gb ram
 
Man of Honour
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Associate
OP
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Thanks everyone for the advice updated my shopping list accordingly. Been doing some more reading about motherboards and a bit confused now about the various chipsets. Considering a B450 again. Unsure of the pros & cons for each so any other mobo suggestions and reasoning are welcome!
 
Man of Honour
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B450, b550 and x570 will all support zen 3 cpu .

X570 is the only platform that has pci express 4

PCIe 4.0 is the fourth generation of the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) motherboard interface and will double the bandwidth available to graphics cards, hard drives, SSDs, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet cards.

I think there is a few things that can use pcie4 such as an m2 ssd pcie gen 4.

So if you want to to guarantee the above then go x570 .
 
Associate
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X570 is the only platform that has pci express 4

PCIe 4.0 is the fourth generation of the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) motherboard interface and will double the bandwidth available to graphics cards, hard drives, SSDs, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet cards.

B550 has it too, but via the CPU. Chipset is PCI-E 3.0. That said, real world difference between those two standards is apparently barely noticeable.

I did fancy X570, but that tiny chipset fan put me off.
 
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