Gaming Upgrade Advice

Associate
Joined
10 Jul 2009
Posts
22
Hey,

So it has been ~7 years since I built my current PC and for the most part it has handled everything I've thrown at it. Over the years I've slowly had to turn my graphics setting down, but recently even on the lowest possible settings I'm starting to max out not only the GPU, but RAM and CPU too... (most noticeably on COD MW release).

Currently I am playing MOBAs, 4x and now COD (reactions are definately not what they used to be!)

Current Build:
Intel i5 4670k
8GB (2x4) @ 1866MHz
Vapor-x 7950 GPU
250gb SSD, 1TB HDD
XFX 750 PRO Black ed - (Gold rating)

Currently running 1080p, however would like to get to 1440 or 4k if possible... So, my current plan:

AMD Ryzen 7 3700x
16GB (2x8) Running at ~3600MHz
X570 (Gigabyte Aorus Elite or similar) - however I don't think I need the X570 so maybe a B450 instead?
RTX 2080 Super
NZXT H710i (looking at the Phanteks P400a too...) - The case I have currently have, the Zalman Z11+, was great for my 19 year old self but something a bit less bulging now I think!
H100i PRO - although I have the H80i atm, it is rather loud so not sure if I go for an air cooler instead or a different brand...
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB (I may look at using the new PCIE 4.0 M.2s if I stick with the X570)
Generic 1tb SSD

I will most likely reuse the XFX modular PSU that I have, unless there's a reason I should be getting a new one?

Rough budget £1700-1800 all in. I will buy a monitor seperately from this budget so any suggestions on that front would be great too.

Am I on the right track with the above or should I be taking a look at some different parts instead?

Thanks for all your help in advance!
Jamie
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,616
Location
Finland
MSI B450 Tomahawk is perfect for 3700X and would do decently well with 12 core with good case cooling.
Stronger VRM is only needed if you know you'll be soon updating to 12/16 core and usage is heavy.

In memory remember that 2x8GB shouldn't cost more than £100.
Anything apparoaching £150 is better used on definitely long time future proof 2x16GB.
(command interleaving of dual rank would likely also make 3200MHz as fast in games as single rank 8GB 3600MHz)


Now is historically bad time to buy expensive graphics card and if you want to stay ahead of next-gen consoles, you'll have to anyway upgrade GPU in year or so.
Also Nvidia has super bad performance per price.
Sub £400 Radeon 5700 XT would be bang per buck choise.
And talking about that what monitor resolution you have?
If about medieval 1920x1080, expensive graphics card makes even less sense.


High end heatpipe coolers beat most waterpipe coolers in everything but hype.
And you can be sure that you don't have to worry about it failing, because fan is only failing part and its failure doesn't kill all cooling power.
Besides if cooler costs more than quarter of CPU priorities aren't correct, unless you have sheeps and feed them banknotes.


Also Samsung is pretty much brand scammer in SSDs.
That small half TB drive costs same as 1TB drives!
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/teamgroup-mp34-1tb-nvme-pcie-m.2-solid-state-drive-hd-00b-tg.html

For gaming PCIe v4 is total waste of money.
There's very little if any difference in loading times of Windows and games even between NVMe and SATA SSDs:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nvme+ssd+hdd
Only thing in which PCIe v4 speed would show in home use is you copied files from folder to another to fill the drive, then formatting it and starting over.
And basically controller heating up would fast throttle it to speed of PCIe v3 drive.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
7,781
Location
Surrey
@poultergoose - 1440p is the sweetspot, forget 4k for now. I couldn't believe the difference when I went from a 1080p screen to a decent (at the time I bought it anyway) 1440p screen, although I've now locked myself to Nvidia (cheeky ********) because it has gsync. If only I'd known then their pricing would go from merely exorbitant to astronomically ridiculous :(
 
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