It's been 7 YEARS..! (New CPU advice)

MaxG · 28 Sep 2018 at 14:01

It's been 7 years since I last asked you wonderful people to help me spec a system, well here I am again doing something similar. I've had seven years of experience meddling about with PCs since then and I have a plan but I wanted to put my thoughts out there. After speaking to someone @ EGX from OCUK (who shall not be named just in case :cool:

) I've been put on the right track but it's the CPU that's bothering me. After reading the CPU section I'm being massively put off this 9th generation Intel nonsense, just like I was put off with Nvidia's shambolic 20 series.

So far I'm about £1000 the way through a £3000 build. So far all I've bought is:

AROZZI LEGGERO ARENA DESK £259.99

GIGABYTE AUROS 1080TI £619.99

PHANTEKS GLACIER GTX 1080 TI AUROS GPU FULL WATER BLOCK WITH RGB £129.95

ENTHOO EVOLV X DIGITAL MIDI TOWER GLASS GAMING CASE - BLACK £209.99

I've been patiently waiting for the 9th gen but to be honest, I don't think the price vs performance gain is going to be worth it. My plan is to fully watercool the Evolv X with two rads (overkill I know) and use two NVME SSD's on RAID 0 (yes, futher overkill I know). There are some elements of this system that I want/need to be a little OTT for my own 'MUST HAVE THE BEST' insanity but reading the forums for the last few weeks has knocked some sense into me.

My plan is to be 4K gaming @ 144HZ when they release monitors that actually display at that HZ and that are at a reasonable price.

What to do? I'd rather have INTEL and have CPU performance of/or equal to a 8700k for 1440p 165hz gaming.

I really appreciate your advice.

Quartz · 28 Sep 2018 at 14:31

I thought NVME was actually slower in RAID 0.

MaxG · 28 Sep 2018 at 14:33

Quartz said:
I thought NVME was actually slower in RAID 0.

Ooo, now I've read something else. That it's not 2x the speed but not slower. I can get two 0.5TB drives for slightly cheaper than 1TB. Hmm

pandem0nium · 28 Sep 2018 at 14:43

For nvme raid, you're better off avoiding mainstream intel. All nvme drives have to use lanes from the chipset on z370, so raid will be limited by the DMI 3 connection to the cpu.

X299 (Not Kaby X) or Threadripper x399 are your best bet since there's plenty of lanes from the cpu to get the most out of it. It's doable with AM4 Ryzen but only after dropping the gpu lanes down to x8.

MaxG · 28 Sep 2018 at 14:53

pandem0nium said:
For nvme raid, you're better off avoiding mainstream intel. All nvme drives have to use lanes from the chipset on z370, so raid will be limited by the DMI 3 connection to the cpu.

X299 (Not Kaby X) or Threadripper x399 are your best bet since there's plenty of lanes from the cpu to get the most out of it. It's doable with AM4 Ryzen but only after dropping the gpu lanes down to x8.

Good advice. Much appreciated.I'll stick to just one NVME then. Something like this drive.

LuckyBenski · 29 Sep 2018 at 03:11

Sorry to be that guy, bit you won't be gaming 4k at 144Hz for a while. Unless you're playing older games?

MaxG · 29 Sep 2018 at 07:36

LuckyBenski said:
Sorry to be that guy, bit you won't be gaming 4k at 144Hz for a while. Unless you're playing older games?

That's absolutely fine. If it takes long enough, I'll have an excuse to upgrade again

george1976 · 30 Sep 2018 at 14:25

At 4k resolution, your cpu, providing it's a decent one, will no longer be a bottleneck, it's gpu all the way and by looking at the new ngreedia gpus and the lack of competition from what used to be my favourite Radeon you wont be playing anything in 4k at that refresh rate for a couple of years if not more....
Some Intel discrete gpu's can't come soon enough, sometimes I feel like AMD should let them use their IP's coz they abandoned the high end gpu market for a while.

MaxG · 30 Sep 2018 at 14:56

george1976 said:
At 4k resolution, your cpu, providing it's a decent one, will no longer be a bottleneck, it's gpu all the way and by looking at the new ngreedia gpus and the lack of competition from what used to be my favourite Radeon you wont be playing anything in 4k at that refresh rate for a couple of years if not more....
Some Intel discrete gpu's can't come soon enough, sometimes I feel like AMD should let them use their IP's coz they abandoned the high end gpu market for a while.

I went for the 8086K, as I got a brand new one for 13% off the MSRP. After delidding I hope to get 5.2GHz.

Hopefully in two years the PC industry won't be in a capitilistic mess, then I'll upgrade again.