Hey everyone! Recently I’ve had a couple of friends upgrade their PCs and I’m starting to notice the age of mine a bit. I built a pc back in 2016 that has served me very well, and so far the only thing I’ve felt the need to upgrade is my GTX 1080 STRIX to a RTX 3080 FE. This has been nice to keep decent framerates while gaming at 1440p.
Here is my current build:
Additionally I’m using a HP 656089-001 Infiniband flashed with the mellanox connect x-3 firmware to get up to dual 40g fiber connections.
I’d like to keep everything in my setup the same. I purposefully ‘overbought’ some components back in the day to allow for future expansion, so I’m thinking a refresh of the CPU/MOBO/RAM would be nice. I noticed the 13900k seems to have great performance for the price (I paid 1k for the 6900k), but I’m not so sure my Noctua NH-D15 would be sufficient to get all the power I want out of it.
This leads me to believe that the 13700k or the 13600k might be a better option, but I’m curious what others think. Also not sure if I want to go z690 or z790. Any recommendations?
Consider AMD Ryzen 7000 series. Pretty much on par performance as Intel 13th gen, but much, much cooler. Which equates to lower power use → reusing your current PSU, not a given for Intel 13th gen. It appears that 6000MT/s RAM kits are the sweet spot in price/performance, 16GB seems a common choice too. Mainboards are pretty expensive, but most B series boards offer good value for money. Unless you want only overspec’d stuff, then the X series boards are your realm.
Not much to say, you also get 64 GB memory by adding your two previous RAM sticks to boot. Should hold you over to AM6 released sometime in 2027, if not later. Another option here is the 5900X, for the added cores at more or less the same price. Depends if you need more cores or not.
Well, it is getting more expensive, but it is also a more modern platform. The saddest part about this one is that the only CPU upgrade you can do is to 13900K, and while the 13900K is a really solid choice, I just don’t think this is compelling enough. Especially since we can do…
This is the most expensive option, but don’t just look at the price tag, look at what you’re getting for your money! You are getting a solid motherboard that will be able to slot in a Zen 6 CPU in it. That CPU has not been released yet, it will be released in 2026 or so - Just before AMD releases their AM6 platform. Even if the Zen 6 line turns out to be another Bulldozer, that will still just be a CPU swap for very little extra money, and as much as we love hating on Bulldozer - It’s hard to argue the value of a single CPU swap as opposed to replacing Motherboard + RAM + CPU.
Why the 7900 over the 7900X3D, 7700X or 7900X? Well, 12 cores in a 65W TDP package feels a lot better than 8 cores in a 105W TDP package, and it is close enough in budget to the other CPUs discussed. That said, do take a look at other options as well.
Personally I think option 3 makes the most sense to be honest, you can always swap later to a better CPU - and the fact that you can just swap to a CPU coming out in 4 years is just mindblowing.
