Getting back into hardware after.... over 2 years?

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I’ve been plenty content with my computer so far, but I recently finished my Morrowind playthrough and was looking forward to starting my “full completion” playthroughs of Oblivion and Skyrim and… well, I realized something: I need an upgrade before I jump back into those two. Of course, those two modded (REALLY demanding mod loads) games are not the only cause for wanting to spend hundreds on computer parts. A cutdown on rendering times might motivate me to make more videos. I’ve never been able to stream in HD without having huge FPS/lag issues. Krita and my other art programs could be a bit more snappy. Etc, etc.

Before I go further, here’s my current setup:
CPU: AMD FX-6300
Mobo: GA-990FXA-UD5 (rev 3.1)
RAM: GSkillz 16GBs @1660
GPU: RX-480 8GB (originally ran a GTX 760 4GB, upgraded last year)
PSU: don’t remember, but it’s some 750 or 850W gold rated Thermaltake IIRC. It’s been really nice.
3 1080p monitors (only game on 1)
Got a stupid, mech-anime inspired case from Raidmax (plenty of space and pretty colors)
Running Win10 just in case anyone asks

To anyone who might be blind to the elephant in the room, there’s just one thing that really needs upgraded here: the CPU. It’s… old. Tiny problem: upgrading means I have to get a new mobo and RAM, so this is either a balls to the walls upgrade or nothing at all for me.

I basically stopped paying attention to this entire scene for the last two years. Haven’t even been on this forum. I remember being excited for Zen and seeing that video where Linus walked around in the rain talking about Intel’s caught-with-their-pants-down response and was excited that it seemed the CPU market was finally kicking in gear, but I didn’t have the money to play the game and it just fell aside. Now, we’ve got Threadripper and this Ryzen 2.0 or whatever and DDR4 is… well, I have no idea how the news on DDR4 developments have gone.

Long story short, I want to get a new CPU/mobo/M.2 solid state/RAM by the end of summer and combine it with the PSU/GPU/storage/case I have now. This is going to be a $600+ investment it looks like, so by all means, please educate me on what I’ve missed out on.

Some notes:

  1. I am looking to get AMD’s new CPU lines. Do not bring up Intel options. I do not care. I do not want them. I know I’m going to have that one guy and I’m telling you now, I won’t even respond to it.
  2. I am super indecisive about RAM. I have 16GBs now and there’s a few times I almost fill it, but very rarely. Idk if I’d ever use more, but that really depends on how long I might keep this new build. Should I stick to 16? Upgrade to 32 and just milk the new build for ages? I dunno. Haven’t decided.
  3. I like pretty colors and LEDs.
  4. Overclocking is “eh.” ANY 6+core Ryzen CPU is going to be a night and day difference over my 6300, even overclocked, so I’m not specifically after an unit I can overclock, although that would be an amazing option and a reason to go with that choice because of longevity reasons.
  5. The mobo needs ALL THE THINGS. 8+ 6gb/s SATAs, full 5.1/7.1 audio, x16 PCIe slots, etc, etc.

Thanks for reading and replying, as always.

EDIT: Here is the modified parts list I’m looking to get as of the convo so far.




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Just glancing at the parts list, it seems fine. But get a proper SSD.

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I’d get 16gb ram and use the savings on a Samsung 960 m.2

16 is still plenty. And that’s an easier upgrade in the future than a new ssd.

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@mihawk90 @SudoSaibot Why no love for this one? I don’t need a lot of space on the M.2. I just need about 60G (probably not even that tbh) for boot drive. My old SSD I’m using now will be for utilities.

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Agree 100% with SudoWolf.

In fact I’d even go so far as saying you should grab a Ryzen 7 with the extra money due to typically being able to get better clocks.

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Honestly I say SATA SSDs are perfectly fine, most people won’t take advantage of the Speed and IOPS of NVMe drives anyway.
It’s just that I have a thing for vendors whose names I don’t even know. Honestly never heard of Biwin.

Also for even just 30$ (assuming you don’t want to pay more), you can get SSDs with double the capacity from known vendors.
Granted this is a german site, but the prices in the US shouldn’t differ all that much.

Also what @SudoSaibot says about RAM is true as well.
If you really don’t want a bigger SSD you could also upgrade the CPU instead, get 2C/4T more maybe. RAM can be easily upgraded anytime, but CPU not so much. I’d worry about RAM once I ran out of space on mine (I still run 8GB perfectly fine).

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The main reason I want to get an M.2 is to free up a SATA cable. Well, to be more specific, I want my current SATA SSD to be a utility-only drive that’s not backed up (I mean, who needs to back up the actual programs like Premiere Pro. Just reinstall if you have to) so I can have a bit more space and another separation in how I store/install things. I don’t care for partitions. I rather just have more drives. That might make me weird; I dunno. Anyway, I do want a cheap M.2 because the decent boards for Ryzen that have the SATA and overclocking headway have them anyway.

Also, I just noticed something… the board I have linked doesn’t have two true x16 PCIes. It has one true x16 and two x16s threaded as x8s. That really sucks, considering my old/current GA-990FXA-UD5 (rev 3.1) has two true x16s. Granted… I never actually got around to using it, but… I’d rather not handicap myself early on. If I want two real x16s, am I looking at a more expensive motherboard or both mobo and CPU? Realistically, I don’t see myself actually needing a second true x16. My plans for SLI/crossfire/whatever and dedicated/specialized cards never went anywhere and I probably won’t use them. I should probably just get whatever board is the cheapest that has 8 SATAs, all the audio jacks I need, an M.2, and overclocking potential.

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That’s fine, the ones I linked are M.2 SATA as well :wink:

That’s just how this generation is.

Ryzen has 24 PCIe lanes in total:

  • 4 to the Chipset
  • 4 to NVMe M.2
  • 16 to PCIe Slots (note only the X Chipsets allow for splitting them).

x8 is by no means a bottleneck yet though, you won’t notice a difference.

If you want any more lanes, you have to go with Threadripper. And the prices are slightly different on that one.
On a sidenote: Intel has even less PCIe lanes on the Mainstream platform.

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It’s been a while; do graphics cards really need x16 or are they usually fine on x8? Does resolution and other settings affect that a lot?

Well, again, I WANT more lanes, but that’s only because I MIGHT eventually use them. Buuut… probably not. I mean, I never filled my current Gigabyte board after planning to lol

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The SSD in the original post is SATA3… Not NVMe, so it’s slow-ish…
I would go for ADATA SX6000, which should be priced about as xheap as similarly sized SATA drives, but is faster… So there’s that…
I would strongly recommend moving to faster ram. RYZEN benefits from faster ram, so go as fast as you can…
Here’s an idea… Get an X470 board, get the fast SX6000 and use StoreMI… It works… Everyone who have tested it, have said it works…
So there’s that…
Why don’t you shoot for 2700 instead of 2600X? It’s 2 extra cores… If you keep the system for a while, the extra cores will help with the longevity…

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There’s been various tests, the most recent I remember was GamersNexus. They saw like 1% difference when using 2 Titan V if I remember correctly. So no, they don’t need 16 lanes at the moment. We don’t know what the next generation will bring though.

Me neither, it’s up to you though :wink:

PS: We don’t know your budget, I oriented myself on the prices of your current selection.

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lol shows what I know to look for

I see we’re getting to the point where solid states are cheaper/large enough that you can’t cut corners on size to save money without tanking quality. I suppose that’s a nice problem to have. 128GB is so much overkill on a boot drive, but oh well. Maybe I’ll sell my old SATA SSD to a friend or find something else to use it for.

How fast would you say?

Originally, I wasn’t going to spend the money on an 8 core because my thinking was that any Ryzen CPU will be so much of an improvement over the 6300 that I wouldn’t feel the need. But if I go for cheaper/smaller RAM and aim to have a build that lasts longer, yeah, that makes more sense. Also, if I would go ahead and go for the 2700, why not the 2700x? Is the 2700x mechanically different or can I get the same performance out of the base 2700 with a good cooler and a few minutes in the BIOS?

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@psycho_666 Oops, I forgot to ask why specifically an X470 board. So, why?

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From reports so far it appears that the binning is spot on this generation, most people don’t get the clocks stable on the 2700 that the 2700X does on auto-overclock (turboboost/whatever). But to take full advantage of the boosts (including precision boost overdrive) you currently need an X470 board.
Theoretically the X370 works with Precision Boost Overdrive, but the mainboard manufacturers need to certify and update the BIOS to enable it. If and when that will come is uncertain.

See above, also StoreMI can only be installed on 400 series boards (the software however can be bought from Enmotus as well, AMD only licensed it).

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@mihawk90 Hmmmm… I remember watching that video from Wendall talking about StoreMI, now that I think of it. That would actually give me reason to keep my old SATA SSD. I could use 250ish GB M.2 for both boot and utilities and have StoreMI use the entirity of the old SATA SSD for it’s loading. Huh… IF I can do that, that’d be insane.

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True… even the slowest Ryzen 3 1200 totally annihilates every FX6000/8000/9000… But we are talking smart spending here, not really improvement over current system.

Well, there are 2 types of M.2 drives. One uses SATA3 speed, so it’s basically standard 2,5" drive just in different shape. The others are way WAY faster, up to 5-6 times faster, the NVMe drives… So if you go M.2 boot - go NVMe.



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Broseph,

A fully updated Windows 10 partition will chew up about 40 GB of storage right off the bat. As you get windows updates and Meltdow/Spectre mitigations continue to be patched, the SxS directory will grown and the individual patches will also stack up as well. Server 2012 will chew up roughly 65GB to 83GB on a fully patched system.

Get the 128GB SSD. It is the better purchase. I recommend the Crucial MX500 for SATA. I like data security on write.

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@mihawk90 @psycho_666 Alright, I think what I’ll do is get a 256GB M.2, keep the old SATA one for StoreMI or… something… and go ahead and get the 2700x and a 470 board and only 16GBs of RAM. The only question is, what board? On NewEgg, the only ones I’m seeing that are 470s with 8 SATA ports are the MSI Pro Carbon and the Taichi and Taichi Ultimate.

Also, what RAM speed should I be going for? I never noticed much going from 1400 to 1660 years ago. Will more than 2400 be worth it?

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My vote is for the Taichi. No need for Ultimate.

Ryzen craves faster RAM. Samsung B-die 3200Mhz would be a happy medium if going with x470.

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The situation is different on Ryzen. The Infinitiy Fabric (Interconnect between the two core complexes in the chip) is based off of RAM speed and that’s why Ryzen profits from it massively. Most people would say go as fast as you can afford, but most tests showed that there is a diminishing return with anything above 3200. You do get more performance, but the amount diminishes.

As for the board… I haven’t looked at the to be honest, but the Taichi is identical with the X370 Taichi on the electrical side, and that thing is a beast so… can’t go wrong with that.
The MSIs last generation were underwhelming at best, I don’t know how they fare now.

@Mastic_Warrior B-Die isn’t really needed anymore as shown by Wendell’s recent experiments with worst case RAMs.