Hey guys, For some time now I've been looking to upgrade my old PC with a new CPU/Motherboard/RAM/Case The reason is that I've been getting these strange spikes while gaming. And its not like I'm playing some very heavy games I usually play CS:GO and DOTA2. I bought a second hand R9 290 a year ago so I think I'm fine with this one and I'll probably going to leave it like that but I think the CPU is the real bottleneck of the system. It served me well I have it since 2011, but I think its time for a change.
My current specs are: CPU: Intel i5 2500K RAM: Kingston 8GB 1600 MHZ MOBO: Gigabyte GA-PH67A-D3-B3
I have a 550W cooler master power supply which I think is enough and that's pretty much it. I'm not really a overclock junkie. I've had the cpu for 5 years and I havent ovecrclocked it (Dont even know why I got a K chip in the first place).
I was thinking of getting a ryzen 5 1600 or 1600X. I'm not gonna overclock them probably and I don't care about the fact that the 1600X doesn't come with a cooler since I had to buy one for my 2500K 2 weeks ago when the stock one finally failed. I was investigating and red somewhere that I should get a more higher frequency RAM, because apparently the new processors benefit from it in a big way, was thinking of getting 16G, I think its enough. I was looking at benchmarks, thought about 7700k but its seems like a waste of money to me. The i5's are not that good nowadays in my opinion maybe someone can tell me better but that's what Ive noticed. I don't know what motherboard to get at all and am still open to CPU suggestions if someone can help me with that.
About the case. I'm not looking for something fancy, just want it to be bigger than mine because I had to cut some metal in order to fit the R9 290 a year ago, its a Raidmax ninja btw. I'm not gonna be water cooling, I also don't need windows or rgb stuff , the simpler the better.
I'm open to any suggestions and tips. I'm not really in a hurry, just need some advice, beacause I havent build a PC since 5-6 years ago and dont really know what is good right now.
Price is not that big of an issue but I prefer to get something that's good for my money and not to overkill, because to be honest I'm probably not gonna have the time to play that many games, maybe the new wolfenstein but thats it.
Yeah, I just don't know if I should get a 1600 or 1600X and if ryzen 7 1700 is that much better, so I'm considering that too as an option. Intel is pretty much gone from my list for now unless someone gives me a good reason to get one.
The only advantage the Ryzen 1700 has over the Ryzen 1600 or Ryzen 1600x are two more cores and a higher stock Megahertz. The only difference between Ryzen 1600 and 1600x is the Ryzen 1600 includes a stock cooler. In my opinion if you don't run any programs that will not take advantage of multi cores I would purchase the Ryzen 1500. I my self am purchasing for my next build a Ryzen 1700 but in my case the programs I will be running will take advantage of multi cores.
For what your doing it doesn't seem like you need upgrade. Ryzen is an awesome platform because it provides much needed competition. But don't expect Ryzen to bring a huge difference in what you do now. If you really are wanting to upgrade and not overclock the 1600X is a no brainier for you. This will give you the highest single thread performance due to the boost. Make sure when you are looking for memory to get a kit that is on your motherboards QVL. Since memory speed actually matters on Ryzen I suggest 3200Mhz memory as that seems to be the sweet spot.
Not knowing your budget but get the best motherboard you can get. Since this Ryzen platform is going to support for a few years when you are needing a CPU upgrade you only have to upgrade the CPU, That is a nice efficient upgrade path.
I went from a i7-3770k overclocked to 4.8Ghz to a Ryzen 1600 overclocked to 3.9Ghz on an Asrock Taichi X370. I choose the Taichi because it has superior power delivery (good for future CPU's) and provided all the options that I could possibly want (with exception of 10gig Ethernet)
Thank you, I've decided to get the 1600X For memory I'm getting 16g of 3200 MHz Corsair. I was thinking of this motherboard, red a little about it on reddit, people had positive comments about it, https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-B350-PLUS/ I've also considered the Gigabyte gaming 3 but this seem to be a better choice. Also I'm not sure if my 550W power supply will be enough for this build since I don't really know if ryzen is more power hungry than the 2500K I've had until now. So I don't know if I also have to buy a power supply.
Most cases now have the max gpu length in the specs. 2 cases I bought in the past 2 years are far better then my old Raidmax Sagittia. And allot more restrained in style. One from LEPA and on from Antec at 30 and 50 buck respectfully. One thing to look for is a cut out for cpu cooler installation so you can acess the bottom of the MB where the cpu is. The Antec case I have does not have this but the LEPA does. Others may have some good recommendations since the LEPA is an obscure brand and while I like the Antec and it was perfect for the that build it would be the wrong choice in this case, no pun intended Fans have gotten almost silent compared to my old Raidmax case. And the Raidmax PSU that came with it had some loud fans too. My EVGA PSU is a nice change. Hope this helps
I think 550W might be enough. The 1600X should consume roughly the same as a i5 2500k as can be seen here:
Since a i5 2500k is older than the pictured i5 7400 I argue it needs a little more power, and since the difference between those two is only 7W* this should be negligible.
Your 290 is power hungry though - but if your PSU did the job in your old PC it should do it's job now. If you've bought a good PSU in 2011 it should be fine now. (Corsair's warranty for PSUs is for 10y for instance.)
To be honest based on what you use your rig for it doesn't sound like you need anything new. I currently use a pc similar to your's with a GTX 670. Heck I actually use my son's rig more and it supposedly is worse and is just fine.
@DeViLzzz might be on to something. i love my Ryzen, but I wouldn't have bought it, if my mainboard's PCIe slot hadn't become defect. You should try overclocking, it helped me to run Witcher 3 smoothly (I had a i5 2500k, 4.3GHz shouldn't be a problem).
Depending on how mining crazy of a person you can find, you might be able to flip that 290 for something a bit more modern. And I guess with nvidia getting ready to sell special cards for that in the near future, this might be the best time to try that.
be quiet! Pure Base 600. Quality construction with plenty of room. I love my bq Silent Base 800, but the pb600 is 1/2 price. If you can afford $110, get the Silent Base 600 as this is the budget model and compromises were made.
Riotoro CR1080. Small on the outside & full size on the inside. The PSU and drives mount behind the motherboard tray and 300mm graphics cards will fit. You didn't say which R9 290 you have, so IDK if yours will fit.
Both of those games should run at over 100 FPS easy on your rig. If what you experience is severe fps drops every few minutes but most of the time your game runs smooth. Than it's your firewall preventing the game from probing the memory. Games like dota, cs-go, lol are trying to detect cheating so if you are using good firewall like Comodo, game will not be able to do that and it will stutter hard.
Its not an FPS smooth drop, its a spike, and it pisses me off so much, and it always spikes at the worst moment possible. I assumed its the CPU, but it could also be the GPU, its just that one is older than the other and I'm not really comfortable with overclocking so I don't see much choice that I have that's why I decided on this upgrade.Also CPU is always working at full 100%, I changed the stock cooler 2 weeks ago with a CM 212x. However games are running with good speeds, above 120 FPS. Its just these spikes that are ruining my experience. Last game that I played that was more demanding was Witcher 2 I think and it ran very well. Also I don't have any sort of antivirus or anti-malware software on my PC no custom firewalls only the windows stuff. Don't think that this is the reason.
It's not about the risk. Its all the same to me if it blows up, after 5 years of heavy work. I don't have the time during the week and my weekends are mostly full. And I have to sink 2 days at least into research and then I have to flash my bios because it doesn't have the OC stuff which will take more time and I just don't have like 2-3 days free to just do this. And I was thinking to reuse my new CPU cooler for the Ryzen but it turns out it doesn't fit so I basically have to buy a new system minus the PSU,GPU and SSD+HDD, and the PSU I'm still not sure about. I think of selling the whole system and building a new one. So maybe your idea of selling the GPU is kinda going to work. Just have to see if someone would buy this, because its pretty old but it runs well, new games can be played with decent FPS.
OK, just checked the gigabyte website and your board is not really able to overclock. Didn't realize that.
For selling a GPU games don't matter right now. It is all about coin mining. Just put it on craigslist or whatever you have in your area and put a crazy price on it, at least what you paid for it plus 50,- bucks or so. Maybe write mining in the title, just because. See what happens.
Hm I thought GPU mining was mostly dead now, but OK I'll put it in the market and see what happens. If I sell it for at least the money I got it, Its a bargain. In the meantime I'll have more time to decide on the other components that I have to buy.
