CPU,motherboard and ram upgrade help please.

[phreakwarz]

Hello, Its that time once again to do an upgrade, I'm wanting to upgrade my cpu, motherboard and memory. I will be keeping the gpu (evga 1070ti), 2 ssds (120gb,500gb),case corsair 270r. Have not yet decided on the power supply (650w) to keep or not.

Budget wise depends on what cpu I will be getting as I'm not up to speed on the RYZEN processors. From what I can see it looks as if the RTZEN cpus are a bit cheaper. So I will put a budget at $500 us. If need be may go higher.

Use mainly games.

Place buying from newegg USA.

For the last 10 years I have had a intel cpu (i7), but they are expensive to own. I would like to know how a RYZEN cpu compares to a intel c[u. I do know that RYZEN offers a 3,5 and 7 like the intel i3,i5 and i7 cpus.

If you have any question please feel free to ask.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, maybe @Flayed will be by with a build, or someone else, but I will say, I've been using Ryzen CPUs for the last 2+ years, and they've been mostly pretty great.

If your gaming, is "high FPS gaming" (144Hz, or better), then Intel still has the edge, but due to the Intel "premium", and the shortage of Intel chips, you will pay quite a bit more for an Intel solution.

Ryzen, IMHO, is just as good, for most gaming, and especially for multi-tasking, productivity, video-editing, streaming, and the like. (*OK, there have been reviews, saying Intel is best for streaming. But I don't know if that was pre- or post-MDS patches.) That's right, Intel CPUs are CHOCK FULL of security issues and exploits, and they have to be patched, and after patching, you lose like 30% or more performance, in the worst case. That's often enough of a difference to make a Ryzen system a better choice in the first place.

I've used Ryzen R5 1600 CPUs, R3 1200 CPUs, 2200G. 2400G, and most recently, a water-cooled AIO build with a R7 2700 with a manual OC to 4.0Ghz, which is really sweet.

I'm not a big gamer anymore, so take some of my recommendations with a grain of salt, I suppose, but I've been happy with my Ryzen rigs.

For that $500 budget, what all do you need, the whole PC? Because an Intel CPU *alone* will be $300 to $350.

You can currently get the Ryzen R5 1600 CPUs at Newegg sometimes, for ~$120, and at MC, for ~$80. Those are 6C/12T, and can be manually OCed, on the stock 95W heatsink, to 3.6-3.7-3.8Ghz, depending on your case cooling and ambient temps and GPU choices.

You already have the GPU (GTX 1070 ti), so that should work out great with a Ryzen CPU.

Edit: If the power supply is 5 years old or older, I wouldn't re-use it.

 

[phreakwarz]

Thanks virtuallarry. Had a look at a 2700 ($219 at newegg). I think that would be a 2nd generation cpu? The motherboard is where I;m lost. I saw a B450 MB, but is that what I would need? Also is say 3000 plus mhz memory fast enough? Also is water cooler or air?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I mean, that's basically what I chose for my next-to-most-recent build.

Ryzen R7 2700 (Newegg, $205 after promo code, now expired)
16GB GSkill RGB RAM DDR4-3600 ($115)
ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F mobo ($110 on promo/sale, has dual PCI-E 3.0 x4 NVMe slots, can run RAID-0 on NVMe at full speed on AM4, which is a kind of rarity, really. I'm running RAID-0 on some 660p 1TB NVMe SSDs.)
CoolerMaster AIO WC kit, 240mm (was $40 on sale some year or two ago on BF, you can get the newer RGB model for $70 on promo sometimes.)

Edit: That's roughly $500 right there.

The 2700 isn't very good performance-wise on stock clocks / stock "boost" config, but with a manual OC, and being 12nm, it OCs nicely to 4.0GHz. Some might get it to 4.1GHz, depending on voltage and temps. A 240mm or better AIO WC kit is pretty necessary at those clocks and voltages (I'm at 1.332V on that rig for vcore), as HWMonitor says that the CPU package is dissipating 134W.

 

[Flayed]

If you can wait a month or two AMD are going to release new chips that will shake things up. Otherwise what Larry suggested looks good.

 

[phreakwarz]

Thanks for the great help. Got some info on the ryzen chip. It will most likely take me a couple of months to save $500 to $600.