Finally looking to upgrade my 2500K..

[nFeF]

Six years later.. i'm finally going to put my baby down and rebuild, it's been rock solid at 4.5ghz on a basic $30 cooler since the day I got it.

Not having built a PC for myself in six years i'm just a BIT out of the loop on things, if I could get some advice on which way to go with the below pieces I would really appreciate it. I will list the things i'm re-using.

I see a lot of talk about Ryzen, but I have no idea what it means. I'm guessing this is the new enthusiast chip and I want one but which flavor is the sweet spot and do I need to overclock it?

I'd like to keep the budget under $1K but i'm flexible, there's no reason I should need to go over that keeping my GPU.

GPU: MSI GTX 970 4GB
SSD: Samsung Evo 1TB
HD: Need
MB: Need
PSU: Need
CPU : Need
CASE: Need
RAM : Need

Any advice is super appreciated - thanks

 

[lehtv]

Six years later.. i'm finally going to put my baby down and rebuild, it's been rock solid at 4.5ghz on a basic $30 cooler since the day I got it.

What's prompting the upgrade now? GTX 970 should not be noticeably bottlenecked by 2500K @ 4.5GHz.

What are the rest of your PC specs?

I see a lot of talk about Ryzen, but I have no idea what it means. I'm guessing this is the new enthusiast chip and I want one but which flavor is the sweet spot and do I need to overclock it?

Compared to Intel, Ryzen means lots of cores and threads for a low price, and with decent performance per core and decent power consumption (unlike the disastrously bad perf/watt and perf/core AMD FX processors).

Ryzen's performance per core is similar to your i5-2500K @ 4.5GHz. You can reach up to 3.8-4GHz for a 24/7 overclock, depending on the individual CPU, motherboard VRM quality and cooling.

The sweet spot is Ryzen 5 1600 which is the cheapest six-core model and as as such has slightly more overclocking headroom than 1600X, and comes with a stock cooler that is perfectly suitable for stock settings or even a mild OC. The 8-core Ryzen 7 1700 is also an excellent buy, especially if you have immediate use for the extra threads. See here for a quick comparison of the specifications of different Ryzen models: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11202/amd-announces-ryzen-5-april-11th

The downsides:
- AM4 is still a new platform and there are some kinks still being straightened out in terms of BIOS stability and memory compatibility
- applications and drivers are still being optimized for Ryzen, especially gaming performance tends to be a little behind Intel, and especially on NVIDIA GPUs running DX12 (but will not bottleneck a single GTX 970, not by a long shot)
- performance per core is behind overclocked Kaby Lake which can reach up to 4.8-5GHz for a 24/7 overclock

I'd like to keep the budget under $1K but i'm flexible, there's no reason I should need to go over that keeping my GPU.

What display do you have (resolution and refresh rate, or make and model)?

Where are you buying from - newegg, amazon etc?

Do you care about how quiet the computer is?

 

[nFeF]

What's prompting the upgrade now? GTX 970 should not be noticeably bottlenecked by 2500K @ 4.5GHz.

What are the rest of your PC specs?

8gb DDR 1600, Samsung Evo 1TB SSD, Win 10 64, Asus VG248QE 24" 144hz @ 1080p, Dell U2412M 60hz @ 1200p
I have a 500GB mechanical that is used only storage, music etc. It's smaller than even my SSD because it's very old and the SSD is new. It needs to be replaced but nothing runs off it.

Upgrading because i'm starting to experience lower frames than I like in some games.

What display do you have (resolution and refresh rate, or make and model)?

See above - but note this build will probably need to move to 1440p @ 144hz in the near future.

Where are you buying from - newegg, amazon etc?

Do you care about how quiet the computer is?

Either/or for purchasing, I usually piecemeal based on best prices.

Quiet is good but it's not a priority. I won't purchase based on that, i'll buy based on performance and price point.

 

[lehtv]

Upgrading because i'm starting to experience lower frames than I like in some games.

Which games, I'm curious to know? If your particular games don't scale well with cores and require as high perf/core as possible, i7-7700K is going to be the better upgrade option, at least in the shorter term (say, a couple of years down the road).

Have you checked whether the bottleneck is your 2500K @ 4.5GHz or GTX 970? Here's a quick guide:

You can easily find out if a graphics card upgrade can get you the performance boost you want: simply lower your display resolution from 1920x1080 to 1280x720. This will nearly double the capacity of your current GPU to push out frames, which simulates the scenario of upgrading from GTX 970 to GTX 1080 (see AT bench). Decrease it further down to 800x600 to see if there's any point in ugprading beyond GTX 1080. If the fps doesn't increase as much as you'd like, you need to upgrade the CPU as well. It would be best to play a variety of games for a few hours on 1280x720 to get a good sense of the amount of CPU bottleneck you get and in what situations.

[note: GPU comparisons changed to fit this thread]

Some additional points:

• Your DDR3-1600 will slow things down a little bit as well, 2133/2400MHz would be optimal these days.
• If you're running out of RAM while playing, that will slow things down (check with Task Manager). It'd be possible to upgrade to a used 2x8GB DDR3-2133/2400 kit.
• If you're running out of VRAM, that will also make fps plummet, it would be best to avoid VRAM heavy graphics settings (such as Ultra textures) with the GTX 970.

See above - but note this build will probably need to move to 1440p @ 144hz in the near future.

OK, that'll require a graphics card upgrade. Won't affect CPU (or other) requirements - the maximum fps the CPU can handle will be the same regardless of resolution.

 

[nFeF]

Which games, I'm curious to know? If your particular games don't scale well with cores and require as high perf/core as possible, i7-7700K is going to be the better upgrade option, at least in the shorter term (say, a couple of years down the road).

At this particular moment i'm playing Path of Exile, which runs great normally but there are a lot of points in the game where massive amounts of units are on spawning and attacking on screen (Breach, Beyond, etc) and the FPS drops down to intolerable (to me) levels. The same things occur in a map with a lot of grounds effects + lots of units at the same time. I don't run it at even close to max settings due to this.

Have you checked whether the bottleneck is your 2500K @ 4.5GHz or GTX 970? Here's a quick guide:

I have not what i'm currently experiencing in PoE pointed to CPU to me so I was running in that direction, I will try this though and see what the results are.

Some additional points:

• Your DDR3-1600 will slow things down a little bit as well, 2133/2400MHz would be optimal these days.
• If you're running out of RAM while playing, that will slow things down (check with Task Manager). It'd be possible to upgrade to a used 2x8GB DDR3-2133/2400 kit.
• If you're running out of VRAM, that will also make fps plummet, it would be best to avoid VRAM heavy graphics settings (such as Ultra textures) with the GTX 970.

I understand that the RAM Is old and needs to be upgraded, but at this point i'm not going to stick new ram in a 6 year old build just to eek a little bit more time out of it. I'd rather bebuild the whole base (mb/cpu/ram/case) at the same time.

I appreciate all the advice given so far!

 

[lehtv]

You could also look at CPU and GPU utilization. Task manager will tell you which CPU cores are being utilized, while MSI Afterburner or Techpowerup GPU-Z will tell you GPU utilization. If there are only a few CPU cores being used actively, and at least one of them looks like it's being choked at 100% when lots of units are on screen, you'll want to upgrade to i7-7700K and OC the hell out of it. If on the other hand CPU utilization looks to be evenly distributed and GPU utilization is at 100%, the GPU is the bottleneck, in which case I'd probably favor Ryzen 5 1600 and GTX 1080.

 

[Valantar]

Are you sure your slowdowns are CPU related? After all, adding a whole bunch of units on-screen would stress the GPU considerably as well. Also, considering the minimum CPU requirements for the game seem to be a single-core 1.4GHz CPU, a 2500k should be plenty. Though those requirements might be outdated - has the game changed significantly since launch?

 

[nFeF]

Are you sure your slowdowns are CPU related? After all, adding a whole bunch of units on-screen would stress the GPU considerably as well. Also, considering the minimum CPU requirements for the game seem to be a single-core 1.4GHz CPU, a 2500k should be plenty. Though those requirements might be outdated - has the game changed significantly since launch?

Yes, the launch reqs are going to be mostly irrelevant.

I will look at the usage stats tonight and see where the problem lies.

 

[nFeF]

Well I didn't have a whole lot of time to test but the time I did have MSI Afterburner showed my CPU and GPU both about neck and neck with each other during a PoE session, staying at 50-60% at the same time, and spiking to to 77% or so at the same time across all cores but that was all never higher. I had 30 fps at this time, which is very low to me.

Windows performance stats on the other hand showed a difference story, they showed my CPU pegged out 80-95% basically the whole time, across all cores.

I'm not sure which I should be trusting more but there's what I have. Also as far as RAM goes that was never close to a concern, I will be going to 16 at least with a fresh build anyway however.

 

[lehtv]

Well, that's pretty clear then, you're definitely CPU bottlenecked. Interesting that all four cores are being heavily utilized... but it's impossible to say based on that info alone how well the game scales beyond four cores. I would make the guess that the safest bet is to go with i7-7700K for the higher perf/core, as opposed to Ryzen.

CPU - i7-7700K $328 @ newegg (after promo code EMCRECR23)
Cooler - Macho Rev. B $50 @ amazon
Motherboard - Asus Z270-A $160 @ newegg/amazon
RAM - Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB DDR4-3200 $120 @ newegg/amazon
HDD - Seagate ST2000DM006 $67 @ newegg/amazon
PSU - Corsair RM650x $90 @ newegg (after rebate) or Seasonic Prime 650W Titanium $140 @ superbiiz
Case - Don't know what sort of cases you like but here are some options in the $60-120 range:
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/jrVBD3/phanteks-case-phes515pbk
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/FbKhP6/corsair-case-cc9011081ww
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/svVBD3/fractal-design-case-fdcadefsbk
https://pcpartpicker.com/search/?cc=us&q=define+r5
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/yLDzK8/fractal-design-case-fdcadefsbkw
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#t=4,3&m=337&sort=a8&xcx=0&X=5161,61658&p=0&f=2

= about $900-$1000 depending on case/PSU

The cooler/mobo combo is enough for a bit of an overclock on the i7-7700K while still keeping it quiet. However, note that it runs 4.4GHz at stock settings on all four cores, there's barely 10% overclocking headroom there.

edit

Just a quote from a reddit post:

I'm having a really good experience on my R7 1700, it outperforms my i5 4590, i5 6600, and E3 1231V3 in Planetside and Path of Exile.

Would suggest that in Path of Exile, Ryzen's extra cores are actually helpful versus the Xeon which has similar performance per core to both Ryzen and your current 2500K @ 4.5. Based on this I don't think you can go wrong with Ryzen either. E.g. Ryzen 5 1600 or Ryzen 7 1700 and Asus X370-PRO. The Thermalright cooler is optional.

 

[nFeF]

Well, that's pretty clear then, you're definitely CPU bottlenecked. Interesting that all four cores are being heavily utilized... but it's impossible to say based on that info alone how well the game scales beyond four cores. I would make the guess that the safest bet is to go with i7-7700K for the higher perf/core, as opposed to Ryzen.

CPU - i7-7700K $328 @ newegg (after promo code EMCRECR23)
Cooler - Macho Rev. B $50 @ amazon
Motherboard - Asus Z270-A $160 @ newegg/amazon
RAM - Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB DDR4-3200 $120 @ newegg/amazon
HDD - Seagate ST2000DM006 $67 @ newegg/amazon
PSU - Corsair RM650x $90 @ newegg (after rebate) or Seasonic Prime 650W Titanium $140 @ superbiiz
Case - Don't know what sort of cases you like but here are some options in the $60-120 range:
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/jrVBD3/phanteks-case-phes515pbk
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/FbKhP6/corsair-case-cc9011081ww
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/svVBD3/fractal-design-case-fdcadefsbk
https://pcpartpicker.com/search/?cc=us&q=define+r5
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/yLDzK8/fractal-design-case-fdcadefsbkw
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#t=4,3&m=337&sort=a8&xcx=0&X=5161,61658&p=0&f=2

= about $900-$1000 depending on case/PSU

The cooler/mobo combo is enough for a bit of an overclock on the i7-7700K while still keeping it quiet. However, note that it runs 4.4GHz at stock settings on all four cores, there's barely 10% overclocking headroom there.

edit

Just a quote from a reddit post:


Would suggest that in Path of Exile, Ryzen's extra cores are actually helpful versus the Xeon which has similar performance per core to both Ryzen and your current 2500K @ 4.5. Based on this I don't think you can go wrong Ryzen either. E.g. Ryzen 5 1600 or Ryzen 7 1700 and Asus X370-PRO. The Thermalright cooler is optional.

This is perfect man, exactly what I need thanks so much.

I've always been a fan of Corsair for different things including cases (have a 300 right now) so i'll probably go that direction again.

Thanks

 

[nFeF]

If I decide to throw a GTX 1080 on top of this, which one would you recommend?

I might pass on my current PC to a family member as a complete build.

 

[lehtv]

@nFeF In terms of bang for buck, Gigabyte Windforce 3X is the best at $470. It's a relatively good quality and quiet card, but not as quiet as MSI Gaming X $535 AR. Asus Strix is a good midway option for $520 AR.

 

[Valantar]

If you're contemplating expanding your budget to throw a 1080 in there too, going Ryzen would seem to be even smarter - shaving ~100 off your budget while gaining two cores and four threads, or staying at the same price and adding 4c/8t. Not to mention that your performance needs seem to be growing "wider" (as in more threads) rather than fast single threads, which should make a 6- or 8-core Ryzen last you a bit longer than a 4c8t i7.