Poor time to build new system?

[cmdrdredd]

Is this kind of a bad time to build a new system with AM5 rumors floating around for a release this year?

Been sort of thinking about doing a fresh build for pure gaming with no bloat/extra software and leave my current PC as is. Just swap my 1080ti back in this one and put the 3080ti in the new build. Part of me thinks it foolish to build something now while another part of me says just do it.

Thinking either a 12700k or 5900x and know either will do just fine but would the timing be poor if done now?

 

[Aapje]

Of course, depending on how that proof of stake thing goes on Sept 15th (?), prices may start falling even before then. In my view, it's just a matter of time and Moore's law, in one manifestation or another, will prevail on GPUs, contrary to whatever the last couple of years may have suggested otherwise.

Prices can also only start to drop after proof of stake, since mining can still be done afterwards. It will take a bit of time for mining to become less and less profitable. If miners mine as long as possible, it might take a bit longer before those cards show up on the 2nd hand market.

If Nvidia starts a price war so they can earn back more of the money from the production capacity they bought, I also expect this to happen in 2023 at the soonest. At first, demand will outstrip supply and there is no point in reducing prices then, because it will just increase the demand that they can't satisfy.

Also, while I do expect price/performance to improve, inflation can still make things so much more expensive that you still will pay more.

 

[MoragaBlue]

Can't wait to get it all together. I went ahead and got a 32GB set of Corsair RGB memory. I don't care much about RGB and none of my fans will be RGB but if my motherboard and CPU cooling system have it I may as well add the RGB memory too I suppose.

Just waiting on motherboard and CPU

Yeah, building PCs are so much fun, enjoyable and, for me, as large a part of gaming as actually playing the games! LOL...For me, it's been so long, I thoroughly took my time, read up on everything (even the manuals, if you can believe that!) and tried to enjoy each step of the build. I recall during the past, that once it's finished and burned in, that part of the adventure is over. When it comes to building PCs, getting there is truly 1/2 the fun, in my view.

$400 on a 5950X on Amazon points! What a score! With your system, I wouldn't be able to wait either! That's one heck of a rig you've got going on there. Likewise, not opposed to RGB but I was from an era where I think RGB wasn't really a thing yet, and I too opted for Noctua's. Ultimately, for me, old habits die-hard and I'll always choose performance over bling; though, admittedly, some of those new RGB decked out machines do look awfully impressive!

You're gonna have so much fun with that 3080Ti--just max out all video options on 4K and have a blast!

 

[Spicedaddy]

Buy a 2x32GB DDR5 kit if you need 64GB.

All 32GB sticks are currently dual-rank and it's harder to get running than 2x16GB (single rank).

If you want faster stuff, stick with 2x16GB for now.

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

For pure gaming, probably. For a budget office build, perhaps a decent time.

 

[mikeymikec]

On the topic of "is it a bad time", I've been flirting with the idea of an upgrade for a while and as part of the prep I do a spreadsheet of costs and options. I started the spreadsheet on the 3rd of August, and all it had on it at that point was CPU/MB/RAM/SSD and was around about the £600 UKP mark. Even at that point I was thinking it was a bit steep and was wondering whether I was over-spec'ing. Within two weeks, the overall price had gone up by at least £110UKP. It was as if the fates said to me, "how much more obvious a sign do you need to not upgrade now?"

 

[GodisanAtheist]

At a certain point one's build gets so old that even a bad time to upgrade is still a good time to upgrade.

Starting to feel the age of my rig, and I figure even if I don't hit minimum price points on everything refreshing the system while everything is still working beats scrambling to buy whatever because something went bad.

Even mid-range components will give me a solid doubling of resources (cores/threads on a CPU, Raster performance & RAM on a GPU), nevermind all the fancy new features and bells and whistles stuff comes with now (silent idle, Ray tracing, freesync, resizable BAR, PCI-E 4.0, etc etc etc).

 

[Aapje]

At a certain point one's build gets so old that even a bad time to upgrade is still a good time to upgrade.

Starting to feel the age of my rig, and I figure even if I don't hit minimum price points on everything refreshing the system while everything is still working beats scrambling to buy whatever because something went bad.

Yeah, I think that anything below the 8th gen (i5 or better) is a bit ratty at the point, at least for gaming.

silent idle, Ray tracing, freesync, resizable BAR, PCI-E 4.0, etc etc etc)

Resizable bar and PCIe 4 don't seem to add much value right now.

 

[Makaveli]

Resizable bar and PCIe 4 don't seem to add much value right now.

unless one is planning on getting an intel ARC gpu

 

[igor_kavinski]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/LBBYfv

I think this could serve as a really decent upgrade for anyone stuck on a pre-10th gen gaming system. Should prevent the upgrade itch for at least two years. $1223 right now. Should be fun to check what it comes to in December this year.

 

[ZGR]

I am not a fan of recommending non-K Alder Lake since their System Agent (SA) voltage is locked and that cheap 3600 C16 might be a challenge to achieve.

 

[coercitiv]

The 12400 is fine for a value build, no matter whether one buys 3200 MT/s or risks more with 3600 C16 RAM. The big problem is with locked high-end SKUs such as 12700 and 12900, these parts can obviously leverage higher performance memory, and the penalty for losing out on the IMC lottery is just too big to be worth the price delta.

I used to prefer locked parts starting with Coffee Lake, but now I would scale an Intel build differently: 12400/12500 -> 12600k -> 12700k.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I'm in the same boat. I absolutely hate rebuilding systems when I have one that works. I am currently on a 2500k @ 4.5 and a 290x. Both way long in the tooth, but admittedly still do everything I need, just requires setting the quality settings down a bit on most of the latest games. I intended to upgrade early 2020, but..well we know how that went so I'm diving into all the new hardware that I haven't been keeping up with for 11-12 years. I think the only thing for me is I can tell I'm getting old because the cost to get a good 4k system is...more than I'm willing to deal with. I'm happy at 1440p. I just don't enjoy chasing FPS. That being said, I intend to go with a 5800x or 5900x and I expect that will last for another 6+ years unless something amazing happens between now and then. The timing of most things seems to be about in our favor for best value in the next month or so if you don't need bleeding edge.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I intend to go with a 5800x or 5900x and I expect that will last for another 6+ years unless something amazing happens between now and then.

Why not 7600X? Six years later, you could pop in a 9950X and make it last 10 years in total. AM5 is expected to have at least four years of life.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Why not 7600X? Six years later, you could pop in a 9950X and make it last 10 years in total. AM5 is expected to have at least four years of life.

Depends on multiple factors. I don't know enough about them tbh as they aren't even on my radar since it's upcoming. Unless they have some must have feature, I doubt I would miss it.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Is this kind of a bad time to build a new system with AM5 rumors floating around for a release this year?

Been sort of thinking about doing a fresh build for pure gaming with no bloat/extra software and leave my current PC as is. Just swap my 1080ti back in this one and put the 3080ti in the new build. Part of me thinks it foolish to build something now while another part of me says just do it.

Thinking either a 12700k or 5900x and know either will do just fine but would the timing be poor if done now?

I won't offer a judgment as to the two options. The last AMD processor I had was a replacement for an Intel 8088 CPU. There were no drawbacks. But same with my interest in Apple: I never had one, never used one, didn't think it was much relevant. Schools where I'd taught set up labs solely with Windows and Intel. I was the database guy, and the client-side software -- if available -- would look pretty much the same on any platform, especially since AMD versus Intel choices are fairly agnostic.

So -- obviously -- I'm planning a 12700K system (I think those are designated as i7?), and I won't even get my panties in a twist over a dated z690 motherboard versus the forthcoming successor and DDR5.

Just to chatter on a bit -- I got a Kaby-Lake and a Skylake -- systems built for both the overclocking, the low temperatures and the speed. The speed derives from additional hardware (NVME and RAM) to support advantages from PrimoCache. I'd been observing that screen response and even software response would get sluggish until I completely restarted the systems -- unwanted if you have lots of ongoing work and benefit from hibernation.

Been trying to figure it out for a few months. Then, decided to run CCleaner, and attempt to tweak it so I didn't lose automatic account and password settings for certain things.

Saying "Wow" is like being an old rock-a-roller catching up to Metallica: "Wow, man! This is all new shee-**!" Then you find out the album was release 30 years ago . . . .

So . . . . CCleaner. Yeah. Yup. Foh-shuah. No hurry springing for that octo-core upgrade, though . . . (or was it deca? Or dodeca? I can't remember. I'll sort it out about four months before I get started. No hurry with that . . . )

 

[igor_kavinski]

Unless they have some must have feature, I doubt I would miss it.

The must-have feature is platform longevity. Both Intel and AMD will be releasing CPUs with dedicated AI processing units that, if they catch on, could become a necessity in a lot of software. These CPUs should be available in 2024-25. Only AM5 owners will be able to just pop the new CPU in with a simple BIOS upgrade.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Why not 7600X? Six years later, you could pop in a 9950X and make it last 10 years in total. AM5 is expected to have at least four years of life.

- Not who your responded to but a 5800x or 5900x will be a huge upgrade off my old 6600K to begin with, will be able to use the same memory as my 6600k so a pretty big cost savings there, and AM4 boards have been put through the grinder and are fairly stable (who knows what issues will crop up with AM5).

I'd rather pay less for a known quantity and still see an absolutely massive upgrade in performance and features than pay more for a bit more performance and a whole bunch of "unsurity".

 

[dlerious]

- Not who your responded to but a 5800x or 5900x will be a huge upgrade off my old 6600K to begin with, will be able to use the same memory as my 6600k so a pretty big cost savings there, and AM4 boards have been put through the grinder and are fairly stable (who knows what issues will crop up with AM5).

I'd rather pay less for a known quantity and still see an absolutely massive upgrade in performance and features than pay more for a bit more performance and a whole bunch of "unsurity".

I'm not looking to upgrade to AM5 right away either. I'm giving it 6 months to a year to shake any bugs out - new memory, new pcie and new motherboards. The 5800X3D would be the best for gaming, but it's $135 more expensive than the 5800X and about $50 over the 5900X unless you find it on sale. You get around a 27% boost with the 3d version, but $135 might get you a gpu tier higher like 6600XT to 6700XT. Mid range Nvidia isn't seeing the price cuts the higher end is getting.