Ready for a new PC

[Harrison]

With intensive tasks it is always the amount of ram that will help the most. Much more than a faster CPU.

[Demon Cleaner]

So here we are again. Lately I'm doing a lot again on my PC, reorganizing all my ROM sets and games and movies and series aso. And I noticed that my actual PC is struggling a lot lately, which makes working on it quite a chore, and takes even a LOT more time than eventually needed. If I have downloads running, archiving/extracting, plus copying stuff around and Firefox is open (which was now replaced by Chrome btw), then my PC almost comes to a stop, sometimes freezes then recovers, a bit painful is the least I can say.

So I thought that it's now 5-6 years old, perhaps time to finally get a new one, when I saw, to my surprise, that I bought it already in 2010!! Time passes very fast, didn't think it would have been that long, I remember it as it was yesterday. But then I thought that now would be even more the time to buy a new one, and I still have to check components, what I really want and need, but basically I'm still doing the same stuff on it, and multithreading is probably the most important in my case, gaming is not so much an issue, as I don't play AAA games on the PC, playing them on console, but I have a lot of games which are less resource hungry because they're already a bit older, or just not as demanding.

First I wanted to start with the right CPU, and AMD popped in my eye with their newer CPUs, the Ryzen models. The Ryzen 7 2700X seems to be interesting with it's 8 cores, would definitely not go lower than that. But I also saw their Threadripper (what a name) models, which seem to be ultra performant, the 16 core variant being the most interesting for me, as the 24 and 32 core ones are in a quite high price range still. What I have to do is find some good comparison between those two CPUs, and see if I would actually need a Threadripper. I have to add that the price doesn't matter, I buy a PC, as you probably notice, not on a regular basis, thus I want to have it future proof, and the price isn't so important. So I guess I might go with the 16 core Threadripper CPU.

Any thoughts?

Motherboard wise I think I'll go with the Asus Prime X399-A which seems to be really good. Didn't look and investigate others yet, this one popped straight away into my eye, but I might still do some research.

As I'll do with the RAM, I want to put 32GB, because in my opinion 64GB isn't needed, but of course I could be wrong. Now would be the time to decide anyway, so that I won't need to upgrade later.

GPU wise I guess I'll stick with a RTX 2060, the 2070 and 2080 still being too expensive, although sometimes the price between a 2060 and 2070 is quite small, also depending the maker. I don't know anything yet about the AMD GPUs.

EDIT: Was checking out the AMD GPUs, and I might as well stick with an RX590, first of all gaming isn't that important, and secondly, bigger factor, is that I only have Full HD screens, thus the resolution is lower.

I will also remove all my HDDs out of the case, putting them in an external enclosure, as I only need them as storage, but I have 6 of them, don't need them inside a case anymore. Plus I bought a 12TB HDD as backup for my collection, which will also fit in an enclosure, btw I bought one from Fantec, no RAID (still having my Synology), only the basic JBOD version of it. Will receive it tomorrow.



So I will only need to buy one disk, SSD of course, and will also have to decide which one. I guess a 500GB one is sufficient, having a 250GB at the moment, still free space, although only around 25%.

Any suggestions and thoughts are very welcome.

P.S.: I also received my new chair today, the amber Secretlab TITAN model, have to say, it's awesome

[Harrison]

AMD processors are definitely finally the best gaming and general purpose CPUs again at the moment. I would only really recommend Intel for productivity because they do still offer some advantages for things like video editing, 3D rendering etc. GPU wise try to get a 2070 instead of a 2060 because it's more like a cheaper 2080 and will future proof you if you decide to upgrade to 4k monitors in thr future. However if you can find a reasonable second hand 1080 they actually outperform the newer 2080 in some tests.. although they seem to be commanding more second hand than they were new at the moment.

CPU I'm not 100% sure on the best AMD ones to get at thr moment because they keep releasing new models. If I were going Intel I would only invest in an i7 or i9 because they offer far more over the i5. But you are paying 3 sometimes 4 times thr prices of a similar performing AMD CPU so it really isn't worth it.

[Kin Hell]

AMD processors are definitely finally the best gaming and general purpose CPUs again at the moment. I would only really recommend Intel for productivity because they do still offer some advantages for things like video editing, 3D rendering etc. GPU wise try to get a 2070 instead of a 2060 because it's more like a cheaper 2080 and will future proof you if you decide to upgrade to 4k monitors in thr future. However if you can find a reasonable second hand 1080 they actually outperform the newer 2080 in some tests.. although they seem to be commanding more second hand than they were new at the moment.

CPU I'm not 100% sure on the best AMD ones to get at thr moment because they keep releasing new models. If I were going Intel I would only invest in an i7 or i9 because they offer far more over the i5. But you are paying 3 sometimes 4 times thr prices of a similar performing AMD CPU so it really isn't worth it.

Ya know H....

I still canna believe your Banging on about AMD & Gaming. - Proper Tosh in every manner.

If you want a Gaming Rig with Stunning Productivity, Intel & nVidia all the way.

@ DC

Well done & special thank's for me not seeing your AMD suggestion earlier on. - It saved me & Harrison having another boring discussion about Intel with nVidia & AMD with ATI or nVidia; - Yuck!
The only thing I would have suggested would have been to go for a 1080Ti. - Infinitely more Cuda Cores & a much higher FPS rate than the the RTX2070 when gaming. You could have a grabbed a good 2nd hand Zotac Extreme Core Edition for the cost of the RTX2070.

GTX1080 Ti - 3584 Shading Units with 11GB DDR5 Ram giving Memory Bandwidth of 492.8GB/Sec on a 384Bit Architecture.

RTX2070 - 2304 Shading Units with 8GB DDR6 Ram giving Memory Bandwidth of 448GB/Sec on a 256Bit Architecture.

1080 Ti Pixel Fill Rate & Texture fill rate is 151.4 G/Pixels & 385.5 G/Texels

2070 Pixel Fill Rate & Texture fill rate is 103.7 G/Pixels & 233.3 G/Texels

To add, 384Bit Memory Architecture is like Butter compared to 256Bit (where's the 512Bit nVidia promised years ago??) & the 3GB of less Ram means you can't load as many textures onto the card.

Don't get me wrong, the RTX cards are awesome in terms of Real Time Ray Tracing, but it's only ever 60FPS @ best when doing so with the 2080 Ti's.

All I'm trying to say here is the 1080 Ti Smokes the 1070 in every manner. The 1080 Ti is approximately 50% faster on the best FPS you will see from the 2070.
I was lucky enough to buy mine from a guy that had two & he didn't even play games on them; - One was a spare, as he just re-codes Video & was gutted @ buying a 2080 Ti to see an identical Render rate comparing it to his 1080 Ti.

He did say I could have his 2nd card being an SLI nut, though I suggested he hung onto it as a back up card just in case. - I have a HB SLI Bridge on standby for the day he calls me to offer his 2nd 1080 Ti. - I'll be all over it like a rash.

The CPU you went for is simply awesome, so I'm more than sure you'll be floored with your new Rigs performance, & better still.....it's all brand new.

Pah, Bah & Meh @ AMD/ATI Harrison.

[Harrison]

@Kin. AMD hadn't been worth buying for years. But their current range has simply pushed their CPUs right up there again. Great performance, at a great price point, often a third of the price to similar equivalent Intel CPUs.

Would I currently buy an AMD CPU? No. Mainly because I'm not just needing one for gaming, so would stick with an i7 or i9 combined with an nVidia GPU for Cuda support.

BTW, GPU specs are a bit lost on DC because he's not really using the system for gaming at all. Although utilising the nVidia cuda cores and GPU for accelerated video rendering and transcoding will be a bonus.

[Demon Cleaner]

I have everything together now, spend some time uninstalling stuff on my old one, to see what programs I'm running, making backups of everything I could, and wrote down a list on what to install on the new one. Everything is ready now to install the new one under my desk, and remove the old. Gonna do that now straight away. And probably coming days I'll spend with installing, I like to do that thoroughly, so it always takes me some time.

Went with the RTX2070 as I bought the Intel CPU, but in the beginning I wanted even a lower priced one, like the RTX2060 which I considered, but already thought that it would be too much for my usage, like I said, I wanted a Vega 56 or perhaps Vega 64, or a 1660Ti, but in the end I decided to go with the RTX2070. And I definitely didn't wanna buy a used card, if I want something new, then everything should be new, so I didn't go with a 1080Ti, and in the end I went with the newer model GPU.

[Kin Hell]

If it's any help RE 2nd hand stuff DC, I bought 2 x Zotac 780 Ti's over four years ago January 6th just gone & both of them cost £540 brand new. - They were end of the line & it was literally buy one, get one free when they were selling @ nearly £600 each in their hey-day.
The 2nd hand 1080 Ti I bought was barely 12 months old, cost £520 & completely blows the 780 Ti's out of the water.

I guess the 780 Ti's work out at about £135 a year & hope I'm as lucky with the 1080 Ti but of course, a 2nd one will ramp my yearly cost up.

Seeing Battlefield 5 maxxed out with ULTRA settings and holding over 100fps is mental Gaming & looks stunning on an nVidia G-Sync IPS panel @ 2560 x 1440.

You couldn't have bought a better CPU though & (I'm almost slightly envious 'cos I want one) the i9 9900K is simply a Monster & you will get the best from you 2070 possible. - I'm still banging an i7 3770k on an Asus P8 Z77 Premium board @ 4.7GGhz under water. She's been happy @ this speed for the last 6 years now & I know I'm not getting the best out of the 1080 Ti in any manner.
As a matter of interest, how are you cooling the 9900K?

Harrison, the issue with AMD/ATI for many years has always been around the drivers, or the lack of. - Can't speak for Freesync now that I'm a GSync guy, but back in the VSync days, ATI was very wrong in every manner.
RE AMD's CPU's tho, they have always chased Intel & never quite got there.