Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

I used the step-up program once and it worked fine. No complaints.

But yeah, I'd expect it to be a miserably slow process right now if your goal is a 3080.

Also re: MSI, remember they also recently got caught trying to bully reviewers out of releasing negative coverage of their products.

I'm sure all these companies are trash in one way or another, but MSI is definitely bottom of the barrel and on my no-buy list for the foreseeable future.

Thin_J wrote:

I used the step-up program once and it worked fine. No complaints.

But yeah, I'd expect it to be a miserably slow process right now if your goal is a 3080.

Yeah, probably, but if I'm aiming for a 3080, I'm waiting either way. At least being able to build the rest of the machine + the temp 2070 would get me something much more usable at this resolution than I've got now, so I wouldn't mind a long wait as much. If it works as advertised, it sounds like I'm in basically the ideal use case for it.

Go to the EVGA website NOW and click on a "auto-notify" button for the card(s) you are interested in. This is how they are utilizing a queue for the non-step up folks. They started going through the queues for each of the cards yesterday. Right now, it is the only sure way to eventually get a shot a getting a 3080 or 3090 without going through scalpers.

The EVGA website informs me I registered for the auto-notify... on the 17th. Barely half an hour after the cards "went live" and were immediately out of stock.

If that's how they're queuing it's gonna be a long wait.

Not that there's any better alternatives, given the situation.

I heard Nvidia delayed the release of 3070 to Oct 29th in order to beef up their inventory prior to release and allow 3rd party vendors to produce more cards as well.

Sigh.

For the FTW3 Ultra cards, the queue is up to approximately 7:22 am on 9/17. I registered about 7:52 am so I am likely looking at a week or two....

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16148...

New Ryzen's in November.. ~19% IPC improvements with a $50 price increase. I'm probably down for a 5950 to replace my old Intel Gaming System.

Love that the 5600X is 65W TDP. That is just nuts!

I think I'll be looking for a 5900X to replace my Core i5 4690k. That should be a decent bump, eh?

Pricy though. Will wait for more testing. Wonder which one will be the gaming sweet spot for price to performance.

I have an i5 6600K. 4 cores and not oc'ed. It does ok for what I play. But my interest is in building a new rig for the next 5 plus years.

Heretk wrote:

Pricy though. Will wait for more testing. Wonder which one will be the gaming sweet spot for price to performance.

If there aren't non-X versions of these chips on release the value king will likely still be the 3600.

Or, given how close the performance numbers actually are, you may suddenly find that things have flip flopped and Intel's 8 core or whatever is a better deal than AMD's new one.

And now that this is the final generation for the AM4 socket you no longer have the upgrade path as an argument for going AMD.

The only way the 5000 series are the for sure path right now is if you already have an AM4 motherboard that's getting an update to support it.

So far, that's only guaranteed for X570/B550 with updates for X470/B450 apparently up to each vendor, and likely coming later on.

If you're on one of the 400 series chipsets definitely keep an eye on BIOS updates or news from the maker before you buy a 5000 series CPU.

TheGameguru wrote:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16148...

New Ryzen's in November.. ~19% IPC improvements with a $50 price increase. I'm probably down for a 5950 to replace my old Intel Gaming System.

AMD is being less aggressive on price than before, now that they have the superior product and have built up some brand credibility.

But if the 19% IPC increase claim actually holds water, it's hard to argue with them over it. Previous rumors suggested a 10-15% increase. Pushing it near 20% is huge, plus inching the boost clocks up a little more to reduce the MHz deficit vs Intel helps too (although it's slightly disappointing to see them not break the 5.0 mark).

Sign me up for the 5800X.

Yeah, sadly the news I heard is that beta support for Ryzen 3 on 400 series mobos comes in January.

I am willing to wait until next year to see how this shakes out.

Intel or AMD how many cores should a gaming rig have to be reasonably future proof?

I think the consensus is 8 cores.

Thin_J wrote:

And now that this is the final generation for the AM4 socket you no longer have the upgrade path as an argument for going AMD.

Hell
So it would make no difference to me say, 4-7 years down the road if I get a 450 or 550 board now, I could only ever upgrade to a zen3 cpu, on either case, right?

I think so. I think zen 3 is the last am4 socket processor.

Thin_J wrote:
Heretk wrote:

Pricy though. Will wait for more testing. Wonder which one will be the gaming sweet spot for price to performance.

If there aren't non-X versions of these chips on release the value king will likely still be the 3600.

Or, given how close the performance numbers actually are, you may suddenly find that things have flip flopped and Intel's 8 core or whatever is a better deal than AMD's new one.

Yeah when I saw the announced SKUs (and what wasn't included in the lineup), one of my first thoughts was, "I bet 3rd gen Ryzen is meant to fill the rest of the way down".

I mean, that's something you CAN do when you don't force a whole new board/chipset platform every generation.

Would not surprise me at all if, especially in a COVID year, AMD repurposes 3rd gen Ryzen as the budget half of the "new gen", and potentially keeps them priced aggressively enough such that they still manage to out price/perform whatever Intel releases for the low/mid range. But we'll see.

fangblackbone wrote:

I think so. I think zen 3 is the last am4 socket processor.

Bummer, I guess? this, however makes the path towards acquiring a new rig a bit clearer. I think I'll go for an APU build on a 450 board and try to upgrade in 2-to-3 years to a by-then ancient zen3 chip. I can live with the APU experience by the reviews I've seen around, and I'll have a foundation to a solid upgrade not so far away in the future.

Yeah but just how long will zen 3 be considered viable? A long while I'd bet. By the time you do need to update it would likely be a cpu, ram and mobo scenario.

That is true. Zen 3 will be great for 4K gaming. Seeing as how 1080p gaming is still very much a thing, Zen 3 will more than likely be gaming capable for a very long time.

I mean look at it this way: do you see 4K gaming being out of fashion 10 years from now? Cuz I sure don't.

Yeah, I don't mean to sell short the new chips, my reaction to this was realizing that whatever board I get now won't support whatever comes next to zen 3 in a couple of years, for example. I was under the impression that b550s were future-proof and was weighing whether to get one or build with an APU (like a 3400G) on a supported b450. This option is clearly now the way to go for me. When I get the chance later on I'll upgrade to a zen3 + gpu if there's a need for me to do so.

edited for proof-reading after posting

Anyone who already has a 400 series mobo, I think it is prudent to deal with what you have now until the support for zen 3 trickles down. If you don't already have a 400 series then with the potential longevity of Zen 3, it would be worth it to spend the extra $100 on a 550 or perhaps a 570 to get Zen 3 now or in the coming weeks.

Now, there are some who are very budget conscious. That $100 and the extra $50 for zen 3 is doesn't fit their budget. In that case, getting a budget b450 and a zen 2 when the inevitable discount comes will buy you at least 3 years until the bottom falls out of the prices for Zen 3.

The issue is that zen 2 is not insignificantly faster than Zen and Zen+. It could make sense if you have a 450 and a Zen or Zen+ to upgrade to a cheap Zen 2 and then Zen 3 a couple years down the line.

And then you have to consider whether a gpu will boost you more which is more likely the case. Even if you have a Zen or Zen+, a gpu will probably give you a bigger boost. The Nvidia 3000 series are going to be too expensive for budget gamers. The 3070 is $500 so the elusive 3060 will be $400? I think your only bet will be that AMD performs comparably and has something in the $200-300 range.

I'm gonna have to dig in once reviews start coming out to figure out how this impacts the build I have planned. Since I'll be doing a full system build, I'm more concerned about longevity, with bang for the buck as a close second.

Of course, I'll have to wait for AMD's graphics card announcement to finalize any build decisions, and then I have to worry about supply.

And now that this is the final generation for the AM4 socket you no longer have the upgrade path as an argument for going AMD.

I've gotten used to the Intel Way of having to buy motherboard/CPU/RAM all at once, so I don't really see this as a major problem at this point. I'm kinda eyeing that 5800X, and knowing that I'll be buying and dedicating the three components together doesn't bother me that much. If I get the same kind of longevity out of them that I did from this 4790K, I'll be happy.

The price is steeper than it's been in prior years ($850ish for CPU/decent board/32 gigs/decent cooler), but hey, inflation, and AMD has pricing power for the first time in a long, long while. I'd have preferred to see the 5800X at $350, but that's not happening soon, if ever.

The value proposition has definitely dropped somewhat, however, between the price hikes and the lack of an included cooler. AMD's right that most people wouldn't use them on the higher-end chips, but you'd think they'd drop the price a little in exchange for not providing them. Hah, as if. And I guess even the 5600X took a hit, too, because it's coming with a Wraith Stealth instead of a Wraith Spire.

So, no doubt, the price rises are substantial. We'll have to wait for real benchmarks to see if the chips are worth it, but I'm inclined to think that they probably are, and that if AMD was pricing lower, they'd be leaving lots of money on the table.

Malor wrote:

I'm kinda eyeing that 5800X, and knowing that I'll be buying and dedicating the three components together doesn't bother me that much. If I get the same kind of longevity out of them that I did from this 4790K, I'll be happy.

The price is steeper than it's been in prior years ($850ish for CPU/decent board/32 gigs/decent cooler), but hey, inflation, and AMD has pricing power for the first time in a long, long while. I'd have preferred to see the 5800X at $350, but that's not happening soon, if ever.

I'm also moving on from Haswell to Ryzen 3 and likely a 3080. I had been targeting the 5000-series version of the 3700X, which is the 5800X, but I think I'm going to go with the 5900X instead. It's very hard to turn down 50% more cores with a higher boost clock for 20% more cost. Right now the low core count on my 4670 is what's killing me and pushing that problem further into the future in the new build sounds appealing. Another $100 in a likely >$1500 build seems worth it.

It's possible that there might be an advantage to having all the cores be in the same die on the 5800X, but at some point engine developers will include numa-based thread affinity if they haven't already. I imagine the third-party gaming benchmarks for these two will be available before stock is.

Yeah, the total cost of a really good gaming computer is definitely climbing. For a 5800X/3080 combo you'd be looking at about $1500, which is about half again more than it was, say, five years ago. Moore's Law is ending, and we're not getting faster chips at the same price, we're getting faster chips at higher prices.

The speed is still (at least for now) increasing faster than the price, but that may not last much longer, either.

Overall, that is a pretty good argument for a 5900X. I'll have to think about it.

edit: I said 5800X/3800, which was confusing. Meant 3080.

peanut3141 wrote:

I had been targeting the 5000-series version of the 3700X, which is the 5800X, but I think I'm going to go with the 5900X instead. It's very hard to turn down 50% more cores with a higher boost clock for 20% more cost.

Ugh I was settled on the 5800X, cost increase and all, but you might have just cost me a little more money with that argument.

I'm already in for an RTX 3080 and Reverb 2 VR headset, so yeah, it is a small percentage increase in overall outlay for a pretty significant return in overall compute power (even if the extra cores will largely idle in most workloads I throw at it).

This will be my first from scratch build since 2012. I have been updating franken pc since then. So many expensive choices. But i can keep franken pc as a backup if needed. And i really do deserve a new toy. There, i have nearly convinced myself to add pci 4 m2 drives to the build list.

Malor wrote:
And now that this is the final generation for the AM4 socket you no longer have the upgrade path as an argument for going AMD.

I've gotten used to the Intel Way of having to buy motherboard/CPU/RAM all at once, so I don't really see this as a major problem at this point. I'm kinda eyeing that 5800X, and knowing that I'll be buying and dedicating the three components together doesn't bother me that much. If I get the same kind of longevity out of them that I did from this 4790K, I'll be happy.

Sure, but the real point was that the lack of an upgrade path post 5000 series and the price increase means Intel is very possibly worth shopping again if you're building a gaming rig in that price range. It's end of life on the motherboard in both cases.

So look up benchmarks and go whichever way gives you the most for the dollars you want to spend.

And for the first time in a long while, at sub top top-end price brackets, that might mean going Intel for some folks.