New The PC Build Thread

Price of PC hardware is going to literally chase me out of the country..
Average salary VS average GPU costing.. nevermind if you want high-end.

Long gone are the days where you could get away with sub-R3000 GPUs for a few years.
 
Faux_Grey said:
Price of PC hardware is going to literally chase me out of the country..
Average salary VS average GPU costing.. nevermind if you want high-end.

Long gone are the days where you could get away with sub-R3000 GPUs for a few years.
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Dawid mentions it here, our pricing isn't bad, internationally
But of course our buying power according to him is 10 times less.
 
Guys I reckon it's time for an upgrade. I like to upgrade one or two components every year or two so that I never have to fork out R30k once off but rather maybe R10k a year.

Current setup is:
i7 8700 6 core/12 thread
32GB RAM DDR4
3060TI

PC is used for general stuff and gaming. 1440p 165hz monitor. Performance is adequate at the moment but starting to need to turn down settings to keep the FPS reasonable.

Now I know the i7 8700 is very old but it seems like I need to spend crazy money to see any meaningful performance improvement? I was looking at 8700 vs 5600x and the 5600x is maybe 10% faster in games? I would need to spend quite a bit more to make the upgrade worthwhile? Crazy considering the 8700 is in its 8th year.

Perhaps I should just get a 5070 or similar and live with the CPU bottleneck until there is a real reason to upgrade CPU/mobo.
 
1440p puts the load more on the GPU than the CPU. A CPU + RAM upgrade would help, but your GPU is your biggest limiting factor at 1440p.

5070 would be a juicy upgrade, if your PSU can support it. Might need to do that at the same time depending on what you have. But we need the reviews to drop so we can give more useful advice.
 
Brawler said:
Guys I reckon it's time for an upgrade. I like to upgrade one or two components every year or two so that I never have to fork out R30k once off but rather maybe R10k a year.

Current setup is:
i7 8700 6 core/12 thread
32GB RAM DDR4
3060TI

PC is used for general stuff and gaming. 1440p 165hz monitor. Performance is adequate at the moment but starting to need to turn down settings to keep the FPS reasonable.

Now I know the i7 8700 is very old but it seems like I need to spend crazy money to see any meaningful performance improvement? I was looking at 8700 vs 5600x and the 5600x is maybe 10% faster in games? I would need to spend quite a bit more to make the upgrade worthwhile? Crazy considering the 8700 is in its 8th year.

Perhaps I should just get a 5070 or similar and live with the CPU bottleneck until there is a real reason to upgrade CPU/mobo.
Click to expand...
The 5070 will probably blow your budget for the next two years, so be prepared for a long term bottleneck, however it probably won't be that impactful since you're a 1440p gamer. The GPU is more important for you.

I'm kinda tempted for the 50 series, but it's not a need for the foreseeable future, since I'm on a 4080.
 
Brawler said:
Guys I reckon it's time for an upgrade. I like to upgrade one or two components every year or two so that I never have to fork out R30k once off but rather maybe R10k a year.

Current setup is:
i7 8700 6 core/12 thread
32GB RAM DDR4
3060TI

PC is used for general stuff and gaming. 1440p 165hz monitor. Performance is adequate at the moment but starting to need to turn down settings to keep the FPS reasonable.

Now I know the i7 8700 is very old but it seems like I need to spend crazy money to see any meaningful performance improvement? I was looking at 8700 vs 5600x and the 5600x is maybe 10% faster in games? I would need to spend quite a bit more to make the upgrade worthwhile? Crazy considering the 8700 is in its 8th year.

Perhaps I should just get a 5070 or similar and live with the CPU bottleneck until there is a real reason to upgrade CPU/mobo.
Click to expand...

Regarding the 5600x: this was launched in November 2020, as the base model of that launch. I have one and it is a great processor, but note that you would be upgrading your upper-range 7-year old CPU to a 4-year old base CPU...
 
Brawler said:
Guys I reckon it's time for an upgrade. I like to upgrade one or two components every year or two so that I never have to fork out R30k once off but rather maybe R10k a year.

Current setup is:
i7 8700 6 core/12 thread
32GB RAM DDR4
3060TI

PC is used for general stuff and gaming. 1440p 165hz monitor. Performance is adequate at the moment but starting to need to turn down settings to keep the FPS reasonable.

Now I know the i7 8700 is very old but it seems like I need to spend crazy money to see any meaningful performance improvement? I was looking at 8700 vs 5600x and the 5600x is maybe 10% faster in games? I would need to spend quite a bit more to make the upgrade worthwhile? Crazy considering the 8700 is in its 8th year.

Perhaps I should just get a 5070 or similar and live with the CPU bottleneck until there is a real reason to upgrade CPU/mobo.
Click to expand...
The Ryzen 5600x is already 4 years old, if you want to upgrade you'd need to go AM5, going to AM4 the best would be 5700x3d but honestly if you need RAM, motherboard and CPU go AM5
 
Lupus said:
The Ryzen 5600x is already 4 years old, if you want to upgrade you'd need to go AM5, going to AM4 the best would be 5700x3d but honestly if you need RAM, motherboard and CPU go AM5
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Yup, I'm playing with the idea of a new PC and it will be AM5, makes no sense to go AM4 at this point if you're doing motherboard, CPU and RAM.

Suck up the premium for the upgradability into the future.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Yup, I'm playing with the idea of a new PC and it will be AM5, makes no sense to go AM4 at this point if you're doing motherboard, CPU and RAM.

Suck up the premium for the upgradability into the future.
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Yup.

The only AM4 upgrades that make sense are a straight CPU replacement for an X3D part. Anything besides that is a waste.
 
UrBaN963 said:
Yup.

The only AM4 upgrades that make sense are a straight CPU replacement for an X3D part. Anything besides that is a waste.
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I find it better that I went to 14th gen i5 than AM5.

i5 14600KF works really well for even the most CPU demanding games. Works out a lot cheaper than AM5 X3d as well. The few extra frames in Gaming are barely noticeable on those X3d's - you're better off investing that extra $ in a better GPU.
 
Longboi said:
I find it better that I went to 14th gen i5 than AM5.

i5 14600KF works really well for even the most CPU demanding games. Works out a lot cheaper than AM5 X3d as well. The few extra frames in Gaming are barely noticeable on those X3d's - you're better off investing that extra $ in a better GPU.
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Well, yea, but mostly no.

If the 13th and 14th gen CPUs weren't prone to dying and massive consumers of power they'd be a much more attractive offer, but in 2025 there's zero reason to go for Intel if AMD is an option - in regards to new PCs, not minor upgrades on the same platform.
 
UrBaN963 said:
Well, yea, but mostly no.

If the 13th and 14th gen CPUs weren't prone to dying and massive consumers of power they'd be a much more attractive offer, but in 2025 there's zero reason to go for Intel if AMD is an option - in regards to new PCs, not minor upgrades on the same platform.
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No issues with the i5's since they draw less power. The power / degradation issues are also gone now with the new update.

It also depends what your use case is. If you only turn your system on when you want to game, AMD is more efficient.

But, if your gaming system is also the main system that gets all your general use then Intel can actually be more efficient overall (depending on your split between gaming and general tasks), due to the higher minimum idle usage by AMD’s chiplet design -
the entire reason why their laptop chips are monolithic and come out after their desktop parts.
 
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Longboi said:
I find it better that I went to 14th gen i5 than AM5.

i5 14600KF works really well for even the most CPU demanding games. Works out a lot cheaper than AM5 X3d as well. The few extra frames in Gaming are barely noticeable on those X3d's - you're better off investing that extra $ in a better GPU.
Click to expand...
Your only comparison for a i5 14th gen that came out similar time is the 7800x3d, which far outclasses it in games.. not just a few frames.

If you want to throw the 5700x3d/5800x3d then you need to go back to 12th gen era, which again shows the 7800x3d not being matched in games unless you throw a power plant at the overclocked i9 to get somewhat close to the 7800x3d. .. heck the i9 didnt even beat the 5800x3d back in the day
 
UrBaN963 said:
Yup.

The only AM4 upgrades that make sense are a straight CPU replacement for an X3D part. Anything besides that is a waste.
Click to expand...
Well everyone is not a gamer and everyone does not have a 30K GPU
So Am4 will live for long still. It is not only about the upgrade path, its about costs.
I just upgraded to a 3700x. Way more than I need. Only game I might play with kids is Fortnite and with my cheap gpu that 3700x does not even use 40%
3700x cost R1500 cheap cheap now. Will be good for a few years, then I can @Upgrade to a 5950x that will probably go for 2k by that time. So for my needs I could probably stay another 10 years on AM4.
Am4 parts are cheap and for the guys that does not play a lot of games or have cheaper GPU's it is still a great option.
 
Lol, I still game with an i7-4790 and Vega 64 :ROFL:

It may be comparatively a turtle compared to modern systems, but it works. It can send mail, it can open a browser, and it can play CS, RPGs, and all RTS games.

I have a better system, but it is all work and no play. Did run some games, and replayed Cyberpunk 2077 on it, but she is back to doing her duties. This said, the old i7 and Vega 64 does not struggle to run Cyberpunk 2077, though at 1080p at mid to high settings. Frame generation also helps.

I am currently exploring putting a previous gen AMD system together with a new GPU. Will see. My 2025 budget will be tight.
 
Jean Claude Vaaldamme said:
Well everyone is not a gamer and everyone does not have a 30K GPU
So Am4 will live for long still. It is not only about the upgrade path, its about costs.
I just upgraded to a 3700x. Way more than I need. Only game I might play with kids is Fortnite and with my cheap gpu that 3700x does not even use 40%
3700x cost R1500 cheap cheap now. Will be good for a few years, then I can @Upgrade to a 5950x that will probably go for 2k by that time. So for my needs I could probably stay another 10 years on AM4.
Am4 parts are cheap and for the guys that does not play a lot of games or have cheaper GPU's it is still a great option.
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Oh absolutely there will be events where an AM4 CPU upgrade is entirely valid...

But if you're buying a new Mobo, CPU and RAM, then it really doesn't make sense to jump on the AM4 bandwagon now.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Oh absolutely there will be events where an AM4 CPU upgrade is entirely valid...

But if you're buying a new Mobo, CPU and RAM, then it really doesn't make sense to jump on the AM4 bandwagon now.
Click to expand...
Sill depends on your budget and how often you upgrade.

Plenty of times people buy with " I will upgrade" ..and never do, just end up replacing with whatever is in their budget and newer tech/platform.

Am4 with a 5700x3d will be cheaper than an equivalent am5 with a 7500f/7600 and most people can milk that am4 setup for years and years longer before the am5 user would actually decide to bend over for that am5 x3d cpu upgrade that might be old tech/socket by then
 
Is the older Strix B650E-F board better than the newer B850-F?

Does the number of PCB layers make a real difference for day to day use?
 
Oh and another thing, do the more expensive boards tend to have better on-board audio?
 
Astarion said:
Is the older Strix B650E-F board better than the newer B850-F?

Does the number of PCB layers make a real difference for day to day use?
Click to expand...

6 layer pcb vs 8 layer pcb is a hot topic. Generally more layers is better if you are trying to push higher clocks.

Reliability is almost the same between 6 vs 8.

For Intel 14th Gen I use - Z790 Asus Tuf
For AMD AM5 I use X870 Asus Tuf

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