PC Refresh

[calebsdeq]

Hi guys,

Hoping you lot can give me some great advice and help me out, I am looking to maybe upgrade my current rig which has been solid for the last 5 odd years.

There are a few parts I am not looking to change and am basing the other parts of them and trying to not over or under spec.

The parts I am keeping:

GPU: MSI GTX OCV1 1060 6GB
PSU: Corsair CX600
SSD: Crucial NVMe
CPU cooler: Corsair H55

So I am thinking of the R5 2600 (maybe the X if I can see enough benefit) will be a good match to the above. However, I am not sure about the mobo or RAM. I have seen a lot of bundles that use Gigabyte mobos and 8GB of 3000Mhz RAM. I have had a few Gigabyte mobos and they haven’t served me too well. I currently have an AsRock which I love and is solid but can’t see a bundle for them. I also have 16GB DDR3 Ballistix Tactical but apart from VMs I never feel I make the most of them.

So my questions to you are:

Am I thinking along the right lines for the CPU?

Is 3000Mhz And 8GB a good standard for RAM in newer gen rigs?

Are CPU, mobo and RAMbundles worth it?

If I get the new parts and keep the above parts will it be a solid machine for a while or am I best to restart?

Cheers,

Caleb

 

[Zerileous]

What is your current rig? What are you trying to do better with the upgrade? What is your budget?

 

[trents]

I would not build a new system with less than 16gb of RAM. I see a lot of these bundles where they are using one stick of RAM instead of two which would mean you'd be operating in single channel mode. These bundles are often just leftover or returned odds and ends that will work together but with some hidden issue on one or more components that hindered their sale in the first place.

And it doesn't make since to me to throw good money down on a Ryzen 2000 when the 4000's are debuting later this year. The 3000's are around the same price as the 2000 CPUs.

 

[calebsdeq]

I am currently running Phenom II x6 1090T @ 3.8Ghz and AsRock 970GA2, the rest of my rig is listed in the first part of the post.

Budget wise I am thinking £300ish but have room to spend more over time on more RAM etc.

I will have a look into the 3000 range thank you, do you know much about the “X“ versions? I have always bought the “Black Edition” of Phenom CPUs, is that a similar idea?

For reference as well I wanna play CoD Warzone, the Total War games and The Witcher 3.

Cheers!

 

[Zerileous]

X versions have a higher TDP and higher clock speed, but in general are not worth it, or it depends on the CPU. For a budget entry you'll want to do a 4 core 8 thread 3300X, or if you can afford a bit more the 3600 will offer 6c/12t which will help in some games.

Currently, we are expecting B550 motherboards out soon. While it is expected that B450 will support 4000 series Ryzen CPUs, it is likely that B550 will do a better job of it. It will be up to the board partners to implement support on B450 motherboards. MSI not only seems to have some of the strongest B450 boards, they also seem to be the most committed to supporting future CPUs.

A CX PSU is Okay, but I would not expect a super long service life out of it. I would consider replacing it before it reaches the 6 year mark.

Here is a potential build list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/nNZFWD.

 

[calebsdeq]

X versions have a higher TDP and higher clock speed, but in general are not worth it, or it depends on the CPU. For a budget entry you'll want to do a 4 core 8 thread 3300X, or if you can afford a bit more the 3600 will offer 6c/12t which will help in some games.

Currently, we are expecting B550 motherboards out soon. While it is expected that B450 will support 4000 series Ryzen CPUs, it is likely that B550 will do a better job of it. It will be up to the board partners to implement support on B450 motherboards. MSI not only seems to have some of the strongest B450 boards, they also seem to be the most committed to supporting future CPUs.

A CX PSU is Okay, but I would not expect a super long service life out of it. I would consider replacing it before it reaches the 6 year mark.

Here is a potential build list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/nNZFWD.

Thank you very much! I have quoted this together on Amazon and NewEgg seems to have better prices aha... But this seems to be along the right lines of what I was thinking about, the mobo looks good and I have an MSI card so I know the vendor is reliable but have not used the G.Skills RAM before but I have heard about them, are they kinda standard now? Is 3600Mhz the standard as well?

 

[Zerileous]

Yeah at least in the US G.Skill is pretty popular. While they have some lines specifically optimized for AMD (Ripjaws is not one, but should work). Although most of the memory problems associated with Ryzen have been ironed out with 3000 series chips, we have seen some users having problems with kingston and corsair iirc.

For 3000 series, 3600 is considered to be the best reasonable speed. 3200 is the spec for the chips. For these chips the IO, cache, and interconnects between some cores run at the speed of memory, up to at least 3600. Above a certain point however (it can be manually tuned above 3600 a bit), this drops to a 2:1 ratio, increasing latency, so going above 3600 is generally considered not beneficial. In gaming, generally the difference between 3200 and 3600 is like 1% though, so if pricing becomes a factor 3200 is adequate. 2666 to 3200 is noticeable though, so it's important to get decent memory at least.

Edit: also note while most B450 motherboards have been updated at this point, not all B450 boards will support the Ryzen 3000 CPUs without a BIOS update. For MSI boards, those labeled "MAX" will support 3000 out of the box.

 

[calebsdeq]

Yeah at least in the US G.Skill is pretty popular. While they have some lines specifically optimized for AMD (Ripjaws is not one, but should work). Although most of the memory problems associated with Ryzen have been ironed out with 3000 series chips, we have seen some users having problems with kingston and corsair iirc.

For 3000 series, 3600 is considered to be the best reasonable speed. 3200 is the spec for the chips. For these chips the IO, cache, and interconnects between some cores run at the speed of memory, up to at least 3600. Above a certain point however (it can be manually tuned above 3600 a bit), this drops to a 2:1 ratio, increasing latency, so going above 3600 is generally considered not beneficial. In gaming, generally the difference between 3200 and 3600 is like 1% though, so if pricing becomes a factor 3200 is adequate. 2666 to 3200 is noticeable though, so it's important to get decent memory at least.

Edit: also note while most B450 motherboards have been updated at this point, not all B450 boards will support the Ryzen 3000 CPUs without a BIOS update. For MSI boards, those labeled "MAX" will support 3000 out of the box.

Thank you for the info on that, I would rather get the 3600 over 3200 if there is a marginal price difference, I don't like to the refresh too often!

G.Skills seems to have a premium in the UK, I know you mentioned Corsair had some issues but does this look like a good potential match: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rYR8WD

 

[trents]

If you are going to use Corsair or Kingston RAM, I would definitely refer to the QVL list of the motherboard manufacturer which supposedly certifies which RAM products are compatible with that motherboard. And when I say "RAM products" I mean more than just the brand. That would also include frequency, total amounts and number of modules and specific chips used, i.e., literally the specific part number. The issue here is not that the RAM will or will not work but whether or not it run at the full advertised speed. We have more confidence that a wider range of G.Skill memory products will do that with Ryzen CPUs. But definitely, other memory products will work and MSI seems to have done a particularly good job with bios tweaks to make that more likely. Having said all that, even with problematic memory products they can often be made to work properly with some tweaking of the timings. But I'm sure you'd rather not get into that if you can avoid it.

If your choices are limited to Kingston and Corsair, I would probably look at Corsair first.

The "X" does not correspond to "black" as used in older AMD nomenclature. Formerly, "black" indicated a AMD CPU that was easy to overclock because it had an unlocked multiplier. All Ryzen CPUs are unlocked but overclocking them doesn't yield nearly as much performance benefit as it did with the AMD CPUs of yesteryear. The Ryzens are pretty much pushed to the limit out of the box as are the latest Intel products and typically they will not overclock on all cores even to the max turbo speed which may hurt performance in games that thrive on high single core speed.

 

[Zerileous]

One of the problems with corsair and kingston is that the QVL is of limited utility. Multiple ICs can be used on a single part number so it doesn't help as much. I know some users have had good luck with the LPX. In your post you state that you would rather get 3600 over 3200, but then link to a 3200 kit. Really all you have to do is open up the memory section of this forum:

corsair + 3000 series Ryzen https://www.overclockers.com/forums...4-Ryzen-3700x-x570-tuf-ram-overclocking-issue
kingston + 2000 series Ryzen https://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/796777-My-3000mhz-ram-dont-go-over-2800mhz
corsair + 3000 series Ryzen https://www.overclockers.com/forums...geance-XLP-3200-(CMK16GX4M2B3200C16-Ver-4-32)

Of course these are not the majority of users. I'm not sure what return policies are like, but if you have the ability to return a product that doesn't work well then I wouldn't worry too much.