Author Topic: Computer Upgrade?  (Read 10395 times)

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Offline JP

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Computer Upgrade?
« on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 13:54:23 »
Current build as follows:

CPU: i7 3770k
Heatsink: Noctua NH-D15
Memory: 32 GB DDR3
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB
SSD: Samsung 850 Pro 512GB
HDD's: 4TB, 2TB + NAS w/8TB
PSU: 1250 watt Evga (Seasonic based) - used to run high end video cards in sli
Case: Thermaltake Armor

I am pretty content with this build but have had a number of weird issues and I think my motherboard is flaky at this point.

I could simply get a very nice high end Z77 motherboard on eBay for about $100-150 and hopefully call it a day...

OR

I could sell my i7 3770k for about $125 on ebay, sell the memory and buy an AMD RYZEN 7 2700X 8-Core 3.7 GHz which I can get for $240 currently (reusing my heatsink using Noctua's AM4 install kit), buy a new motherboard < $200?, and 32 GB of DDR4 < $200?. Total build after selling parts should put the build to around $500 or under I'd hope.

OR

Wait a month or whenever AMD's new 3rd gen processors hit the market and get the 2nd gen stuff for less hopefully or spend a bit more overall getting a 3rd Gen Ryzen 7 3700X or 3800X.

What should I do?

If I'm going with modern kit I'm gonna want to decommission my current desktop soon and just run off of a backup machine.
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Offline tp4tissue

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #1 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 15:09:30 »
unless you have specific tasks that can be accelerated by m0ar c0res,  and you do them OFTEN.. it'd be a waste to upgrade the cpu+platform.


The only thing that you can really FEEEEL by spending money is GPU..

For that, if you care about high quality video playback,   Nvidia,   if Just games, you can go with Either Nvidia or Ati


I'd recommend used 1080 / 1080ti  at this junction.


But you'd wait for ATI's  latest mid range card to release first, because surely that will bring down the prices of used 1080s on Ebay.


Offline JP

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #2 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 15:21:02 »
unless you have specific tasks that can be accelerated by m0ar c0res,  and you do them OFTEN.. it'd be a waste to upgrade the cpu+platform.


The only thing that you can really FEEEEL by spending money is GPU..

For that, if you care about high quality video playback,   Nvidia,   if Just games, you can go with Either Nvidia or Ati


I'd recommend used 1080 / 1080ti  at this junction.


But you'd wait for ATI's  latest mid range card to release first, because surely that will bring down the prices of used 1080s on Ebay.



-New video card is out of the question for now unless a glorious benefactor comes forward...
-Possible motherboard and or ram issues or both as I have multiple issues. My system randomly will freeze (usually running a web browser with utube + multiple tabs in either Chrome or Firefox), one NIC doesn't work (zapped by electrical surge), onboard sound is acting crazy, USB 3 ports work when they want. All in all I want my system to be stable again and it seems like it would be a good idea to update my core if I'm already considering a motherboard swap. I bought the i7 new so I've got my monies worth out of it and feel like I should take the money and run (aka sell off parts) rather than throw money at a used / outdated motherboard.

[Edit] Gonna run a mem test later.
« Last Edit: Wed, 05 June 2019, 15:24:02 by JP »
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Offline JP

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #3 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 15:31:12 »
Another pro to waiting a while for AMD 3rd gen + updated motherboards is for full PCI Express 4.0 support which won't be available with older motherboards in conjunction with 3rd gen CPU's as PCI 4.0 will be disabled in future bios updates.

What's funny though is PCI 4.0 is already obsolete as the Specs for 5.0 are already available  :))

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/292251-the-pcie-5-0-specification-is-now-available-before-pcie-4-0-has-even-shipped
« Last Edit: Wed, 05 June 2019, 15:33:20 by JP »
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Offline AJM

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #4 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 16:02:44 »
....
[Edit] Gonna run a mem test later.

Forget memory tests.
I did that first, when my pc was regularly crashing. It found nothing so I replaced the power unit, because that helped last time.
After I did that - without any improvement - I finally started to swap out memory modules.
Now I only have 3 modules instead of 4, which means 12 GB instead of 16 and everything works fine.

Offline tp4tissue

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #5 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 16:31:08 »
Another pro to waiting a while for AMD 3rd gen + updated motherboards is for full PCI Express 4.0 support which won't be available with older motherboards in conjunction with 3rd gen CPU's as PCI 4.0 will be disabled in future bios updates.

What's funny though is PCI 4.0 is already obsolete as the Specs for 5.0 are already available  :))

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/292251-the-pcie-5-0-specification-is-now-available-before-pcie-4-0-has-even-shipped

PCIE 4 is mainly an improvement so that you can split the lanes for new faster ssd storage.

It doesn't do much for GPU in Home scenarios,  for AI / Big data, it certainly helps.

If you have general instability,  Give the whole setup m0ar Juice , increase the voltage just a little on everything

Offline JP

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #6 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 16:49:45 »
....
[Edit] Gonna run a mem test later.

Forget memory tests.
I did that first, when my pc was regularly crashing. It found nothing so I replaced the power unit, because that helped last time.
After I did that - without any improvement - I finally started to swap out memory modules.
Now I only have 3 modules instead of 4, which means 12 GB instead of 16 and everything works fine.

Yeah that's a good thought. Although the crashing is so irregular it will take a while to know if it is fixed or not. I think I will run a test from a boot disk just for shirts and gargoyles.

Also no overclocking and I have a high end power supply with a 7 year warranty so I'll blame the ram first and maybe the motherboard for some of the other quirks I've seen like the flaky USB 3.
« Last Edit: Wed, 05 June 2019, 16:52:32 by JP »
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Offline lightsout714

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #7 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 17:34:12 »
I would definitely wait for Ryzen 3 to come out. At least to see how it affects pricing of everything else. I know that people will be offloading (already starting) their previous Ryzen gear to have the latest and greatest.

Offline JP

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #8 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 17:56:40 »
So far I have:

1. Replace / Check Ram
2. Wait and see what happens with Ryzen 3

Seems reasonable enough and won't hurt to wait.
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Offline lightsout714

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #9 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 18:08:21 »
I mean depending on what you do with it, an CPU upgrade may not be noticeable. I have a Ryzen 2600x. Suits me great, but the upgrade itch is still there with new AMD stuff.

Plus you are int he same boat I was recently, making the jump finally to ddr4 makes the upgrade kind of costly. But on the flip side how much do you want to invest in an old platform like that.

Offline Leslieann

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #10 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 19:23:34 »
Ignore the ram for the moment... Check the drive S.M.A.R.T. status.
Look for corrected and uncorrected errors, if there is ANYTHING in the raw data collumn, the drive is failing and there is your problem. Replace the failing drive before you do anything else.

Then check ram.


As for upgrades,
If this does the job, there's really not a ton of sense in getting something newer. Gaming will see almost no improvement with that gpu and in terms of apps and OS that too will see little, EXCEPT for one place, the drive. M.2 is a pretty good upgrade, but, you do not need a new motherboard to get it, you can buy an $8 adapter that plugs into a pcie slot and gets you m.2 NVME ssd.

Ryzen,
While I want to say wait for the 3000 over the 2000 series, there's a few issues here. For one, it's untested, and two, it's really not THAT much gaster, and three the boards cost A LOT more. The average 3k board is going to run $200, but, you can run Ryzen 3k in most 2k boards with a bios flash. That is an option, but again, there's no tests yet. I do look forward to building a low power model into a teeny tiny box though. So much power for so little wattage. If I didn't have my 8700k, this would be what I'd be buying.

Regarding pcie 4.0, IGNORE IT.
Not even a 2080ti can max out a pcie 3.0 slot, in fact two of them together barely can. The onlything capable of using it so far is the new Corsair ssd and there is very, very few situations where even a high end cpu like the top of the line 3k is going to ever exceed what a PCIE 3.0 ssd could deliver. It's just not the bottleneck.

Which is an important thing to consider...
Where is your bottleneck these days. Yes, you have fewer cores, but beyond 4 you start getting diminishing returns, this is why the 9900k is not hyperthreaded. Firefox can use 4 cores, Chrome really only uses two (and one is just the base browser, the second does the rendering), the OS, yes it can use more, but most of the OS sits idle. I have 12 threads and most of the time my cpu load sits at 1-2% with only 2-4 threads hitting 5-6% and even when I do something half will sit idle. Point being, more cores will not really make a difference. Same with frequency, cpu speeds themselves have not imrpoved dramatically.

Honestly, the biggest improvements since since your cpu, have been more cores (which I already ruled out), ssd interface, which you can fix, and ports. We now have USB type c/thunderbolt. Thunderbolt stuff is expensive and of limited use, type C is just a connector and you can use an adapter, you won't get the fast charge but again, that's not a huge deal and if you really want that, a pcie card can do it. The thonly other real gains have been in chipset and that can't be solved easily, but it's also not THAT big of a deal.


My advice
Check the drives, check the memory, fix the problem.
Want a bit more speed, install a pcie to NVME adapter and install that ($60)
Still not happy, wait a few months for Ryzen 3k to settle in and see if a 2k series board will work, OR look around for someone selling a used last gen setup.
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Offline JP

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #11 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 20:24:28 »
I just checked drive and it is in excellent shape as expected. I'll check the ram later, check bios settings, and ultimately reinstall Windows 10.
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Offline Sintpinty

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #12 on: Wed, 05 June 2019, 20:24:51 »
unless you have specific tasks that can be accelerated by m0ar c0res,  and you do them OFTEN.. it'd be a waste to upgrade the cpu+platform.


The only thing that you can really FEEEEL by spending money is GPU..

For that, if you care about high quality video playback,   Nvidia,   if Just games, you can go with Either Nvidia or Ati


I'd recommend used 1080 / 1080ti  at this junction.


But you'd wait for ATI's  latest mid range card to release first, because surely that will bring down the prices of used 1080s on Ebay.



1070/1080 is great, but 1660 is just as powerful as a 1050.


I wish i could afford the 28 core Xeon. That would be awesome  :-[
« Last Edit: Thu, 06 June 2019, 05:00:51 by Sintpinty »

Offline Leslieann

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #13 on: Thu, 06 June 2019, 01:10:31 »
I just checked drive and it is in excellent shape as expected. I'll check the ram later, check bios settings, and ultimately reinstall Windows 10.
Win10 could certainly be a big part of the problem.


I wish i could afford the 28 core Xeon. That would be awesome  :-[
They aren't too terrible on the used market.
Prior generation server stuff drops in price insanely fast, the problem is, it's server stuff and that doesn't always make for a good desktop experience. Especially in Windows.
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Offline Altis

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #14 on: Sat, 13 July 2019, 19:31:22 »
....
[Edit] Gonna run a mem test later.

Forget memory tests.
I did that first, when my pc was regularly crashing. It found nothing so I replaced the power unit, because that helped last time.
After I did that - without any improvement - I finally started to swap out memory modules.
Now I only have 3 modules instead of 4, which means 12 GB instead of 16 and everything works fine.

Yeah that's a good thought. Although the crashing is so irregular it will take a while to know if it is fixed or not. I think I will run a test from a boot disk just for shirts and gargoyles.

Also no overclocking and I have a high end power supply with a 7 year warranty so I'll blame the ram first and maybe the motherboard for some of the other quirks I've seen like the flaky USB 3.

....
[Edit] Gonna run a mem test later.

Forget memory tests.
I did that first, when my pc was regularly crashing. It found nothing so I replaced the power unit, because that helped last time.
After I did that - without any improvement - I finally started to swap out memory modules.
Now I only have 3 modules instead of 4, which means 12 GB instead of 16 and everything works fine.

I had the same problem exactly. Moving around the RAM sticks seemed to fix it for a bit. I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was wrong but assumed there was a hardware failure.

I eventually took all the RAM sticks out and thoroughly cleaned the pin strips on the sticks and in the slots with rubbing alcohol. Haven't had any issues since, and even started overclocking my DDR3 RAM to 2133 MHz.

So, give this a try as it could well just be a bad contact that only manifests in certain addressing.
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Offline JP

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Re: Computer Upgrade?
« Reply #15 on: Sun, 14 July 2019, 10:14:04 »
I had the same problem exactly. Moving around the RAM sticks seemed to fix it for a bit. I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was wrong but assumed there was a hardware failure.

I eventually took all the RAM sticks out and thoroughly cleaned the pin strips on the sticks and in the slots with rubbing alcohol. Haven't had any issues since, and even started overclocking my DDR3 RAM to 2133 MHz.

So, give this a try as it could well just be a bad contact that only manifests in certain addressing.

Thanks for the tip Altis. I have some 99% rubbing alcohol so I'll give that a go later.
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