Hold out for 10900k, grab 10700, or just go with a discounted 9900K?

Snagged (supposedly) a 10700k. :) Ordered the aorus master with it; now shopping for cooling (think I want the EK AIO). Going to go for as high an overclock as I can.

Question - with PCIE 3.0 support only in this gen; will a PCIE 4 NVME drive work for now until rocket lake comes out?
 
Snagged (supposedly) a 10700k. :) Ordered the aorus master with it; now shopping for cooling (think I want the EK AIO). Going to go for as high an overclock as I can.

Question - with PCIE 3.0 support only in this gen; will a PCIE 4 NVME drive work for now until rocket lake comes out?

What do you have now? I'd just reuse your current drive and then upgrade later. You'd have to think that more drives will be available and will be cheaper as both Intel and AMD move to PCIe 4.0
 
What do you have now? I'd just reuse your current drive and then upgrade later. You'd have to think that more drives will be available and will be cheaper as both Intel and AMD move to PCIe 4.0

6700K with a 512G 3.0, but I want to leave it in to pass that system on without modification to my wife to replace her bulldozer. I'll be buying new drives for certain, just trying to decide if it's worth investing in 4.0 for the future or if only 3.0 would work.

Meh, given that I don't really upgrade all that often, I'll pick up two nice 3.0 ones and use them. I'll save 4.0 for when I redo the workstation this winter (Decided to wait for Zen3 on that one, and then decide between TR and Zen3).
 
I'll be buying new drives for certain, just trying to decide if it's worth investing in 4.0 for the future or if only 3.0 would work.
Nope. If PCIe 4.0 drives would help you, you'd already have them, and be running them in RAID0 and so on. Where NVMe helps over SATA SSDs is in terms of latency and the overall mess of limitations that is using flash through the spinner-based SATA protocol. Granted that still works, it's just a little less responsive due to the protocol, and of course there's a max transfer speed limit that using PCIe / NVMe circumvents.

Thing is, PCIe 3.0 already gets you to 3.5GB/s; flash drives can go faster than that, but the reality is that you're far more limited by other parts of the system once you hit those speeds and latencies.

Better to spend more money on larger drives (or more drives) if you can, if that's even an issue.
 
Nope. If PCIe 4.0 drives would help you, you'd already have them, and be running them in RAID0 and so on. Where NVMe helps over SATA SSDs is in terms of latency and the overall mess of limitations that is using flash through the spinner-based SATA protocol. Granted that still works, it's just a little less responsive due to the protocol, and of course there's a max transfer speed limit that using PCIe / NVMe circumvents.

Thing is, PCIe 3.0 already gets you to 3.5GB/s; flash drives can go faster than that, but the reality is that you're far more limited by other parts of the system once you hit those speeds and latencies.

Better to spend more money on larger drives (or more drives) if you can, if that's even an issue.

Let me rephrase: I'm buying a pair of 1TB drives or 2TB drives for certain, since this is a gaming only system I won't need any more (the workstation and NAS have all the storage). Since the board (but not the CPU) is compatible with 4.0, but I'm considering upgrading to Rocket Lake in the future, the debate is: buying 4.0 now (if it works at 3.0 speeds) so the upgrade in the future is just dropping in the new CPU/BIOS, or buying 3.0 now and deciding if the upgrade to 4.0 is worth it in the future ~with~ the CPU/Bios.

That being said, you make a good point - speed differences for this use case are minimal. It makes sense for some of the insanity I do on my workstation, but not really for games - we're talking a couple of seconds of load time at worst, so might as well just be happy with 3.0 :)
 
Well, here's one thing: if PCIe 4.0 costs the same, then rock on.

However, there aren't actually PCIe 4.0 drives; just drives with hot-clocked PCIe 3.0 controllers. The real ones are coming later.

Doesn't really make a difference except they cost more and benchmark higher.
 
seems we are finally getting closer to the new controllers and drives being available. the 980pro was supposed to launch back in late january, and then the world changed. a rumor from 2 weeks ago was availability by the end of summer/two months.
so maybe as little as 6weeks away for the 980pro?
 
I was on HEDT when I cared about storage io on my local workstation.

I'd want direct cpu lanes, not chipset lanes that may or may not choke when I fire off a load test.

Consumer platforms I use for gaming.
 
I'd want direct cpu lanes, not chipset lanes that may or may not choke when I fire off a load test.

Consumer platforms I use for gaming.
That is the exact problem with all of Intel's consumer platforms. All of the storage connections on Intel consumer platforms are to the PCH rather than directly to the CPU. Comet Lake CPUs still have only 20 total PCI-E lanes, four of which go to the PCH. That leaves only 16 PCI-E lanes, all of which go directly to the GPU slots. AMD Zen consumer platforms, on the other hand, have 24 total PCI-E lanes, four of which go directly to one of the m.2 slots (which is also shared with the SATA controller) and four more to the PCH. No wonder why Intel mainstream systems start falling behind otherwise comparable AMD mainstream systems in Premiere Pro once it began supporting GPU-based encoding for H.264 and HEVC. And that is not because Intel CPUs are weaker per se; it's that the Intel CPUs rely entirely on that choke-happy PCH for all of its storage connections.
 
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Using Premiere as an example, I wouldn't want to run a consumer platform of any kind.

Time is $, and I'd want whatever resources needed to close an invoice to not be measurably saturating itself bc of chipset design limits.

OP is talking about a gaming box.
Mine is in my Sig.
$100 used Maximus X, $300 new 9700kf.
If I was buying new the 10600k + board that can drive my overclock seems to be the equivalent replacement for a 9700kx build.

I'm not so keen on a 9900kx build, I don't see where the extra $100-150 turns into 33-50% more framerate or flatter frametime than what I've got in the games I play.

I'm not seeing value in the z490 surcharge bc I don't see the uplift from better build tier z370/z390 (for your cpu use case) for gaming, also 9700kx is available as a build where you can put the $ somewhere else with performance impact.

Lastly I'd need to overclock the 10600k to get into the 9700kx ballpark. What's the cost of that vs buying a 9700kx and a quality board and just easy clocking it to 5.1ghz and be done with it?

If it's a hobbyist output of your time and effort to clock then z490 is exciting.

If you just want to hit a budget limit and get gaming value then I'd start looking for 1080ti+ performance $500 and less, Mobo ~ $100, cpu ~$300. If any of those #s are unpalatable then burn some time with a used 9600k and upgrade to your desired performance to gaming panel output when Ampere #s are released down to 3060.
 
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Now I'm working out the WC details :)
Start with a lot.

Then perhaps add more. I have an H115i from Corsair, a 2 x 140mm unit, with two fans on each side (a push-pull sandwich). Now the 9900K just gets into the low 100s at 4.9GHz AVX loads ;).
 
Start with a lot.

Then perhaps add more. I have an H115i from Corsair, a 2 x 140mm unit, with two fans on each side (a push-pull sandwich). Now the 9900K just gets into the low 100s at 4.9GHz AVX loads ;).

Planning on dual 360mm rads at least, but I'm also planning on adding an RTX 3090 or whatever it ends up being too. Might go with a third Rad for that. I figure that 1080mm of radiator space should do the job. :p
 
Planning on dual 360mm rads at least, but I'm also planning on adding an RTX 3090 or whatever it ends up being too. Might go with a third Rad for that. I figure that 1080mm of radiator space should do the job. :p

What kind of case are you running?
I’ve thought about buying and holding a $50 thermaltake X series that pop up on my local CL every so often.
 
Snagged (supposedly) a 10700k. :) Ordered the aorus master with it; now shopping for cooling (think I want the EK AIO). Going to go for as high an overclock as I can.

Question - with PCIE 3.0 support only in this gen; will a PCIE 4 NVME drive work for now until rocket lake comes out?
It will work at 3.0 speeds. Samsung should be releasing their pcie 4.0 drives soon but probably at a premium.
 
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