jimthebob
Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2013
- Messages
- 889
Goodbye team blue, hello team red. I must say, while I've owned an AMD system or two over the years, team red has never been my choice for my main system. This has been for various reasons over the years but a big part of it has been I have a friend who is die hard Intel and I would get his used components for dirt cheap, albeit always a couple gen behind current.
But this time, I decided to build my own new. While I do enjoy Intel products, the price of new hardware (mainly CPU's) is the largest driving force keeping me out of camp Intel. Even used, I'm not finding anything Intel that is within my price that is a step up from the 6 core 4.2ghz Xeon I've been using for some time now. At one point, I believed my next step would be X99 as that would have added a few key upgrades over the X79 platform I'm on now but the prices on that used stuff is...insane to me. So pricing combined with AMD finally being up there again with Intel in performance along with a long upgrade path have driven me to give AMD a shot.
I'll also add that earlier this year I got a couple good deals at the time and put together a new Plex server with a 6th gen i3 6100 and an M.2 NVME SSD as the boot drive in it and if I'm being honest, it has bugged the hell out of me that my server was on a newer platform that my main rig! I'm petty like that
Anywho, after much reading, I settled on an X470 Asus board, the Crosshair VII Hero to be exact, as my motherboard of choice paired with a Ryzen 7 2700x. I figured a high end last gen motherboard was good enough as the price of current high end X570 boards vs what new/useful features you get wasn't worth it to me. I also see a good upgrade path CPU wise with this board. I figured in a year or so once new stuff comes out, I'll be able to snag a nice 3rd gen Ryzen CPU to upgrade if I feel the need since this board supports them (and possibly beyond third gen but that is yet to be determined/confirmed afaik). Plus at $160 for an 8 core 16 thread CPU that can boost a smidgen higher than my current OC'd CPU...I couldn't see any other better value out there, the value is insane!
So my upgrade will roughly look like this at the moment:
Xeon E5 1650v2 @ 4.2ghz 6 core------------> Ryzen 7 2700x 8 core
32gb DDR3 ----------------------------------------> 16gb Trident Z RGB (to 32gb eventually, knowing me)
Asus ROG Rampage IV BE -------------------> Asus Crosshair VII Hero
512gb Samsung 850 Pro Boot ----------------> M.2 NVME SDD (this will be purchased in a few weeks, I'll have to "deal with" the Samsung drive for now)
So what do you guys think, should I see some nice performance upgrades? I do a fair bit of mixed stuff and do tend to multitask. My general games I play are either Cities: Skylines (my biggest city is 225k+ population) at 1080p maxed details or coughminecraftcough, Doom, and maybe a few other titles here and there I'll touch on. I also keep Chrome open in the background if I need to look something up and have Plex or youtube playing on my second monitor while I game (if the game type allows). I also do the very occasional video edit/render but that's more of an exception than the rule kind of situation. I'm thinking between a smaller architecture, IPC improvements over Ivy Bridge, more coars, new standards, and just 5-6+? years of technological advancements should net me a positive experience.
But there we have it, I've given the middle finger to Intel, their pricing, and somewhat stagnated advancements in favor of AMD. I'll be honest, I've always been a little leary of AMD products in the past (although I have had several of there video cards in my main rig before) in regards to their drivers. They haven't struck me as quite as polished as Intel/Nvidia but I guess I'm about to find out if that has changed! Parts should (hopefully) be in in the next couple days so wish me luck guys! I'll be sure to post a few pics when the system gets up and going if there's interest.
But this time, I decided to build my own new. While I do enjoy Intel products, the price of new hardware (mainly CPU's) is the largest driving force keeping me out of camp Intel. Even used, I'm not finding anything Intel that is within my price that is a step up from the 6 core 4.2ghz Xeon I've been using for some time now. At one point, I believed my next step would be X99 as that would have added a few key upgrades over the X79 platform I'm on now but the prices on that used stuff is...insane to me. So pricing combined with AMD finally being up there again with Intel in performance along with a long upgrade path have driven me to give AMD a shot.
I'll also add that earlier this year I got a couple good deals at the time and put together a new Plex server with a 6th gen i3 6100 and an M.2 NVME SSD as the boot drive in it and if I'm being honest, it has bugged the hell out of me that my server was on a newer platform that my main rig! I'm petty like that
Anywho, after much reading, I settled on an X470 Asus board, the Crosshair VII Hero to be exact, as my motherboard of choice paired with a Ryzen 7 2700x. I figured a high end last gen motherboard was good enough as the price of current high end X570 boards vs what new/useful features you get wasn't worth it to me. I also see a good upgrade path CPU wise with this board. I figured in a year or so once new stuff comes out, I'll be able to snag a nice 3rd gen Ryzen CPU to upgrade if I feel the need since this board supports them (and possibly beyond third gen but that is yet to be determined/confirmed afaik). Plus at $160 for an 8 core 16 thread CPU that can boost a smidgen higher than my current OC'd CPU...I couldn't see any other better value out there, the value is insane!
So my upgrade will roughly look like this at the moment:
Xeon E5 1650v2 @ 4.2ghz 6 core------------> Ryzen 7 2700x 8 core
32gb DDR3 ----------------------------------------> 16gb Trident Z RGB (to 32gb eventually, knowing me)
Asus ROG Rampage IV BE -------------------> Asus Crosshair VII Hero
512gb Samsung 850 Pro Boot ----------------> M.2 NVME SDD (this will be purchased in a few weeks, I'll have to "deal with" the Samsung drive for now)
So what do you guys think, should I see some nice performance upgrades? I do a fair bit of mixed stuff and do tend to multitask. My general games I play are either Cities: Skylines (my biggest city is 225k+ population) at 1080p maxed details or coughminecraftcough, Doom, and maybe a few other titles here and there I'll touch on. I also keep Chrome open in the background if I need to look something up and have Plex or youtube playing on my second monitor while I game (if the game type allows). I also do the very occasional video edit/render but that's more of an exception than the rule kind of situation. I'm thinking between a smaller architecture, IPC improvements over Ivy Bridge, more coars, new standards, and just 5-6+? years of technological advancements should net me a positive experience.
But there we have it, I've given the middle finger to Intel, their pricing, and somewhat stagnated advancements in favor of AMD. I'll be honest, I've always been a little leary of AMD products in the past (although I have had several of there video cards in my main rig before) in regards to their drivers. They haven't struck me as quite as polished as Intel/Nvidia but I guess I'm about to find out if that has changed! Parts should (hopefully) be in in the next couple days so wish me luck guys! I'll be sure to post a few pics when the system gets up and going if there's interest.