That time of year again - ryzen or coffee lake

Asm0deus

My son has been using an old hand me down PC my wife used to use for work, compaq presario cq5320 that I made fit a 5770 gpu, and it's time to get him something better for Xmas.

Now I was initially going to go with a ryzen1600 or 1600x and OC hopefully to 3.8 or 4ghz with a z370 mb that can use two gpus. I have a second 5770 I can xfire in his new pc till he get the 2 xgtx 760 from my wife and I when we upgrade our gpus.

Since I been thinking about this though we have the intel 8400/8600k which looks interesting and seem to boost well so I am now confused and not sure which way to go.

Mostly I don't want to buy anything else for this new PC of his except maybe new gpu, but he will probably just keep using 2x gpu we hand down from my wife's and from my PC, for the next 5 years.

The only thing I need to get is  a motherboard, a cpu and new ram.  All the other stuff needed for a PC he has already.

I have this ryzen
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/Calistin/saved/MgPdCJ


or something intel like this
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/Calistin/saved/KZ6wP6

For the intel build I could probably be okay with downgrading the ram to a slower speed, I know for DDR3 generally 1600mhz is good for gaming etc and I initially was looking at 3200 ddr4 due to ryzen needing the extra speed the way the infinity fabric works.

Not sure what would be a ddr4 equivalent to ddr3 1600mhz sweet spot so to speak.

Have to say I am tempted to just go with a ryzen build...

wanderica

The Coffee Lake processors are good, but the i5s, unless I'm mistaken, still don't have hyperthreading.  For that reason alone, I might be more tempted by the R5 1600 over the i5 8400.  More cores at attainable pricing means that games may make use of more threads going forward.  Additionally, even with 2 760s, he's likely to be GPU limited in newer titles with either processor, so they should both last a long time before needing to be upgraded. 

Given those choices, I would go with the 1600 to save 100 bucks.  If 4 years from now, he gets into encoding or streaming, the 1600 should provide a better experience.  Either way, those two should be roughly equal in performance.  I just built a 1600 based system for my brother, only he got my hand-me-down GTX 1070.  It OCs to 3.8 GHz with 2966 MHz RAM, and in some ways provides a smoother experience than my 6700k at 4.7 GHz.

Ridelynn

Coffee Lake i5s don’t have HT, true, but they are 6 core now, which makes them roughly equal to previous i7s.

Honestly, if you are using those GPUs, don’t spend any extra money on anything - the 5770 was a great GPU, but it’s beyond dated at this point. 760s will be much better, but I still wouldn’t pay extra for I more threads or faster RAM or anything else, because it will all be bottlenecks by the GPUs.

Honestly, in your shoes, I would go with a Kaby Pentium G4620 or i3 (Coffee is near impossible to find even in these lower tiers for something reasonably priced) , or a Ryzen R3. You won’t get nearly as fast of a computer as what you are talking about in the OP, but you are still going to be bottle necked by the GPU in nearly every game. Do get an SSD, and enough RAM, but don’t worry too much about RAM speed or anything like that.

If you are seriously thinking Coffee Lake or R5/R7, and put all that money in on it, put a couple hundred into a modern GPU to go with it.

Asm0deus

Ridelynn said:

Coffee Lake i5s don’t have HT, true, but they are 6 core now, which makes them roughly equal to previous i7s.

Honestly, if you are using those GPUs, don’t spend any extra money on anything - the 5770 was a great GPU, but it’s beyond dated at this point. 760s will be much better, but I still wouldn’t pay extra for I more threads or faster RAM or anything else, because it will all be bottlenecks by the GPUs.

Honestly, in your shoes, I would go with a Kaby Pentium G4620 or i3 (Coffee is near impossible to find even in these lower tiers for something reasonably priced) , or a Ryzen R3. You won’t get nearly as fast of a computer as what you are talking about in the OP, but you are still going to be bottle necked by the GPU in nearly every game. Do get an SSD, and enough RAM, but don’t worry too much about RAM speed or anything like that.

If you are seriously thinking Coffee Lake or R5/R7, and put all that money in on it, put a couple hundred into a modern GPU to go with it.

I want the gpu to be the bottleneck, goes like this I have 3 PCs to keep updating all the time, he's 8 years old and I find it easier to update change  gpus once in awhile in the course of 5 years or more.

I have tried doing cheaper cpu better gpu route before and it doesn't work out well and ends up in costing more in the long run.

I respect your opinion Ridelyn but sometimes you seem to miss the idea behind OPs and advise stuff that's not relevant.

The idea is imo a good long lasting system will almost always have the gpu as a bottleneck.  When the cpu starts giving you trouble it's time to build another which is the situation he is in so that is what I want to focus on for now, not the gpu. 

I mentioned in the OP that the 5770 are just a stop gap measure for now but maybe I wasn't clear enough in that my focus is really not the gpu for now in 3 to 6 months I will take a look at gpu's and who will get what on which PC.  Could be he gets the new gpu along as my wife and I get the 2x 760.

I am pretty sure with one of the two builds in the OP he will have no issues cpu wise especially if I do get 2 1060 one for him and one to go with my wifes 3570k

I was also aware the coffee lakes are hard to get which is another reason I was thinking of doing the ryzen build.

Point is it is much easier for me to over time get 2 or 3 new mid range gpu than to replace cpu/mb x3.

Our gpu are a bit behind but then we are still running all games on max no problems.  My old i5-750 is getting long in the tooth though so it probably better to give him and the wife pc a 1060 and keep sli the 760 on my PC.

I don't want to spend money to replace an old obsolete 2 core to replace with another 2 core that will be obsolete in a couple year if it isn't already.

As for the ram well it's important in a ryzen build not so much in an intel one, though I want to make a point of making sure all our PC will have 16gm of ram going forwards.

Only need 3 things ,a cpu, a motherboard and ram. All the other stuff he has, SSD and hdd included, hell he even has a ps3 controller he uses for some games via scptoolkit.

Hehe sorry if this seems like a rant it not intended as one!  Just trying to make my intentions and idea more clear. I want to phase out of 4 core builds much less go back to 2 core builds.

Thing is i have to stagger stuff out a little due to trying to keep things in the budget and while I know these forum seem to favor "getting it all at once or save up till you can" that isn't always the best option or even a viable one.

You're right though about his pc getting the newer gpu.

My upgrade cycle should be something like this for the 3 PC's running in the house:

~ Get cpu/mb/ram combo for son that will last maybe 5 to 7 years.

~ Get new gpu for two of the PC, probably 2x 1060..one for my wife one for my son and put the 2x 760 in my i5-750 4ghz. My 750 at 4ghz should be good to up to a 970/980 gpu

~ New build to replace my i5-750 with focus on cpu/mb, keep using 2x 760

~ Two new gpu, one to replace the sli 760 and my son's 1060 gpu

~ Look into new build for my wife to replace the 3570k or just get new gpu if the 3570k is still viable with a bigger OC or sli the two 1060's.

Each cpu/mb/ram build should be good enough to go through 2 or 3 major gpu upgrades.

Ridelynn

It’s your system. What you are thinking will certainly work. I have my doubts about it saving money in the long run, but it’s not my money to spend so...

Hope your son has fun with it!

Asm0deus

Ridelynn said:

It’s your system. What you are thinking will certainly work. I have my doubts about it saving money in the long run, but it’s not my money to spend so...

Hope your son has fun with it!

I know it will be cost effective, I have been doing this with two systems, my wife and I, it's just now I have to add in a 3rd.

Was mostly looking for feedback on those two system routes 8400 vs ryzen 1600.

Loke666

Unnless he compile video or code I would put my money on an acceptable graphics card instead and just get whatever not too old cheap thing I could get for CPU and motherboard.

As @Asm0deus said will the ancient GPU bottleneck it rather badly. If you plan to instead give him a new GPU later (there is always birthdays) you should be fine with the Ryzen, you could use the money you save on a SSD instead which is a good cheap upgrade that gives a lot of speed for a good price unless you need a too big one (keep the old drive as a media/store drive).

The GPU is the far most important thing if you game and using an ancient GFX card in a new computer will give you far worse gaming experience then the other way around.

Asm0deus

Loke666 said:

Unnless he compile video or code I would put my money on an acceptable graphics card instead and just get whatever not too old cheap thing I could get for CPU and motherboard.

As @Asm0deus said will the ancient GPU bottleneck it rather badly. If you plan to instead give him a new GPU later (there is always birthdays) you should be fine with the Ryzen, you could use the money you save on a SSD instead which is a good cheap upgrade that gives a lot of speed for a good price unless you need a too big one (keep the old drive as a media/store drive).

The GPU is the far most important thing if you game and using an ancient GFX card in a new computer will give you far worse gaming experience then the other way around.

Yes in Feb. is his birthday so he will by then for sure have a 1060, I will maybe buy one before then if there's some good sales.

Like I said he has a ssd for windows and a 1 tb hdd already.  I should not have mentioned the 5770 as people are focusing on that too much.

It just i have two of those hanging around and he is presently using one in the junk PC he has now.  I figure I can stick the second one in his system till he gets the new gpu.  Basically I don't want to gimp the build cpu wise simply to get a more recent gpu "right now!"  which is what getting a r3 or G4620 or i3 cpu would be doing.

Also gpu pricing is pretty wacko right now.

The idea is to get a good base system and upgrade the gpu a little after.  What I was looking at is how viable a ryzen 1600 is long term as a cpu.

My i5-750 has really proven to be great long term but then it has the ability to OC really well as it has been running at 4ghz the last 7 years.

I know my wife's 3570k can OC to 4.5 or 4.7 so that's good  for the long haul too. 

I think the ryzen if I can hit 3.8 or even better 4ghz will be good long term too, at least better than 8400?

Ozmodan

A new GPU is a major investment these days.  Personally I would choose a Ryzen chip, motherboard and memory.  I just recently rebuilt a couple old parent computers for teenagers doing exactly that.  I just stuck in inexpensive 1030 gpu's and both said their school software runs much better.  Sure, not fantastic gaming computers, but most games still run on them and much better than using a Intel cpu with integrated gpu.


Hopefully GPU prices will subside some next year.  The only good buy these days is a low end 1080 and you are looking at $550+ for those.

gervaise1

Stuff has to be built in time for Christmas of course but if you can wait a few weeks that may see Coffee Lake supplies sorted. Which should see CL prices fall to Intel's suggested price (so -$40 on the one you listed). Which could have a knock on effect on Ryzen prices. (So potentially a saving whichever way you go.)

Brunlin

  I think the first thing to do is define the goal of your sons computer. You said its time for a update....but the why hasn't really been determine. Define that and that might help you determine which upgrade you need to do. If its just because you now have better parts to go into the pc than just do that. If its because he has a hard time playing now because of lower setting or poor fps, than I would address that issue and figure out what the best upgrade for the parts you have on hand which allows you to buy the least amount of parts.

  What does your son play? If its just minecraft,Wow,Wizard 101, etc or something else less demanding than go with the least up grade. However, if he is playing more demanding games or is looking forward to a more demanding game that is on the horizon that should determine the gpu.

 Ok, i just wanted to address the why because that should determine the longevity of the upgrade. I think with the 1060 that you plan on getting him later and the Ryzen 1600 that would be find if he is playing older games in 1080p. It will be find for newer games as well in medium settings. OC it for more Cpu intensive games but you should have no bottle neck issues. As for the dual older gpus, do what ever gets you by until you get the 1060. 

As for the GPUs being wonky its because of the ethereum miners are buying up all the good cards and making the prices unstable. Eventually that should play out. As for me I built this pc 5 years ago on a 60 gig SSD, a 1 TB Black WD, a 7870 2gb card, I5 2500k cpu, and 8 gigs of 1600 ram. My card died, so i replaced it with a 1050. I am milking this for all i can get out of it before i upgrade. So far I havent had any issues with playing any games. I play Black Desert Online, Gw 2, Blade and Soul. H1z1 king of the kill, Archage, WOW....no issues and I am probably good until the end of next year or maybe two.

Dinasty

Or you could by him a book and or encourage him to go outside.

Pretty sad sight theses days, driving down the street you see so few kids out playing like we used to.

USA number one in obesity and diabetes. Yay us! /groan 

Asm0deus

Dinasty said:

Or you could by him a book and or encourage him to go outside.

Pretty sad sight theses days, driving down the street you see so few kids out playing like we used to.

USA number one in obesity and diabetes. Yay us! /groan 

Nice assumptions there mate!

Firstly I live in Canada and I assure you he gets plenty of outdoors time, I am one of these old farts that spent his childhood jumping in lakes and streams, building treehouses with old junk tools and wood we found here and there and filched from "our folks" cause yes we the local kids played together.  You know back when you spent sunrise to sunset and then some outside....

I actually have a library "hard cover and soft cover" that's slightly bigger than the local town library, wont even mention how many ebooks I have.....

When I want to go fishing with the boy it's 3 min drive to the local lakes and we have a nice trail that goes by the back yard where we can pick local wildberries of various variety.

Doesn't change the fact that computers are important and it's a bad idea to have a computer illiterate child.

Yourself should maybe step away from the keyboard there and do more reading and learn some of the stuff I have been teaching my child.  For example a healthy body or mind go hand in hand, one doesn't trump the other...




@Brunlin

The pc is primarily a gaming pc that is used for some game time, which is a privilege he earns not an acquired right. He uses it for watching comics or playing learning games and some outright games we all play together as a family.

The games vary but it's usually stuff like Grim Dawn, SWL, DDO, he also enjoys various lego games.

My goal is that his PC should have a cpu/mobo that will last at least 5 year on max settings with only gpu upgrades.  Kind of like how my i5-750 still plays many game at max and is only starting now to need to tune a few settings down to high or med.