Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
New build
I'm looking to upgrade my gaming rig, possibly this weekend. Currently have
i5 7600k
asus prime z270-ar
r9 390x
CORSAIR H80I V2 LIQUID COOLER
i5 7600k
asus prime z270-ar
r9 390x
CORSAIR H80I V2 LIQUID COOLER
| CORSAIR RM750 FM 80+G ATX PSU CRUCIAL 16GB 2X8 D4 2400 SPLT CL1 Looking at a ryzen 7 or i7 9700. can upgrade other components if needed... Any suggestions would be appreciated |
Comments
You don't mention storage. If you don't already have an SSD, then you should definitely get one. You can get 1 TB for under $100 these days.
Upgrading to a Core i7-9700 (or 9700K, which you may have meant) would give you more CPU cores and allow them to clock higher with turbo, but they'd fundamentally be the same CPU cores that you have now. Intel did decide to break motherboard compatibility so that you'd have to also buy a new motherboard to make that upgrade. Third gen Ryzen cores are about as good as Sky Lake cores on performance, but tend to use less power.
It's easy to upgrade a video card if there's some particular game you play that needs more GPU performance. If you want to upgrade your video card, I generally recommend that you at least double the performance of your old card. That would mean at least a Radeon RX 5700 or GeForce RTX 2060. Alternatively, if you're happy with your old GPU, you could keep it.
DDR4 is still the modern standard for CPU memory, so your old memory should still work with whatever you upgrade to if you want to keep it. You could upgrade to more memory and/or faster memory. That's cheaper than it used to be, now that memory prices have come down. You can get 32 GB for about $100 or so.
I have been hitting max cpu lately playing a few games. Mostly archeage, smite, and read dead.
I tend to watch a streaming service on second monitor while i play games also.
Task Manager will also tell you which programs are using how many cores. So long as nearly all of your CPU usage is stuff that you know what it is and want to be running at the same time, you're fine. If the reason you're maxing out your CPU is that other programs that you weren't aware of are eating a ton of CPU resources, then the solution is to shut down those other programs.
I'm not saying that you're wrong about needing a faster CPU. I am saying that I'd like to understand what the problem is before saying that such and such is the solution.
I have gigabyte internet so didnt think it was that.
I did full restore of windows and started fresh. Only thing i added is 2 games and discord and still having the same issue
Assuming that you're running Windows 10, open up Task Manager and check CPU usage on the processes tab. You can sort by CPU usage by clicking on the CPU column header. It's normal for there to be a lot of processes using some tiny fraction of a CPU core, such as bouncing back and forth between 0.1% and 0%. If you're using a lot of CPU power, it's typically one or a few processes that are using nearly all of it. Check to see which processes they are at times when you get the lag that you described.
If it's the game that you're playing that is using 98% of your CPU, then yeah, buying a CPU with more cores will fix your problem. If the problem is that something else that you don't know what it is is using 90% of your CPU, then the solution is to shut down that something else. Buying more cores that some rogue software immediately eats up won't necessarily help you. Sometimes anti-virus software doing something stupid (e.g., a full system scan once per day during a time when you play games) can hog a CPU. Cryptocurrency mining malware could do that to you, too.
Also check your memory usage. It's possible that the underlying problem is that you're running out of memory and paging to disk, which slows everything to a crawl. If you're over 90% memory usage when you have your lag problems, then buying more memory could be the real fix. Upgrading to 32 GB only costs about $100, and is much easier to do than swapping out a CPU and motherboard. That could be anywhere from a complete fix if running out of memory is your current problem to completely useless if you're not running out of memory.
I'm not saying that your diagnosis of needing a faster CPU is incorrect. I am saying that it is easy to find out for certain, and that you should do so before throwing money at the problem.
I appreciate all the information
I can't imagine that a 7600 is bottlenecking a R9 390 at anything less than an already pretty good framerate, unless the game is going to run like crap no matter what CPU you run it on.
Ram is staying around 50% max even when cpu goes to 100
I do believe the games are optimized poorly.
If Chrome is using two full CPU cores, then that is the problem. Unless you're actively playing a browser-based game or something like that, Chrome should usually be under 1% CPU usage except when you actively navigate to another web page. And even that should just be a brief spike that subsides after the page loads.
I suspect that the problem is cryptojacking. That is, something in the web browser is using your CPU to mine cryptocurrency for someone else. This could be malware that you've had for quite some time. It could also be malicious ads, which were very common a couple of years ago, but have become less so now that cryptocurrency prices have dropped. Alternatively, if you're intentionally mining in a browser while playing games, then stop doing that.
You can probably figure out which site is the problem by selectively closing browser tabs and seeing what happens to CPU usage. You might also be able to fix the problem even while keeping the site you want open just by blocking ads there.
The problem is that if you have some malicious software that is trying to use as much of your CPU as it can (which is certainly what it sounds like with Chrome at 50% CPU usage, unless that was only a brief spike when you loaded a page), buying a CPU with more cores just means that there is more CPU hardware for the malicious software to claim. It won't necessarily improve performance in the games that you actually want to use.
If you track the problem to being some particular site that you actually need causing heavy CPU usage, and it's not a fixable problem because the site has to do something more CPU intensive than most games, then buying a CPU with more cores will fix that. That would be very unusual, however. Simple video decode should mostly be handled by a video decode block on a GPU. It shouldn't use two full CPU cores.
Been researching the
G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB 2 x 16GB
Patriot Viper Steel DDR4-3200 (2x 16GB)
But willing to look at anythingI don't crypto mine at all
the ram, mother board, processor and liquid cooler were all bought in march of 2017
Budget wise id say around a thousand total but would spread it out a little.
spending 600 today what would you change first?
0.03
0.03
0.02
0.01
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
Somethings up with your Chrome....
Would the problem follow a re-format? Yes, if you keep going to the same sites.
I don't think a new CPU will fix the problem with Chrome, but with more threads available, maybe it would allow you to ignore it.
Video card.
After that, unless you run into a problem where one particular component besides the CPU dies or is clearly the bottleneck, I'd keep your current computer for a few more years and then replace it with an entirely new computer.