Have a 6800 - Upgrade old components or build new

€>sense · 12-01-2022 10:57pm #1

Hi all,

Thanks in advance, as I've always been given a good steer by the great people on here.

I have an AMD R8 6800 for about 6 months in the following old PC:

CPU: i5 6600 CPU

RAM: 8GB (1x 8192MB) Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 DIMM CL16-16-16

MB: ASUS ROG STRIX H270F GAMING LGA1151 DDR4 DP HDMI DVI M.2 ATX

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G3, 80 Plus Gold 550W

Monitor: Benq 1440p 144 Hz Free sync

Cash is allowing a bit of an upgrade so the question is would I be better off:

1) spending my money on a better CPU & RAM with that MB and trying to get a couple more years out of it? If so, what would be a good CPU and RAM for it? I know there is something about matching sticks of RAM, so can I just buy 8GB more of the DDR4 above and bang it in or is there something else I should do?

or

2) upgrading CPU, MB, RAM & PSU to 2021/2 tech to match the 6800? If so, can you recommend good gaming processor, MB, RAM and PSU for gaming, I've no interest in overclocking.

Thanks again for any help or advice.

€>sense · 13-01-2022 1:56am

Thanks Sugarman.

I'm scratching option 1 and going with the full upgrade.

I'm going to go for the PSU because of its age and it doesn't meet the min spec on the AMD website for the 6800. I'll also have a go at making a back up PC out of the old and functioning CPU/RAM/MB. I'm a bit nervous about PSUs since my nephew's PSU blew and took the MB and HD with it. Geez it was hard enough getting the 6800, if I blew it by trying to save e100 on a PSU I'd never forgive myself.

Where do we shop nowadays post Brexit? I've used amazon UK mostly in the past, but doubt post-brexit that's a runner.

If I was to increase the budget to €600 what would the recommendations be for CPU, MB, RAM?

BTW DDR4 or DDR5 RAM?

SeanW · 13-01-2022 9:47am

Definitely DDR4, NOT DDR5. Right now DDR5 is about as easy to find as graphics cards. If you do it will be insanely expensive and the performance increase over DDR4 will not be worth it.

Alder Lake boards come with either DDR4 or DDR5 support, but not both. If you're going down the Alder Lake route, e.g. to get the Intel i5 12400F, make sure the motherboard you buy with it uses/supports DDR4.

€>sense · 13-01-2022 1:12pm

Thanks SeanW.

Scratch anything insanely expensive like DDR5. One GPU-like saga is enough for one lifetime.

€>sense · 13-01-2022 10:43pm

Any recommendations for retailers?

Aodhan5000 · 13-01-2022 11:40pm

Are you sure mindfactory delivers here? Didn't think they did

Confused11811 · 14-01-2022 1:39am

Mindfactory, won't deliver to Ireland directly. Alternate.de will but you need to do a price request via the checkout. The items are reserved for you and they'll send a final quote with Irish VAT and delivery costs applied. You have 24 hours to process the quote before they cancel the order. At least that's how it was a couple of months back.

@€>sense I still think it's worth looking at an AMD as an option. The Ryzen CPU is more expensive than the Intel offering but depending on the day you look you might find a good deal on a B550 motherboard and save in that regard. You be able to max of the performance of the RX6800 with the AMD setup because you can enable AMD SAM. The AMD option might give you the best overall performance but it just depends on the price premium you willing to put on that and if you can save enough on a motherboard when looking to buy.

Regarding AMD SAM. I get a 1000+ point boost in benchmark performance by having it enabled on a RX6800XT . You should see similar performance increase for the RX6800 by enabling it at motherboard bios level on the AMD setup. This won't be an option with an Intel setup.

Either setup option is a big upgrade and you'll be happy with the results.

€>sense · 14-01-2022 9:20pm

Thanks Confused18811.

Do Intel have an ability to use SAM also?

Confused11811 · 14-01-2022 10:15pm

AMD SAM only works with AMD CPU & boards.

I believe it was originally intended for Ryzen 5000 series CPUs and B520/550 or better boards but was back ported so now Ryzen 3000 series CPUs and some B450 & x470 motherboards can have enabled SAM.

In real world activity you probably won't notice to much of a difference between a SAM enable system and one that's not but personally if the overall cost difference was less than a 100 - 150 euro I would pay the extra just for satisfaction in knowing I can push the hardware to its fullest potential. Absolutely no real logic behind that other than knowing I can do it but that's just me.

K.O.Kiki · 15-01-2022 1:33am

PCPartPicker Part List: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/nxKmfP

CPU: Intel Core i5-12400F 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor (€197.85 @ Computeruniverse)

CPU Cooler: be quiet! Shadow Rock Slim 2 CPU Cooler (€41.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)

Motherboard: MSI PRO B660M-A DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard (€188.89 @ Amazon Deutschland)

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (€59.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)

Video Card: AMD Radeon RX 6800 16 GB Video Card (Purchased For €0.00)

Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case (€48.83 @ Amazon Deutschland)

Power Supply: EVGA G5 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€85.59 @ Amazon Deutschland)

Total: €622.06

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-01-15 01:25 CET+0100

-------

Availability of good, cheap B660 motherboards should improve in the next 1-2 weeks.

Regarding going AMD, even with a cheap 100 euro motherboard, the inflated price of all Ryzen 5 models means you're only saving 50euro vs the Intel 12400F - not even remotely worth it considering you're losing 25-30% performance at 1080p.

Gile_na_gile · 17-01-2022 11:34am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118478263#Comment_118478263

That is a pretty decent build. The B660 boards are still expensive but seem to slowly opening and coming down in price. Also even DDR4 at 3600Mhz seems expensive, and I will probably go down to 3200Mhz too (any real notable difference?). Here my own:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/vq6GBc

CPU: Intel Core i5-12400F 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor (€193.76 @ Mindfactory)

Motherboard: MSI PRO B660M-A DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard (€188.89 @ Amazon Deutschland)

Memory: Crucial Ballistix 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (€114.90 @ Alza)

Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (Purchased For €0.00)

Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6 GB OC Video Card (Purchased For €0.00)

Case: Fractal Design Core 2500 ATX Mid Tower Case (€63.70 @ Computeruniverse)

Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For €0.00)

Total: €561.25

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-01-17 11:31 CET+0100

I reckon if I wait two weeks prices should improve as shipping and supplies lighten a little, plus greater supplies of B660 competition. At the moment, the B660s are barely cheaper than their clockable Z690 equivalents. To save on delivery costs, would prefer single suppliers (unless Amazon free delivery) like Alternate.

25-01-2022 9:15pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118488271#Comment_118488271

Not sure if you bought yet but be extremely careful on buying off Amazon.de and make sure to read reviews for things like cases that may have similar cases by the same manufacturers - I've recently ordered a new build minus GPU and they ended up charging 40 euro to ship a 40 euro case which I didn't notice until the end.

You'd easily get away with a 10400F and a B560 board for the next few years. I got a 10400F with a B560m Pro4 Asrock board for 200 euro shipped off Amazon. You can either save the money or invest in getting another 1TB SSD. Definitely get a modular PSU as well. I got a seasonic 750w+ gold fully modular for 70 quid on Amazon Germany, amazing value to be had if your not looking for specifically for a Corsair.

It's all relative but do some looking around if you've not ordered. You'll not notice the difference between the 10400F and the 12400F imo to justify the price. Although some of the newer boards require you to have a 12th gen CPU to be able use one of the fancy m2 slots

Gile_na_gile · 26-01-2022 11:45am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118532611#Comment_118532611

I also own a Dell precision laptop with a 9th gen i7 and have a MacBook Pro 2020 from work, so I'll probably just wait it out a bit and go straight to an i7 12700 or its older version if it comes up cheap, perhaps with DDR5 once prices drop. I have the PSU already from 2019 so that will stay. Only shortcoming is that the Alder Lake mobos have an extra 4-pin connector that this PSU does not have, but it is not essential to connect it. The rig's Haswell i5-4460 is fine for most games but lags for general use and CPU-bound games.