the ultimate $3500 or less vr-friendly PC build

[von_Michelstamm]

the problem: I have very little time to figure out a good PC build and haven't really done one before. I also have little kids so looking to get the thing put together and up and running ASAP, rather than lying around in parts on my desk.

In short, I'm trying to build one with as little hassle as possible for the best price.

I've heard stories of things not lining up correctly or pushing against each other, compatibility issues, etc.

Can someone recommend me a tried and true, "just put it together" full list of components for a headache-free new PC? I figured $3500 is a good price for something that can run an excellent VR setup, is that reasonable or can it be done for less?

 

I guess I'd use the 9900 so I don't have to do upgrades later....

 

Thanks!

Edited December 11, 2019 by von_Michelstamm

[Jaws2002]

PC parts picker should help you a lot with the compatibility issues and prices. I spent a few good hours in there.:)

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

 

 

Edited December 11, 2019 by Jaws2002

[Stolle]

Make sure you get an unlocked processor.... a 9900K not a 9900 (if you go with intel)  you will still need to overclock to get the best vr experience. $3500 will get you really good vr  capable computer. 

[von_Michelstamm]

they seem to have one listed thats only 2300 based on the 9900k.

What here should I swap out and with what?
https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/8B6MnQ/glorious-intel-gamingstreaming-build

 

[Jaws2002]

      From that list, I would change the power supply. Maybe because i was burned by two Corsair power supplies. One (AX1000W) was not able to run my GTX590 and I replaced it with a Corsair Platinum AX860W  that two years later burned my CPU and motherboard in the same shot. I wouldn't touch another Corsair PSU. 

 

So I would change that with something in the 850W range from Seasonic. Something that's Platinum certified and comes with ten years warranty.

     

         I have the exact CPU water cooler you have on that list....Corsair , again. It was the only 360mm AIO i could find locally and i bought it. After i installed it i noticed that one of the fans was running 100% all the time and the USB cable that should connect the pump to a USB header on the motherboard was not working, so my pump was also running at 100% all the time. I managed to find the fault for the fan connector (one of the pins connecting the three fans together was pushed in. I pulled it out again and it was fixed.  Corsair support shipped a new USB connector for the pump, but in the mean time i had to hook the pump to the USB port outside the case.  Now it's working ok and it's quiet, but i wouldn't buy it again. 

     I'd go with something from different brand that didn't drop in quality so much.  Nzxt, Termaltake, or Coolermaster, probably make better quality CPU coolers.  I heared the EVGA unit is pretty decent as well, just a bit noiser.

     Another thing to look for in a CPU water cooler is the connection of the pump to the motherboard. This one connects it with a USB cable, so the pump and RGB lighting can only be controlled with their software. I'd get a cooler that connects with a normal fan header, so it can be controlled by the motherboard and you don't have to install their bloatware.

 

I don't know anything about the company that makes the memory, so if this would be my rig i'd get something different, but then again, there are three companies that make the actual memory chips, all this companies just make the PCBs.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Jaws2002

[SeaW0lf]

Regarding PSUs, several Corsair PSUs are made by Seasonic, but since you don't have much time to research, just get a Seasonic PSU and call it a day. Just remember to get a PSU with 8+8 pins CPU power cable, because the Z390 motherboards are coming with 8+ power cable. Mine (Z390 UD) is 8+4.

 

Regarding AIO water coolers, most of them are OEM as well. Asetek (Corsair, Thermaltake, NZXT, EVGA, etc.) and CooliT (Corsair) are common on the western market. DeepCool is popular in Asia. The catch is, Asetek has the patent of the pump design on the block, so in the US in special, you mainly find Asetek models and CooLIT, which probably sells to Corsair with Asetek patent fees included.

 

Then no matter if you choose Thermaltake, Corsair, EVGA, NZXT, you are basically getting the same unit (Asetek OEM) plus the gimmicks theses brands attach to it. To buy one of these, I recommend Corsair, since Corsair Link, their app / controller is older and more developed than the one of NZXT, for example. Thermaltake is also old in the market. But not all models from Corsair are Asetek ones. The round coldplates (the copper part where you apply thermal paste) are from Asetek, the squarish ones are from CoolIT. I used to like CoolIT more in the past, but I'm not sure how they are nowadays.

 

AIO water coolers are a bit tricky and it is best to test it before install to see if the pump rpm is correct (Asetek pumps run generally at 3000rpm), if the fans are within spec and if the radiator is properly filled.

 

I would get a 360mm rad with good fans (hard to get good fans nowadays with this RGB plague).

 

I would do some research and get a good Gibabyte motherboard. The consensus is that the top of the line Z390s from Gigabyte have a better VRM design for the i9 in special. More phases on the VRM. The word out there is that Asus simply split the phases from the Z370 series to call it Z390 series. But do some research, because it is not every model.

 

I would get good RAM. You can find 3600Mhz RAM with cas 14 for example.

 

Edited December 12, 2019 by SeaW0lf

[mpdugas]

Be mindful of adding accessories to the Z390/370 PC.  Most processors in that range support a maximum of 24 CPU pci-e lanes for peripheral communications.  Those are the hardware channels that the CPU uses to take questions from software and give back answers.  The quality of the pci-e connections is also important, given that pci-e 3.0 is faster (broader) than pci-e 2.0.  So keep that in mind when buying your MB.

 

A full-capacity GPU requires 16 pci-e lanes.  You are going to want that for VR; excellent HMD screen performance is the key to a good VR experience.  An SSD requires 4 lanes, as do most other accessories, like a network card, whether wired or not.  So, once you have an optimized 16X GPU booting to a good SSD, you've got 4 pci-e lanes left to splurge on accessories, like networking.

 

The more accessories you add, the greater the burden on the CPU communications processing channels.  The AIO, for instance, is an accessory, since the CPU controls it.  Once you start loading up the processing channels by adding peripherals, those pci-e lanes have to come from somewhere.  You don't want to see the CPU downgrading your GPU connection to 8X pci-e lanes just to free up some pci-e lanes to keep your RGB controller flipping pretty lights.  That's where nausea will come from.  Literally.

 

Nonetheless, it's lots of fun sorting the wheat from the chaff of PC goodness, so building a fiscally efficient performance PC is a hoot!

[CanadaOne]

$3500?

 

That builds a dream rig.

 

 

[Jaws2002]

4 hours ago, mpdugas said:

Be mindful of adding accessories to the Z390/370 PC.  Most processors in that range support a maximum of 24 CPU pci-e lanes for peripheral communications.  Those are the hardware channels that the CPU uses to take questions from software and give back answers.  The quality of the pci-e connections is also important, given that pci-e 3.0 is faster (broader) than pci-e 2.0.  So keep that in mind when buying your MB.

 

A full-capacity GPU requires 16 pci-e lanes.  You are going to want that for VR; excellent HMD screen performance is the key to a good VR experience.  An SSD requires 4 lanes, as do most other accessories, like a network card, whether wired or not.  So, once you have an optimized 16X GPU booting to a good SSD, you've got 4 pci-e lanes left to splurge on accessories, like networking.

 

The more accessories you add, the greater the burden on the CPU communications processing channels.  The AIO, for instance, is an accessory, since the CPU controls it.  Once you start loading up the processing channels by adding peripherals, those pci-e lanes have to come from somewhere.  You don't want to see the CPU downgrading your GPU connection to 8X pci-e lanes just to free up some pci-e lanes to keep your RGB controller flipping pretty lights.  That's where nausea will come from.  Literally.

 

Nonetheless, it's lots of fun sorting the wheat from the chaff of PC goodness, so building a fiscally efficient performance PC is a hoot!

 

 

   This is one of the reasons i went AMD.  The x570 chipset includes sixteen Gen 4 PCIe lanes, in addition to the 24 Gen 4 PCIe lanes on the CPU.

17 hours ago, von_Michelstamm said:

they seem to have one listed thats only 2300 based on the 9900k.

What here should I swap out and with what?
https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/8B6MnQ/glorious-intel-gamingstreaming-build

 

 

Here i did some changes to your rig. Changed the motherboard to the master, memory to 3600, PSU to a 850W Platinum seasonic and i changed the CPU cooler to the 360mm NZXT Kraken . I have no idea about the case, so you can add  what you want. I changed the graphics card to Gigabyte so you don't have to install different software to run the lights.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/HYkvjp

Edited December 12, 2019 by Jaws2002

[simfan2015]

23 minutes ago, CanadaOne said:

That builds a dream rig

In the US ... yes

However in Europe an RTX2080 Ti alone still goes for 1500 USD (includes VAT/TAX).

9900K ... 600 USD etc

It all depends on definition of "Dream PC"

The new PIMAX 8KX, come march 2020, will surely bring any existing graphics card to its knees ! (depending on game settings)

3500 USD is not even ... that much if one hopes to keep a gaming PC relevant for more than 5 years !?  

[SeaW0lf]

Whoever is getting an i9-9900K for gaming, sometimes with a custom loop, sometimes a binned chip, RTX 2080 Ti isn't worried about pcie lanes or thinking about loading the PC with peripherals. The pcie 3.0 at 8X won't probably bottleneck the 2080 Super at 2K anyways, much less weaker cards, then in general you have gamers and casual Photoshop users getting the 1151 and workstation people getting HEDT or Ryzen, Threadripper.

[Jaws2002]

2 hours ago, SeaW0lf said:

Whoever is getting an i9-9900K for gaming, sometimes with a custom loop, sometimes a binned chip, RTX 2080 Ti isn't worried about pcie lanes or thinking about loading the PC with peripherals. The pcie 3.0 at 8X won't probably bottleneck the 2080 Super at 2K anyways, much less weaker cards, then in general you have gamers and casual Photoshop users getting the 1151 and workstation people getting HEDT or Ryzen, Threadripper.

 

 

  Well, they should. As we can see above, a new top of the line PC is expensive and you may want to think about it's future. Even now the 2080Ti is bottlenecked if you drop it from PCIEX16 to PCIex8. It's only about five percent loss in performance, but on the other hand it's more performance loss than what you gain going Intel instead of AMD. AMD doesn't have this problem yet, even with the 2080Ti, because it used PCIe gen 4 and has double the bandwidth.

   With a $3000 build, down the road, you want to be able to swap the graphics card and give your PC a solid boost.  Next generation GPUs will require a lot more bandwidth and z390 is limited there. Then there are the new fast Gen4 PCIe  NMVe drives that have a solid advantage over older gen and z390 can't take advantage of them.

  In my opinion Z390 is already too limited platform and it doesn't offer enough head room for the future. 

 

 

EDIT:

 

Here's a little something to think about from gamer's nexus. This is represents a small sample of the enthusiast market but it's still relevant:

 

 

Edited December 12, 2019 by Jaws2002

[SeaW0lf]

I said that whoever is building such a rig won't bottleneck the pcie lanes. These are gaming oriented rigs. It is not for everyone, not even me, but if I had the money, I would not think twice and I would not regret the money spent. I'm loving my i5, very low temps, high clocks.

[von_Michelstamm]

Cool, thanks Jaws! I added a corsair carbide 274 R case, solely because it can look WWII with a coat of spray paint.

 

 

Any advice here?

 

Edited December 12, 2019 by von_Michelstamm

[Jaws2002]

I have a full tower and i like the extra room for everything and extra cooling options.But that depends on you. How much room you have for the PC. does your PC sit under the desk, do you have enough room for a full tower?

 

other than that it looks good.

 

EDIT: about thew graphics card. that's just my idea because it's gigabyte, like the motherboard, but i have no idea how it compares with other 2080Tis at that price range. You need to do a bit of research there, maybe you get better performing card from different vendor, or cheaper cards with similar performance. There are a lot of 2080tis out there. do a bit of research.

 EVGA and MSI make some fast cards.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Jaws2002

[CanadaOne]

6 hours ago, simfan2015 said:

In the US ... yes

However in Europe an RTX2080 Ti alone still goes for 1500 USD (includes VAT/TAX).

9900K ... 600 USD etc

It all depends on definition of "Dream PC"

The new PIMAX 8KX, come march 2020, will surely bring any existing graphics card to its knees ! (depending on game settings)

3500 USD is not even ... that much if one hopes to keep a gaming PC relevant for more than 5 years !?  

 

I guess money means different things to different people. But I'm just a working class guy, and a 3900X/2080ti machine would be Top Freaking Shelf for me, and I could absolutely build it with that much cash. 

[WallysWorld]

48 minutes ago, CanadaOne said:

 

I guess money means different things to different people. But I'm just a working class guy, and a 3900X/2080ti machine would be Top Freaking Shelf for me, and I could absolutely build it with that much cash. 

With the poor exchange rate, it's pretty pricey for some hardware here. I looked at a RTX 2080 in September with my new i9-9900k build, but decided on the RTX 2070 Super as it was about $240 CAD less and supposedly is only about 6% slower than the 2080. A 2080 Ti would have been another $600-800 CAD which would mean my build would have gone over or very close to $4,000 CAD.

[Alonzo]

I think the accessories thing is a red herring. NVMe drives make zero difference for gaming, so that's just burning money, but might be useful for non-gaming stuff. I have one, but it doesn't help my games load faster.

 

IL2 in VR loves CPU frequency and low-latency RAM. That points to a 9900K (might as well get the 9900KS for the higher bin), a 360mm AIO cooler, and 3600 CAS-14 RAM or better. The RAM especially is very important, most games it makes little difference, but for IL2 in VR it actually does.

 

For the GPU, you might consider the 2080ti Kingpin edition. This comes with a special BIOS to remove voltage and clock limits, and has a hybrid cooler so you can water cool it. It's expensive, but you did say "dream build". It's such a good GPU that if you can build the rest of the PC for $1500 you might be able to squeeze in this GPU.

[CanadaOne]

35 minutes ago, WallysWorld said:

With the poor exchange rate, it's pretty pricey for some hardware here. I looked at a RTX 2080 in September with my new i9-9900k build, but decided on the RTX 2070 Super as it was about $240 CAD less and supposedly is only about 6% slower than the 2080. A 2080 Ti would have been another $600-800 CAD which would mean my build would have gone over or very close to $4,000 CAD.

 

I hear ya. I just dropped a bundle (by my standards) on a 2060 Super.

 

Maybe I'm just cheap, or poor, but when you start getting into the multiple thousands for a gaming PC, you're in the rarefied airs of good fortune.

[Alonzo]

Here's a build for $3555 CAD that includes a 9900KS, 3600-CAS14 RAM, and a hybrid cooled 2080ti. The motherboard is one I selected a while ago, there might be better options. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/jPCJn7

[mpdugas]

6 hours ago, SeaW0lf said:

I said that whoever is building such a rig won't bottleneck the pcie lanes. These are gaming oriented rigs. It is not for everyone, not even me, but if I had the money, I would not think twice and I would not regret the money spent. I'm loving my i5, very low temps, high clocks.

 

The problem is not that the 16x GPU will bottle-neck the bandwidth of its pci-e lanes, or even the 8x slot.  The problem is that peripherals will cannibalize the pci-e lanes, and what started out as a 16x GPU can be throttled down to 4x one simply by adding peripherals.  It won't take a whole lot of them (peripherals) to do so, since each one uses about 4 lanes for itself.

 

Call it "silent death by diminishing lane creep"; you won't notice it because the PC will continue to run so long as you have physical slots to plug extra peripherals into.  Unless you are aware of this self-adjusting-hardware behavior of modern PCs, you may not notice until nausea sets in.

 

That was what I pointing out: take it easy on hardware binging.

 

P.S. As for an example of how robust pci-e capacity is, my Vive Pro wireless headset passes all of my VR visual data from my 1080ti to my HMD through a single 1 x pci-e lane: Intel Wireless Gigabit is pretty awesome technology.

 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/wireless-products/wigig-overview.html

[dburne]

It is always a good idea when doing a build to read up on the manual for the particular motherboard one has to find out

what using up certain slots can mean for others.

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by dburne

[von_Michelstamm]

13 hours ago, mpdugas said:

Be mindful of adding accessories to the Z390/370 PC.  Most processors in that range support a maximum of 24 CPU pci-e lanes for peripheral communications.  Those are the hardware channels that the CPU uses to take questions from software and give back answers.  The quality of the pci-e connections is also important, given that pci-e 3.0 is faster (broader) than pci-e 2.0.  So keep that in mind when buying your MB.

 

A full-capacity GPU requires 16 pci-e lanes.  You are going to want that for VR; excellent HMD screen performance is the key to a good VR experience.  An SSD requires 4 lanes, as do most other accessories, like a network card, whether wired or not.  So, once you have an optimized 16X GPU booting to a good SSD, you've got 4 pci-e lanes left to splurge on accessories, like networking.

 

The more accessories you add, the greater the burden on the CPU communications processing channels.  The AIO, for instance, is an accessory, since the CPU controls it.  Once you start loading up the processing channels by adding peripherals, those pci-e lanes have to come from somewhere.  You don't want to see the CPU downgrading your GPU connection to 8X pci-e lanes just to free up some pci-e lanes to keep your RGB controller flipping pretty lights.  That's where nausea will come from.  Literally.

 

Nonetheless, it's lots of fun sorting the wheat from the chaff of PC goodness, so building a fiscally efficient performance PC is a hoot!

 

 

8 hours ago, SeaW0lf said:

I said that whoever is building such a rig won't bottleneck the pcie lanes. These are gaming oriented rigs. It is not for everyone, not even me, but if I had the money, I would not think twice and I would not regret the money spent. I'm loving my i5, very low temps, high clocks.

 

What components would buy right now to build a brand new machine, if I gave you $3500? (without monitor)

[mpdugas]

1 hour ago, von_Michelstamm said:

 

 

 

What components would buy right now to build a brand new machine, if I gave you $3500? (without monitor)

 

Let me think about that delicious prospect for just a little bit, ok?

 

I'll get back to you with something...

[Alonzo]

16 hours ago, mpdugas said:

Be mindful of adding accessories to the Z390/370 PC.  Most processors in that range support a maximum of 24 CPU pci-e lanes for peripheral communications.  Those are the hardware channels that the CPU uses to take questions from software and give back answers.  The quality of the pci-e connections is also important, given that pci-e 3.0 is faster (broader) than pci-e 2.0.  So keep that in mind when buying your MB.

 

A full-capacity GPU requires 16 pci-e lanes.  You are going to want that for VR; excellent HMD screen performance is the key to a good VR experience.  An SSD requires 4 lanes, as do most other accessories, like a network card, whether wired or not.  So, once you have an optimized 16X GPU booting to a good SSD, you've got 4 pci-e lanes left to splurge on accessories, like networking.

 

The more accessories you add, the greater the burden on the CPU communications processing channels.  The AIO, for instance, is an accessory, since the CPU controls it.  Once you start loading up the processing channels by adding peripherals, those pci-e lanes have to come from somewhere.  You don't want to see the CPU downgrading your GPU connection to 8X pci-e lanes just to free up some pci-e lanes to keep your RGB controller flipping pretty lights.  That's where nausea will come from.  Literally.

 

Do you have a link for this info? From some casual Googling it seems like the majority of peripherals will connect through the motherboard chipset, not direct to the CPU, and therefore will not steal lanes from the GPU. NVMe drives might use some of those lanes, but as I've said before they give you almost zero benefit over a regular SSD for gaming. I'm also reading that PCI-e x16 to x8 varies from zero performance impact to 5%, depending on application (Puget Systems, Titan X tested).

 

On my system I've never worried about any of this, and I have both an NVMe boot drive as well as other SSDs connected through SATA, loads of USB junk, etc etc, and my GPU is still running at PCIe x16 according to GPU-Z.

[SeaW0lf]

7 hours ago, von_Michelstamm said:

What components would buy right now to build a brand new machine, if I gave you $3500? (without monitor)

 

It would require some research, but I would get an i9-9900KS, probably binned, the best Gigabyte for the i9, Seasonic PSU, high speed RAM, probably 4000Mhz or higher, a Kryos NEXT water block, a D5 pump, res, black tubing 10/16mm (EPDM), barbed fittings (simple stuff, sort of building an AIO of custom cooling) and a 480mm slim rad (max 45mm) with Noctua fans, a Phanteks case, an M.2 for the OS and software’s, a couple SATA SSDs for content, a good sound card and perhaps an Aquacomputer fan controller (or similar) and a MSI or EVGA RTX 2080 Ti. I'm not sure if I would overclock and get a water block for the GPU, but the 480mm rad would handle both with no problems.

 

The GPU is tricky, because the 2080 Ti does not have a good cost benefit and the RTX 3080 will probably match it or be better and slash the prices even compared to the 2080 Super. I'm not sure if they are going to release the 3080 Ti right the way. Then I could get a 2080 Super for the time being, I'm not sure. I would have to do some research.

Edited December 13, 2019 by SeaW0lf

[Rei-sen]

The question is, will the $3500 PC with i9900K(S), GTX2800Ti and 3600+Hz RAM be able to run IL-2 with Ultra Graphics in VR smooth on Pimax 8KX or HP Reverb? I feel like to be able to run it smooth we need to wait for the 3080(Ti) and whatever new processor will be around at that time.

[von_Michelstamm]

so it makes sense to wait for the new graphics card?

 

[ZachariasX]

8 minutes ago, Arthur-A said:

we need to wait for the 3080(Ti)

Next summer then. Probably longer until it is actually available. You really want to do this? By next summer, the 9900 will hardly be first choice anymore as far as CPU's go.

[SeaW0lf]

Just now, ZachariasX said:

Next summer then. Probably longer until it is actually available. You really want to do this? By next summer, the 9900 will hardly be first choice anymore as far as CPU's go.

 

I'm not sure if the latency will held the Ryzen 4000 series the same way the HEDT series was never the best option for gaming. Besides, an i9-9900K at 5ghz will still be a very strong chip for gaming, especially for simulators, MFS 2020 included. If people wait for the Ryzen 4000, what if they postpone the release? People are going to buy a rig in 2021?

 

I would just hold on the 2080 Ti because the price is just insane. The 3080 might come cheaper than the 2080 Super and better than the 2080 Ti. Untill it is proven that AMD has a better chip for mainly single threaded gaming (simulators), I would hold my horses and go with Intel.

[Rei-sen]

5 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

You really want to do this? By next summer, the 9900 will hardly be first choice anymore as far as CPU's go.

No, I don't think I'll build a new PC in summer. For me the only reason to go ahead will be getting a Pimax 8KX, or maybe another headset with similar FOV and resolution (Oculus or HTC, but definitely not WMR). So I'd rather be damn sure that the new rig is going to handle it well. I don't  want to spend a ton of money on PC only to realize that it cannot handle IL-2 in VR on a new headset smooth. 

Until then, I'll stick to my current setup.

[ZachariasX]

20 minutes ago, SeaW0lf said:

I'm not sure if the latency will held the Ryzen 4000 series the same way the HEDT series was never the best option for gaming

The 3000 series AMD do not have the latency issues that the 2000 series have, as they are connected differently (directly) and feature a larger cache. They beat Intel on IPC. The "latency advantage" is someting that Intel themselves have to ditch, as it became their problem for upping core numbers. This in many respects make the 9900 the last of its kind. This is a decided fate. Not a speculation.

 

I'm not saying that the 9900 isn't a great chip for gaming, it most certainly is. But by next summer, you will most likely have the first of the 4000 series Ryzens appearing. You can count on further increased performance per core. If AMD just makes another modest gains, it will not be matched in any way by even OC'd 9900. By next summer, I expect Intel being completely done on per core performance and completely blown out of the water in any kind of heavy lifting computation wise.

 

The problem here is not that "AMD is better", the problem here is that Intel is stuck at what the have now, and they will be so for another 2 years. They just delayed their entire roadmap.

 

You can look at it from a positive angle: for the next 2 years, you can count on your OC'd 9900 being the most powerful Intel chip.

 

Personally, I'd buy what you need for now. And you get a lot to play with by buying a 9900 now. But i wouldn't count on buying such next summer. No matter how you look at it, you'll be screwed either way in 6 months time. Flight simming an expensive hobby is...

Edited December 13, 2019 by ZachariasX

[Jaws2002]

2 hours ago, SeaW0lf said:

 

I'm not sure if the latency will held the Ryzen 4000 series the same way the HEDT series was never the best option for gaming. Besides, an i9-9900K at 5ghz will still be a very strong chip for gaming, especially for simulators, MFS 2020 included. If people wait for the Ryzen 4000, what if they postpone the release? People are going to buy a rig in 2021?

 

I would just hold on the 2080 Ti because the price is just insane. The 3080 might come cheaper than the 2080 Super and better than the 2080 Ti. Untill it is proven that AMD has a better chip for mainly single threaded gaming (simulators), I would hold my horses and go with Intel.

 

 

From what i read, the the focus for the Zen 3 is memory latency and infinity fabric improvement. But the biggest question mark is the availability of the Chips, because everyone except intel gets their 7nm chips from the same place, TSMC.

    AMD, Nvidia, Apple and now Samsung are all selling chips based on the same TSMC 7nm architecture.

 The paper launches you see with AMD now, could happen next year again and it could also happen to Nvidia.

   TSMC just can't make enough chips to fill all this big orders. 

Ryzen3900x was impossible to buy for the first four months. i have a deposit for the 3950x for almost a month now and i didn't see the chip. It could be the same with the next Ryzen 4000 series and the next RTX3000 series from nvidia, since they are fighting for the same production lines.

 

My 1080ti is still ok for now, so i'll wait for the RTX3000, and if the 3950x doesn't show up until first week of January, I'll cancel and wait for the next launch. This 3600x seems decent enough for now. a noticeable improvement over my old 4770k.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Jaws2002

[SeaW0lf]

The thing is, AMD still trails Intel in simulators, then I would not buy AMD for now, which I didn't. I love my i5-9600K. I would only consider AMD if the 4000 series gets clearly ahead in single threaded performance against an i7 at 5Ghz for example. Other than that, I won't be impressed.

[ZachariasX]

8 minutes ago, Jaws2002 said:

AMD, Nvidia, Apple and now Samsung are all selling chips based on the same TSMC 7nm architecture.

Samsung does their own 7 nm.

 

But it is certainly true that TSMC doesn't really have AMD as their main priority. 7 nm is expected for the nVidia 30X0 series chips as well, and they will need a lot of volume.

 

As from Intel, for April 2020 you can expect i9-10900 (Comet Lake) CPU's, requiring a new LGA1200 mainboard. In essence, you're getting the Socket2066 i9-10900X neutered. Ten cores to go against 3950X.  So that's what Intel has for you in the near future. But at less functionality.

[SeaW0lf]

This AMD talk is getting old. We all know the strengths of both platforms and enthusiasts tend to stick with Intel, AIOs, custom loop, heavy overclock to play games. That cost / benefit about AMD generally won't stick. Like I said, when AMD clearly beats a 5Ghz Intel in single threaded performance, then people will start to migrate and people won't have to spend time selling AMD. Other than that, some people will always stick with the highest performer chips for gaming.

[Jaws2002]

4 minutes ago, SeaW0lf said:

This AMD talk is getting old. We all know the strengths of both platforms and enthusiasts tend to stick with Intel, AIOs, custom loop, heavy overclock to play games. That cost / benefit about AMD generally won't stick. Like I said, when AMD clearly beats a 5Ghz Intel in single threaded performance, then people will start to migrate and people won't have to spend time selling AMD. Other than that, some people will always stick with the highest performer chips for gaming.

 

 

or when gaming companies update their gaming engines to the twentieth century...

 

but the writing is on the walls:

 

24 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

Samsung does their own 7 nm.

 

But it is certainly true that TSMC doesn't really have AMD as their main priority. 7 nm is expected for the nVidia 30X0 series chips as well, and they will need a lot of volume.

 

As from Intel, for April 2020 you can expect i9-10900 (Comet Lake) CPU's, requiring a new LGA1200 mainboard. In essence, you're getting the Socket2066 i9-10900X neutered. Ten cores to go against 3950X.  So that's what Intel has for you in the near future. But at less functionality.

 

 

You are right. They just canceled one of their chips for a Qualcom counterpart. 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Jaws2002

[Alonzo]

2 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

Personally, I'd buy what you need for now. And you get a lot to play with by buying a 9900 now. But i wouldn't count on buying such next summer. No matter how you look at it, you'll be screwed either way in 6 months time. Flight simming an expensive hobby is...

 

This. There's always something around the corner, and unless it's literally less than a month away, you might as well buy what you need today. It's outdated almost by definition as soon as it's assembled and in your office.

 

2 hours ago, Arthur-A said:

No, I don't think I'll build a new PC in summer. For me the only reason to go ahead will be getting a Pimax 8KX, or maybe another headset with similar FOV and resolution (Oculus or HTC, but definitely not WMR). So I'd rather be damn sure that the new rig is going to handle it well. I don't  want to spend a ton of money on PC only to realize that it cannot handle IL-2 in VR on a new headset smooth. 

 

The PC you're looking for (at least for Pimax 8K) doesn't exist. You can cross your fingers that IL2 becomes more optimized for multiple CPU cores, and that Pimax FFR and 80 FPS mode helps with the sheer pixel count required, or that eye tracking and foveated rendering become mainstream and supported by IL2, but today flight sims at VR framerates and very high resolutions just don't go together.

[mpdugas]

13 hours ago, Alonzo said:

 

Do you have a link for this info? From some casual Googling it seems like the majority of peripherals will connect through the motherboard chipset, not direct to the CPU, and therefore will not steal lanes from the GPU. NVMe drives might use some of those lanes, but as I've said before they give you almost zero benefit over a regular SSD for gaming. I'm also reading that PCI-e x16 to x8 varies from zero performance impact to 5%, depending on application (Puget Systems, Titan X tested).

 

On my system I've never worried about any of this, and I have both an NVMe boot drive as well as other SSDs connected through SATA, loads of USB junk, etc etc, and my GPU is still running at PCIe x16 according to GPU-Z.

 

Hello, Alonzo;

 

You ask "Do you have a link for this info?"  Sorry, I can't provide a link to my mind.  The following analysis is simply the result of my personal logic and thinking, however flawed it may be.  I am quite willing to be wrong about this, because I may very well have been laboring under some horribly wrong concepts about PC, etc., and I stand ready to accept being corrected about how I've thought this whole mess has worked all along.

 

I've noticed that one of the primary selling points of the new generation of AMD CPUs is the enormous increase in the number of pci-e lanes that these processors offer.  They're up, substantially, from Intel's best of 24 pci-e lanes, offering up to 70+ pci-e lanes, depending on the specific processor.  According to the industry press, that is a BIG DEAL; that makes a CPU much more able to feed those many hungry cores!

 

As I understand, here's the fundamental issue: the CPU itself has only so many lanes, electrically, for receiving and transmitting information.  The MB does not "process" anything, so no matter how many lanes you fill it (the MB) with peripherals, no matter how many communication channels to the CPU that the MB offers, the CPU information input/output bandwidth limit is the choke-point.

 

It seems logical to conclude, from what I've read of your reply, is that any (nay every!) CPU has practically unlimited pci-e capacity for receiving, processing and answering software data processing calls, if it's plugged into the right MB.  It matters not the number of pci-e lanes that it has built-in for communications purposes.

 

If so, then I can just ignore, for example, the Intel CPU lane capacity limits that they quote in their technical specifications.  I'm on-board with this sort of fantastic technology that I never knew existed, and I am going to ignore the beneficial changes brought about by the large increases in pci-e lanes now available with the new AMD processors, because that seems to be just a marketing scam.

 

If you are right, then the answer is to buy a MB that offers lots and lots of pci-e channels, and press-on-regardless.  I didn't know that was possible, honestly, I didn't know.

 

You say that "...the majority of peripherals will connect through the motherboard chipset, not direct to the CPU, and therefore will not steal lanes from the GPU."  I'm not sure what you mean by that; are you suggesting that they do their own, peripheral-to-peripheral processing?  Or that the x16 pci-e lanes of the slot that the GPU is plugged into are never reduced, dynamically, by the MB?  I didn't know that, either.

 

Let's continue this discussion, it's very interesting to me, and I hope you will reply.  Nothing that I am saying to you is meant to be sarcastic or snarky, or whatever; I genuinely want to sort this out.

47 minutes ago, SeaW0lf said:

This AMD talk is getting old. We all know the strengths of both platforms and enthusiasts tend to stick with Intel, AIOs, custom loop, heavy overclock to play games. That cost / benefit about AMD generally won't stick. Like I said, when AMD clearly beats a 5Ghz Intel in single threaded performance, then people will start to migrate and people won't have to spend time selling AMD. Other than that, some people will always stick with the highest performer chips for gaming.

 

What's interesting about this AMD v. Intel, AMD v. Nvidia dustup is that each companies' CPUs and GPUs offer more than enough capacity to play games smoothly and without the dreaded stutters.  Even the minimum measurement points are vastly above what is necessary for great game-play.

 

Like your earlier comments about the ability of a 2080ti to fill the x16 pci-e slot, it's beginning to be a moot argument about imperceptible CPU and GPU performance differences.  There's only so much the human bean is capable of seeing and feeling, and just about every company's top-line PC gear, today, does the job of providing a great gaming experience; in fact, I'd love to see gamers play on boxes whose PC component contents were unknown to them.

 

After a while, it's only bragging rights about numbers and nameplates.  So when you say "...when AMD clearly beats a 5Ghz Intel in single threaded performance...", it's just a passé+moot shout-out.

 

Until double-blind tests, with adequately protocols, are run, and Intel reigns supreme in every measure, I'm sticking to my assertion that it doesn't matter.  Well, at least it doesn't, unless you're a fanboi, because, in the end, personal bias always blurs, shadows, pollutes and conflates.

[ZachariasX]

26 minutes ago, mpdugas said:

You ask "Do you have a link for this info?"  Sorry, I can't provide a link to my mind.  The following analysis is simply the result of my personal logic and thinking, however flawed it may be.  I am quite willing to be wrong about this, because I may very well have been laboring under some horribly wrong concepts about PC, etc., and I stand ready to accept being corrected about how I've thought this whole mess has worked all along.

 

Socket1151 just use an equivalent of 4x PCIe3.0 to connect ALL your periphery if you have those 16 lanes in use for your GPU. (You have.)

 

Direct attachment of further lanes do not burden the CPU, on the contrary, the faster I/O helps. It makes Socket2066 systems so much nicer if you have a lot of I/O as well as lots of CPU time.

 

Socket1151 has one advantage only: it is cheap to make and you can segment the customer base much better, as it puts clear limits on game boxes.