What CPU to aim for?

[MrJim]

I'm also using a 3570K...if it ain't broke... I don't have Star Citizen myself, but are you CPU limited playing it? I don't think you mention whether your 3570K is overclocked or not? Mine runs comfortably at 4.5Ghz (with a half decent cooler), which is a 'free' upgrade over the stock 3.4Ghz.

[BFalcon]

I'm also using a 3570K...if it ain't broke... I don't have Star Citizen myself, but are you CPU limited playing it? I don't think you mention whether your 3570K is overclocked or not? Mine runs comfortably at 4.5Ghz (with a half decent cooler), which is a 'free' upgrade over the stock 3.4Ghz.

Hi Jim

Turns out, the cooler bracket was busted -I used to get temperatures around 60 to 70 degrees when running SC, so thought I was pushing it a bit too hard.

Nope - the bracket was well and truly cracked through... so I had to borrow some cash and got another Arctic Cooler 13 and nicked the bracket off that one (I was planning to swap to AMD anyhow, so why not) and I'm now down to around 45 degrees again when running the game. No doubt it'll spike higher than that, but it's a bit improvement.

I thought it was just putting a bit too much strain on the CPU, so didn't think too much of it - just goes to show, if you see the temperatures climbing, might be time for a visual inspection of the bracket again.

And no, up till now, I've kept mine as stock... so I might have to see about improving that now.

[Jace007]

For your SSD i would highly recommend the Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 or ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB M.2 Both great SSD's at very affordable price on Amazon, i agree with Zak33 comments for the cpu

[BFalcon]

For your SSD i would highly recommend the Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 or ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB M.2 Both great SSD's at very affordable price on Amazon, i agree with Zak33 comments for the cpu

Thanks, I'll bear those in mind - I picked up a Samsung QVO 1Tb for my gaming right now, so I've got enough room to move a few of the existing games across to an SSD from my HDDs and I plan, next, to buy in a 2+ Tb HDD (probably the biggest I can get for around £50) so I can consolidate both my (aging) 1Tb into the one drive.

I'll want a decent boot drive though, so those recommendations are most welcome - I HAD planned to go for the Samsung EVO 250 or 500Gb, when the time comes, but I'll definitely bear those in mind. I save all my data to HDD, though, so tend not to use too much system drive space and all my steam games are (currently) on the 2nd HDD - I used to have a few high-demand games on the G: SSD but that's been cleared, so have to redo that.

I like to spread things out a bit too - so some data is actually on both HDD, for example, in case one fails.

[Shante]

Last build was with an Intel
But this time I’m going with the AMD, paired with an RTX 3080

[james9909]

Can I know to which CPU you have upgraded? Thanks in advance

[bowepa]

Now the best value for money is ryzen 3600 and any b450 motherboard. For around £250 you will get a huge boost

[Froger007]

I agree, 3rd gen Ryzen and newer is great value and performance. Go for a basic B450 or B550 MB and you can do a partial upgrade for very little money and see a big improvement.