What CPU

[marshalex]

My brother is looking at upgrading his PC and I've been drafted in to perform my usual digging around parts and performance. He's planning on keeping his current MSI 280x 3GB for the forseeable future to keep the costs down but I imagine this will get an upgrade sooner or later. Budget is going to be around £300 for CPU and Motherboard.

The dilemma is, 1600x or i5 8400. Both are similar in price however its the age old argument of Intel's single core performance vs AMD's multi thread performance. He mainly uses his computer for gaming which would traditionally favour the i5, however I'm concerned with the long term longevity of the Z370 platform and the i5 vs the 1600x on a B350 motherboard owing to Intel's traditional stuff everyone when a new chip is released. The computer being replaced is an i5 760 system, so a good few years old now and he doesn't want to ideally upgrade for a good 5 years or so at least.

With all of this in mind I am tempted to lean towards AMD but keen to hear any other considerations.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What games is he playing?? Something like FO4 or Skyrim I would go Intel,but if its not one of those outlier games,the definitely the Ryzen 5 1600! You might notice I said the 1600,not the 1600X as the former has a decent included cooler too. The Ryzen 5 1600 might actually be a more solid choice if he does not intend to upgrade for years as games should push more threads,and I do have a concern with the consoles having 8 threads,whether the 6 core Core i5 might start to show issues in newer games as time progresses.

The issue with the Core i5 8400 is the lack of stock has pushed prices up,the platform has unknown longevity and the cheapest motherboards are around £100.

ATM,the Ryzen 5 1600 is £159 from OcUK:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/amd-r...cp-39z-am.html

Asus is also doing this promotion too:

https://promotion.asus.com/en/uk/Ryzen

You get two bundled major games and another one if you buy a Ryzen CPU and an Asus motherboard from the list,and apparently Quake Champions is also included with the games.

So I would suggest a Ryzen 5 1600,an Asus B350 TUF,and some 3000MHZ DDR4:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-...mb-6ad-as.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-co...Page=1&sSort=3

It might be worth shopping around with the RAM though,as some deals might appear but avoid Corsair and try to look at the RAM QVL to make sure you can match it as close as possible to what will work fine.

[marshalex]

Games are Ark survival, GTA, PUBG, La Noire. I think his emphasis is on longevity tending to learn towards AMD. Is there a major difference between the 1600 and the 1600X? Main reason I'd picked the X was the ability to OC easily should things start to slow in the future.
The bundles are definitely appealing though and does make AMD a significantly better value proposition

The current ASUS QVL looks a bit thin on the ground for DDR4 3000!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Games are Ark survival, GTA, PUBG, La Noire. I think his emphasis is on longevity tending to learn towards AMD. Is there a major difference between the 1600 and the 1600X? Main reason I'd picked the X was the ability to OC easily should things start to slow in the future.
The bundles are definitely appealing though and does make AMD a significantly better value proposition

The current ASUS QVL looks a bit thin on the ground for DDR4 3000!

ARK technically likes higher single core performance looking at early reviews of the game(I have not seen any comparisions with Ryzen though),but realistically you are massively GPU bottlenecked in it from experience. PUBG is slightly faster on a Core i5 8400,but not to the extent it matters(and that is with fast cards and lower resolutions) and LA Noire is an old game so I suspect any newer CPU is an upgrade. GTA V,OTH,seems to perform much better on Intel CPUs,but again with a good enough card all of these CPUs will easily hit 60FPS in the game AFAIK(might be better minimums for the Core i5 8400,but looking at many reviews all these CPUs will produce over 50FPS minimums).

I would argue with a R9 280X you will be mostly GPU limited with any of the two CPUs anyway.

[stevie lee]

edit: nevermind. it is listed. as ESNET LTD /..
(should read stuff thoroughly before posting)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

overclockers isn't on the list for participating in that ASUS ROG promotion.

It is:

"ESNET LTD T/A OVERCLOCKERS UK".

Edit!!

They have a page on their website regarding the promotion:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/lp/asus-z370.html

[marshalex]

Yeah I thought the GPU would be an issue and likely will be in the short term though getting onto a newer platform is the initial upgrade then GPU can come later. AMD are clearly the better value offering currently so I'm inclined to stick with them.

Is DDR4 3000 the minimum you guys would recommend?

[Xlucine]

Games are Ark survival, GTA, PUBG, La Noire. I think his emphasis is on longevity tending to learn towards AMD. Is there a major difference between the 1600 and the 1600X? Main reason I'd picked the X was the ability to OC easily should things start to slow in the future.
The bundles are definitely appealing though and does make AMD a significantly better value proposition

The current ASUS QVL looks a bit thin on the ground for DDR4 3000!

The X is meant to be related to the boost speed*, all ryzen chips overclock the same. X chips also lack an included cooler, which may or may not be important for your plans

* XFR: eXtended Frequency Range, ryzen processors will automatically boost a hair above the nominal boost speed if there's thermal headroom. It's meant to be a bit higher for X chips, but the 1600X and 1600 both can go 100 MHz above the nominal boost speed.

[marshalex]

The X is meant to be related to the boost speed*, all ryzen chips overclock the same. X chips also lack an included cooler, which may or may not be important for your plans

* XFR: eXtended Frequency Range, ryzen processors will automatically boost a hair above the nominal boost speed if there's thermal headroom. It's meant to be a bit higher for X chips, but the 1600X and 1600 both can go 100 MHz above the nominal boost speed.

1600 it is then! Completely missed the lack of CPU cooler on the product description

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There are some other boards you might want to consider which are ATX:

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-B350-PLUS/
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/RO...B350-F-GAMING/

They cost more than the mATX one I suggested though.

[marshalex]

It's between the mATX TUF or the STRIX Gaming. The reviews seem a bit thin on the ground for the mATX board but having the flexibility to go into a smaller case is appealing but the STRIX reviews pretty well and seems to have a very good feature set for the additional cash. Minefield!

[marshalex]

Does anyone have any memory recommendations to go with the above? 16GB would be preferred but memory prices seem extortionate at the moment! Does anyone have any experience with the TUF board?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Does anyone have any memory recommendations to go with the above? 16GB would be preferred but memory prices seem extortionate at the moment! Does anyone have any experience with the TUF board?

Let me have a look later on - what sort of budget are you looking at for the RAM??

Bagnaj97 has used the B350 Plus:

I've just done a build with Asus Prime B350-Plus, Ryzen 5 1600 and 16GB (2x8GB) Crucial Ballistix Elite 2666MHz RAM. Board seems nice, with solid heatsinks on both parts of the VRM, and the ram is stable at 2933MHz 1.225v without dropping the latencies.

It was using the stock cooler and I didn't have much time, so I didn't play with OCing too much - things seemed stable at 3.7GHz, 1.2v but Cinebench15 scores were substantially lower than stock, so something wasn't right.

Cinebench scores:
Stock CPU clocks, 2666 MHz ram (16,17,17,36 timings) = 1145
Stock CPU clocks, 2933 MHz ram (16,17,17,36 timings) = 1150
3.7GHz 1.2v, 2933 MHz ram (16,17,17,36 timings) = 1052 - I think this can be safely ignored as it's clearly not right.

[marshalex]

Hadn't really set a RAM budget but ideally cheap as possible! Still trying to work out whether to go mATX or ATX. Doesn't seem to be much difference between the STRIX and the TUF feature wise, just a case of more slots/IO. The reviews for the STRIX have sold me on it, just seeing what's about for the TUF.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hadn't really set a RAM budget but ideally cheap as possible! Still trying to work out whether to go mATX or ATX. Doesn't seem to be much difference between the STRIX and the TUF feature wise, just a case of more slots/IO. The reviews for the STRIX have sold me on it, just seeing what's about for the TUF.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/G-SKILL-Rip...ords=ddr4+3000

That has just gone out of stock but can still be ordered - would try to do it quickly!

Works fine on an Asus motherboard at 2933MHZ:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads...emory.2504884/

1. Ryzen 1700 + Gigabyte AB-350M-Gaming 3 mATX
2. Original Bios F2
3. G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Intel X99 Platform Extreme Performance Memory Model F4-3000C15D-16GRBB

Runs @ 2933 with BIOS, have to use Ryzen Master at the moment in order for me to overclock my memory to 3200.

Edit!!

On OcUK this RAM is on offer:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team-...my-087-tg.html

Seems to run at the rated speed with an ASRock board:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...out-ryzen.html

Second Edit!!

OcUK have this 3200MHZ RAM set on offer:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team-...my-08l-tg.html

They advertised it on their Ryzen deals threads:

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/th...ibbo.18800803/

The Strix B350 works very well if our 8 Pack RAM, it will drop in at 3200MHz without issue, 8/16 core/threads processor, very fast memory represents another total bargain and a setup we highly recommend for the more hardcore gamers and overclockers.

You could substitute the memory for the regular 3000MHz TeamGroup 16G kit at £149.99, or even the regular 2400MHz 8G kit at £74.99 if wanting to reduce cost.

The cheaper RAM appears to be the T-Force DIMMs I linked to earlier.

[marshalex]

Good spot CAT, can't say I've heard of TeamGroup before, they any good?