Well the time has finally come that my i5-2500k is due an upgrade as it is becoming a bit long in the tooth. I am looking to build a partially new pc as i want to salvage PSU/Storage/GPU and hopefully cooling from my current build. A build that will last me as long as this one (albeit with a few GPU upgrades thrown in) is what i am after. Budget is not the greatest constraint but i also don't want to spend unnecessarily which is why i cannot decide which path to take. I have been toying with an i9-9900k for a while and was convinced that would be the way to go. However since this will be my main OC'd gaming pc and not used for much else as i have an ASUS Zenbook 15 (8th gen i7 GTX 1050) that i use for photo and light video editing. I am currently thinking that the i9 is a bit overkill BUT i still want it to be relevant in 7ish years time. I have been thinking about i7-9700k and Ryzen 5 3600 but if i get the AMD i would need a new cooler whereas with 1151 i could recycle my corsair h110i GT. All three have very different price points but from a mainly gaming and longevity standpoint what is everyone's opinion? I would look to use VR in future as i play lots of sims if that is of any relevance. The build in my sig is largely relevant but with some storage changes and yes GPU will be upgraded but not this gen.
Just remember, the next gen Intel chips are slated to start dropping any time this quarter, so if you can wait it may be worth holding off for that as they look mighty tempting for the price!
If you want something that will stay relevant for 5-7 years, AM4 is the way to go. Even a 3900K will age better than a 9900K wil, and, if you go X570, will give you an upgrade path to PCI-E 4 storage & GPU's, as well as Zen 3 CPU's. Anything current and Intel is a dead end imo.
Some valid points. There are some logistical reasons to upgrading now rather than waiting for team blue. After that waiting for the dust to settle on intel next gen, Mobos being released and prices settling, i can see myself waiting longer than i want to. The future proofing of the x570 with PCI-E 4 is definitiely something to think about.
Valid points, although I do think that the motherboard longevity point is a bit more theoretical than practical. We've already seen one gen of AM4 boards not support newer gen CPUs, so there's no guarantee of lifetime compatibility, and to be honest (and perhaps this is just my experience as someone who doesn't upgrade very often) by the time I come to look to upgrade my CPU there are new motherboard-based features that I can't access without a new board anyway (past examples would be PCIE3.0, USB 3.0, M.2, and so on. I guess my point is that future-proofing isn't just a case of having an possible upgrade path for your CPU, although ceteris paribus it's better to have that option than not
Generally when I upgrade it would be cpu/mobo at the same time and that would be for the lifetime of the cpu. The PCI-E 4 would be to allow compatible gpus if and when they come out. Tempted to wait now, but that would mean waiting until August to be able to upgrade. Not the end of the world, just an itch i could not scratch.
Yeah, when I upgrade it tends to be CPU & board together. I think the last time I upgraded CPU but not motherboard was back in the C2D days when I went to an E8500 or similar.
Don't worry about PCIe 4 GPU's, they won't be out for a long time, its only really for Storage and I/O. Its highly unlikely that PCIe 4.0 will give any benifit for GPU's for several generations!
I've put better CPUs in three X99 rigs now. That game also works well on X79 and x58 but Intel have now stomped on that. Now you need some weird old board that costs many hundreds of pounds.
There's a distinct possibility that zen2 will be the last gen on am4. Amd said that am4 would run "until" 2020, which could perhaps mean inclusive, but tends to be not including. If you were to get an x570 board and 3900x, it's possible that your only upgrade path in the future would be a 3950x, and that only adds a few more cores. With next gen consoles still having 8core cpu's, I doubt you'll see much in the way of optimisation past that core count. In gaming, the 9900k and it's higher clock speeds still rules the roost and it'd be what I'd go for in the top tier cpu's. As Pete said, gpu's aren't even saturating pcie3 yet, so by the time you come to upgrade your cpu and motherboard in another 8/9 years it will probably only just be relevant, if even then. The only benefit of pcie4 now is for storage and the gap to pcie3 isn't that big (yet). Coming from Sata3 SSDs you'll still jizz your pants at how bloody fast an m.2 drive is in comparison. And how bloody small they are!
