Having left PCs in 2008 and moved to adulting on MacBook Pros, it's time to venture back out and build a PC again. Star Citizen now resembles something gamelike after a decade of work and there are few other titles out that are interesting. So, I'm cleared by my comptroller to move to a gaming PC with strong content creation abilities. So with that said, it seems like choosing a chipset is more important then the actual CPU; which are replaceable/upgradable as the cycle moves along. Any thoughts as to the chipset path that holds up over the next 5 years? Keep in mind, this a complete new build, down to a mouse and keyboard; so I'm truly brand agnostic.
The chipset path that holds more upgrade potential in the next five years is most definitely going to be X370 (or X399, if you fancy TR CPUs!) as Intel seem to change every two years at the least. A lot of us here have made the switch to AMD with their new Ryzen CPUs, and I have yet to see one disappointed person. The CPUs represent fantastic value for money compared to Intel variants. What sort of budget are you intending to use? That will ultimately depict what route to take. Finally, welcome back to the beautiful world of PCs!
Budget is......"capped" at $3K, and I use that phrase loosely because it's....loose; keeping in mind that includes a monitor, case, fans, that sort of thing. I'm by far more interested in throughput in terms of PCIe lanes, memory bandwidth, and I/O than RBG lights and other fluff. I see the value in a system lying there rather than today's CPU/GPU arrangement, which are more flexible longterm.
Just because Intel does, it doesn't mean users have to (look at the amount of people still on Sandy and Haswell setups). Regardless of how much you despise them as a company, or how much you support "the plucky underdog", Coffee Lake is still a very compelling option if you don't need lots of I/O. At the very least, it's nice to finally have options!
While that is true, the OP did mention that he wants PCI-E lanes and the likes. Intel don't provide them unless you spend massive cash. Even then, TR gets you more lanes.
Z370 lacks PCI-E lanes, even more so than X299. The New Year will bring Zen+ which is AMD's revised Ryzen chips. They should hopefully overclock better and also bring a neat IPC increase to the table. If you're not building until then, I'd highly suggest holding on until they become available and then go from there.
Saying Zen+ will be out in the new year is probably being a little optimistic, at best it will be towards the end of the first Qtr and it will probably be little more than a revision to Zen, a bit like an Intel "Tock". No doubt it will be an improvement but i wouldn't (personally) hold out until its release as we already know AMD are sticking to the same AM4 socket and (afaik) chipsets so no matter what Zen+ brings the decision to upgrade can be made when it's released.
Well, having spent 2 days of semi serious research, it looks like I'm 99% settled on an X399 build with a Vega 64. I'll probably waffle back and forth between an Asus and Gigabyte board. Then hee and haw over which memory or which water cooling set up. But at the core, it looks like a good chipset and CPU design that will likely only get better as it matures. I mean; holy multi threading, Batman. Not to mention, I discovered AMD based OSX; which will be a fun project to dual boot with win10; or multi boot with Ubuntu and win10. I'll keep an eye out on sales through the holidays, and then fill in the gaps in the new year.
