So, it's been... a few years since my last upgrade, and I noticed that the teeny-tiny mini-PCs I was reviewing were all about three times faster than the desktop I work on every day. Last time I upgraded, I spent about £500 on an SSD, shiny new case, power supply, AMD A10-5800K. Assuming I can keep the case - Fractal Define Mini, no complaints with it - I idly put together the following. My basket at Overclockers UK: 1 x ASUS TUF B450M-PLUS GAMING (Socket AM4) DDR4 MATX Motherboard= £87.98 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 Eight Core 2700X 4.35GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £329.99 1 x Samsung 970 EVO Polaris 500GB M.2 2280 = £128.99 2 x Team Group Dark Pro 16GB (2x8GB) PC4-28800C16 3600MHz = £199.99 1 x Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium 650W 80 Plus Titanium= £179.99 Total: £1,138.03 (includes shipping: £11.10) Now, that's effectively a dream-machine build: 32GB of decent-speed RAM (which I haven't checked to make sure it plays nicely with Ryzen, so assume that might have to change), a faster SSD, more powerful PSU to support a loaner GPU I could throw in it ('cos, unlike my current APU, that Ryzen 7 doesn't have onboard graphics). It's a fair whack, though, at £1,200ish - although it's also a business expense, so that'd save about 30% off the cost in reality. It's a lot of money, too: perhaps I should stick at 16GB, which is what I have now, and drop down to one of the six-core Ryzen 5 chips? Your thoughts, basically; I want them. Though what'll probably happen is I'll get cold feet and figure I can eke a few more years out of this 'ere desktop for now...
Hmm. Not sure I would buy Ryzen now. Can it not wait until Zen 2 comes along? Then again maybe I'm being a little harsh. You could always upgrade at a later date, and coming from what you have it should be a monumental upgrade, not just an incremental one. Do make sure the ram is B-die though dude.
If you want to buy today... Then go ahead and pull the trigger on the listed parts. If you can wait 3-6 months for Zen 2 aka Ryzen 3xxx to come out then hold off.
It'd be better financially to buy it before the end of the tax year - but, equally, I've gone this long on this poor overworked APU, I'm sure I can squeeze a year or two more out of the thing! The above was literally just put together as "what's the first suitable part that comes up on Overclockers," no real thought has been put into any of 'em - 'twas a five minute thing.
The Team Group RAM is good stuffs with Ryzen. I have 2 of their 16GB 3200MHzC14 kits in my rig. In fact, you've just about specced my current rig, except I have the earlier version of the mobo.
The feels like a very expensive PSU, although tbf I've not bought an ATX for years and years. Surely you could still get a very good unit for half the price?
What CPU-intensive stuff are you planning to do with it? Are you going to get close to using 32GB, or even 16? I'm sure you've asked similar questions, but there's a reason my main PC is "only" a quad with 16GB, because those things haven't yet proved to be an issue for any of the things I do with it. I only ask because you could easily halve the price of the build by making some small changes.
Titanium efficiency simply doesn't come cheap. That being said, https://www.overclockers.co.uk/be-q...plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-128-bq.html knocks off a good chunk on the price if you are willing to drop below Titanium.
Yeah, but surely the money that you'd save from "Titanium" efficiency is going to be outweighed by the saving from buying a cheaper (but still decent) PSU? That said, this feels like exactly the sort of situation where someone like @Gareth Halfacree will have crunched the numbers
Image editing and software compilation, both of which scale really well with multiple cores, as well as file compression which scales well for the compress part and less so for the decompress. Some video editing, too, but only rarely. I'm on 16GB now and still regularly hitting swap, hence wanting to go to 32GB. Editing multiple high-res images simultaneously don't come cheap, and whatever I don't use actively goes to file cache and a tmpfs /tmp. First Titanium I found - like I say, the parts were picked on a "first thing with the numbers I need" basis in five idle minutes, not with any kind of care. I'll have a look when I'm back on the desktop - ta! I did do that once! It does actually work out cheaper, assuming the system's at load for most of its life - or it did a few years back when I ran the numbers, anyway!
Other than maybe scaling back in the psu a bit it looks about as good as you'll want. there's plenty of good psu's for around £100, including the gold version of that Seasonic.
That is one hella pricey PSU... Is 80+ Titanium really worth the price hike over Platinum or even gold...
I am going to go left field here, given your comments about the mini PC's... Intel Quad Core 8th Gen i7 Tall NUC Barebone Mini PC Kit (i7 8559U) - £435 Windows 10 Professional 64Bit OEM - £134 Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR4 SODIMM 2400MHz (2 x 16GB) - £175 Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe - £209 Total = £956 excluding delivery Cheaper if you already have a retail copy of Windows 10 or use another O/S. The i7 8559U is a true quad core (many Intel mobile i7 & i5 CPU's are dual core) that turbo's up to 4.5GHz - I think it is the fastest NUC i7 available. I just used Scan as a quick and easy site, there will probably be cheaper options around. Given that you don't appear to play games going by your mention of using an iGPU, I thought I would put it out there as a cheaper, quieter and much smaller option. Edit: review by NUC blog, including performance figures in Cinebench, Passmark etc. https://nucblog.net/2018/11/coffee-lake-i7-nuc-review-nuc8i7beh/
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/int...radeon-rx-vega-m-gh-graphics-4gb-hbm2-ddr4-2x There's a curve ball for you.
Plus you can buy windows 10 on Ebay for £2.99 ... yes ive bought a few and they are just fine. Id recommend anyone to use Ryzen if they are budget conscious. They are outstanding. I cant remember the last time i had such solid set ups with rock solid overclocks and no crashes/ponsing about in between. If it suits a budget. Buy it.
Actually its a slower CPU than the NUC one I posted, Intel ARK links below: i7-8809G i7-8559U Although the 8809G does have the Radeon iGPU... Plus I added a review link to my prevous post.
Aye, I just did a BOAFP (back of a f@g packet) analysis and I reckon that if you're running your system at decent load (250W) for 12 hours a day then you'd break even in just under 5 years. Assumptions galore behind that basic analysis, of course, and I've also discounted (pardon the pun) any interest that you might earn over the 5 year term on the cash that you'd save at outset. Edit: oopsie, didn't realise the swear filter would take exception to one particular word there
Nice idea, but I need something I can put my full-height PCIe HDMI capture card, 5.25" hot-swap drive bay, optical drive, and 2TB 3.5" data drive in, which rules out a NUC or other USFF. And this - I definitely don't need, nor want, a copy of Windows! I mean, they're *illegal*, but yeah, they'll work. If you want Windows, that is. I've just finished reviewing the non-VR version of that. It's an incredible machine, but no good for me owing to the above reasons. Plus, I'd much prefer to go AMD for the CPU. The glowing skull on the top's a distraction, too! (Yes, you can turn it off.)
