PC upgrade plan

Tech Support
1

I presently have an old AMD Based system (A8-3850 w/8 GB ram). I am planning to move to a AMD Ryzen 5 2600 on a ASRock B450M board with 16 GB of DDR4 2400 RAM. Are there any hidden issues I should be aware of?

I am also thinking of going to a Intel Optane 900P drive provided that the Star Citizen Promotion is still happening. Otherwise the drive is not a good enough value for me to upgrade from a Samsung EVO. I read on one of the reviews on New Egg’s site that the promotion ended on 31DEC2018. But the RSI website still has the page up to claim the Saber Raven. (I take a $300 SSD and through the promotion effectively cut the price to closer to $220) Can anyone confirm?

2

I’d strongly discourage AMD CPU’s for StarCitizen if you’re building a pure gaming rig, price/performance just isn’t there unless you’re building a very low end system. Intel procs are going to out perform Ryzen, and even CIG’s telemetry backs this up.

I have no idea about the Raven promotion, but we’ve seen no performance boost using NVMe drives vs regular SSD’s when playing Star Citizen or any other game. Save your money and pickup a regular 500-550 MB/s SSD.

3

Is that just the Ryzen you strongly discourage? My Ryzen Threadripper has been doing just fine.

4

At this point in time both 1st and 2nd gen Ryzen CPU’s can’t compete dollar for dollar with Intel i5’s and i7’s for a gaming pc. The exception to this is if you’re building an extreme low end, sub $750 USD gaming PC, then Ryzen can make sense. But, nobody is building such a cheap PC and planning on playing Star Citizen at decent frames.

CIG telemetry backs this up. A Ryzen 2700X vs i7 8700K are roughly the same price when you factor in motherboard pricing. With the same graphics card (GTX1080) in both systems you’re going to get 5-10% better performance out of the Intel system in Star Citizen.

5% isn’t a lot when we compare apples to apples, but what if we don’t compare apples to apples, take an i5 9600K vs the same Ryzen, the i5 system costs $150-$200 less, but with a RTX2070 beats out the same Ryzen 2700X by ~5%. Hmm that seems really strange, doesn’t it?

Single core speed, that is where Intel beats AMD, writing multi-threaded games is hard, and while CIG is doing their best, single core speed still wins the day and there is no reason to believe that will change over the next few years in Star Citizen.

So, buy Intel, you will end up with a better gaming computer and save money.

Now, if you are building a computer for other tasks, and gaming secondary, AMD can make a lot of sense… 10+ hours a week Video Editing, or doing development work all day on your PC, these are tasks which do lend themselves to multi-threaded and AMD is very competitive in those areas.

But, if you’re doing those things for a living you’re not asking for feedback on a ADI’s forums :slight_smile:

So, no we don’t recommend AMD’s, the math is simple, and the only reason every gaming website on the planet doesn’t point this out is because it would cost them AMD ad revenue. They think up all sorts of edge cases to make the AMD CPU’s look competitive when they’re not, confusing non-technical buyers.

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5

Thank you all for your responses. I had discovered just how out of date my system is when presented with a challenging game. Its a general purpose computer (hardest tasks are gaming, running VMs, photo editing, may get into video editing). Given the other things I will need to be spending money on (new car), I can’t justify putting that much into a PC upgrade. I do plan to come back in 6 months and get a much better graphics card. I do agree that AMD chips are not cost-competitive at this point with Intel for a pure gaming system. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a terrible choice for the budget. I’m not new to building computers just new to SC.

Historically, I have purchased modestly priced systems and done mid life upgrades focusing on making sure I have fast storage, lots of RAM (skipped it last time around) and a decent graphics card for the games I played. Thanks for the advice.

6

You’d be much better off buying a VM server for $75 than trying to run VM’s on a desktop. and at the price point it appears this system will be at Intel i5’s or i7’s are going to be a better choice.

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Maybe that’s why I haven’t noticed a difference with my Ryzen TR 1950X because I do have an RTX2070 so maybe I am safer as I max out with the top Ryzen and Video card for this motherboard until I can get an Intel in my next refresh. This is the fastest computer I have ever owned, even faster than my previous Intel at I7-3770K. Even the technical can be confused if they reference media that they depend on to make a decision and they lie about it to make a buck with AMD. However, I must admit my expertise lies more in Core/Distribution network equipment than in access-layer equipment where CPUs are rarely considered in determining what router, firewall, or switching fabric device to purchase.

8

The Ryzen’s are faster than a 3770K, but ~6 years difference between them. Publications online have a vested interest in making the differences between Intel/AMD and Nvidia/AMD minimal.

10

The VMs are not for production use, they are for studying for a MCSA exam. If I needed to run VMs for something serious, I’d use AWS.

11

As JayC says, it’s pretty much a consensus oft-spoken about that Intel has the clear edge when talking about gaming.

My only two cents to add here … I’ve got a system that runs SC just great, but …

Being around in Star Citizen since 2013, I thought I was brilliant in buying a heavy-hitting rig in 2017…

Well, it’s 2019 now, still runs great, but I’m already seeing its age in stats and we’re a long way still from the game being fully engaging. I’ve been looking at the latest greatest hardware, fingers on the wallet getting twitchy, and I’m landing on waiting until the game is really more substantially developed and getting my money’s worth out of the latest tech whenever that is.

If you’ve got the money to revisit your rig in a couple/three years, all great, but if this is shooting the load… maybe people should wait than buy something today?

12

Better to do hardware refreshes every 2.5-3 years than once every 5-6 years IMHO. A $2500 PC built 5 years ago will give you a much poor performance than a computer built 2.5 years ago for $1250.

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13

I agree that its better to upgrade often with less expensive parts than less often with pricier parts.

14

On average, you should refresh every 2.5 to 3 years if you can. It will probably be time to refresh when the Verse goes Gold and then I can make this computer a server or UNIX box, and purchase an Intel system? I mean that is where the performance really counts more than SQ42. My last computer is being made into the server and current server, an AMD 6400 I believe, is being made into an UNIX machine.

15

The Ryzens are good value, but bear in mind the 7nm Ryzens should be arriving in the next few months and they are rumoured to be very interesting.

You can’t buy Optane Drives with the SC codes any more, and Optane isn’t that great anyway. Just stick to a SSD for now.

16

They are a good value and now becoming more competitive but JayC is correct stating that SC runs better under Intel. However by the time SC is released into Gold, I will have an Intel according to the road map or it will be close to upgrading time again and this computer will become either a form of UNIX machine or a file share of some sort. And thanks for the suggestion and update.

17

By the time SC reaches release 1.0, I will have upgraded my computer again. The Ryzen 5 2600 is doing very well and I have no complains to this point on it. It may not be the best processor but it fits my needs. Next big step is a better graphics card.

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18

I’m really curious to see the performance of the next gen Ryzens. I’m running an 1800X currently, and it works very well, but I haven’t seen anything truly take advantage of its plethora of cores, and sadly it tops out at 4GHz. The third gens are supposed to hit 5GHz, so single-core performance should hopefully be on par with Intel, and that’s with up to 16/32 cores/threads.

Here’s what my home workstation looks like:

dq8yp1W.jpg1920×781 376 KB

The center system is the 1800X/64G/1080Tix2/3440x1440 G-Sync
The left system is a 1500X/16G/RX480x2/2560x1440 Freesync
The right system is a 3770K/16G/Vega 64/2560x1440 Freesync
All of them have Logitech mechanical keyboards and mice.
The center has a Logitech wireless headset, Oculus Rift and T16000 (not shown).

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19

I have to RMA the CPU Cooler for my new computer and maybe upgrade it too if I can. Even at idle, my system’s temp is too high and doesn’t take much to start sending into dangerous levels. It’s not enough for a melt down or crash most of the time but it does place unnecessary wear on the CPU.

EDIT: Hmm, I read that my CPU may not really be too hot. Let’s see, I submitted an RMA.

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Make sure to update or check that the motherboard box says *updated for Ryzen 2. Also the Intel Optane 900P drive is only compatible with intel processors. If you go the route of getting a x399 motherboard, that feature is baked into the board.

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21

That is correct Dream Lord and I have a x399 MBO and the heat issue I had turned out not to he a heat issue.