Sprucing up and trying to learn, could use some help!

[Baconeggcheese]

My builds around 4+ years old now (older on some parts) and I'm looking at upgrading things that'd see significant performance bumps without being super expensive. My fps dips pretty hard in raid as well as other games and I imagine I can probably see some pretty big improvements without breaking the bank.

The current computer is:

Cpu: i5-4430

Motherboard: biostar z87w

Graphics card: asus 970 strix, I JUST inherited this when my 760 died last week, not sure but I was trying to look at comparisons and it seems like this probably doesn't need to be upgraded right now vs what I'd get for the money on the current cards? (Did notice it is rather noisy when running wow, not sure if that's a result of other bits or just the way the card is).

Ram: Some REALLY old ddr3 ram from god knows how many years ago that has been through 2 computers.

psu: corsair tx 750w

Hard drives: Corsair neutron 256gb, some 500gb mechanical hard drive I pulled out of a stock hp I think before I built my first computer many years ago. I did buy a samsung 850 evo 500gb already that I haven't put into the computer yet. Once I get the new bits I'm guessing I should probably put the OS on the samsung and then I'm wondering if I should even bother with the other 2 drives that are currently in my comp or if it'd be better to just get a new hard drive for bulk storage and just use the samsung + that vs using these older drives?

Case: I have a zalman z9 case that has a smashed in foot from dropping it when I first got it (its a lil wiggly because of that). Not sure if I should think about replacing it or not.

Also have an old disc drive that was also pulled out of said very old HP(from back when windows 7 was current) I dunno if I should bother replacing this as well or not. Haven't had any issues with it and only really use it because I keep getting the 0xc000000e error every once in a blue moon (haven't been able to figure out how to fix this) and need to pop in my windows 10 repair disc.

Monitors 1080, may upgrade in the future but not in a rush right now.


I'm in the US, I'd like to keep price down below a grand if I can help it which I imagine should be pretty easy if I'm not replacing the graphics card. I mostly play blizzard games with a heavy emphasis on raiding in wow, I'll typically have some tabs running in the background with youtube or something running. I was trying to google my way through part picking myself to see if I could figure it out on my own but got a bit lost when it came to motherboards and ram (a friend helped me build my current comp). I'm not sure what to pick and why, and the cpu battle seems to be raging between ryzen and i5 / i7 in regards to wow and I'm having a hard time finding much concrete current data (I don't really know where to look).

If you could explain why you picked certain things specifically over other things that'd be awesome as I'm very curious in what goes into the decision making process.

I did ask over on reddit and one person linked me these builds but didn't really say anything besides seeming like he really liked ryzen.
First one he linked:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/X8zFNN

Second one he linked after saying first one could be done cheaper:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dWC4f8

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated!

[potis]

Waste of money and useless crap for WoW.

The only thing you need to change is the CPU/Mobo/RAM combo into something "newer" which in return means higher Mhz on the CPU itself to notice a difference in raiding.

The rest stuff you have are 100000% fine and do not require any change, unless you wanna change your case for the delusion of "COMPLETELY NEW PC!" cause it looks different.

Despite Ryzen being perfectly fine, going for any of those 3.0Ghz one will result in the same shit with what you have now.

Now people will come and cry "OC TO 3.8!" and usual bullshit which the average person cant do.

You have two options for what you want:

1)The king of single thread in 2017 aka 7700K and its 4.5Ghz turbo mode which only the default 1Ghz difference will give you a massive difference in minimum FPS without adding the small boost from the newer technology.

2)R5 1600X for a cheaper solution because of its 4.0Ghz Turbo mode which is mostly always on, not as strong as 7700K but not that much behind considering the overall price difference, in combination with "Future proofing" if you play other games or plan to play other games, namely Battlefield oriented games where they love more cores.

If you dont plan to play other games in the next 3 years and only Blizzard games then simply go with the 7700K,

If you do, go with the R5 1600X, do not go for any damn CPU thats not 4.0Ghz by default, you will barely see any difference for what you want it.

If you didnt understand me, WoW works better on higher Hz than anything else because its an old game, an i3 at 4.0Ghz is better than any of the Ryzen you linked for WoW as an example simply because there is a 1Ghz difference which translates to a literal 30% increase in minimum FPS.

Which is why, the 7700k with its 4.2Ghz/4.5Ghz Turbo mode is your best option.

[Baconeggcheese]

@potis Thanks for the response!

Reddit guys response seemed very questionable based on what research I've been trying to do, so thanks for the more info. My main focus is blizzard games, if I had to rank it it'd be raiding > other blizzard games > non-blizzard games. You won't see me on battlefield any time soon, I mostly just play RPG's that are on steam outside of blizzard.

If you'll indulge a flurry of stupid questions:

As far as the two chips you mentioned go, is there really not much of a difference? Looking at this (not sure if this is good to look at)
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare...00X/3647vs3920
It seems like the i7 is quite far ahead for single core which if I understand right is what blizzard games care about?

If they're basically the same the ryzen would make more sense no? Money wise I can afford the i7, especially if I'm not replacing my graphics card so I'd rather go for whatever makes more sense. On that note does the i7 outperform the i5 7600k for what I'm worried about? I keep reading people going back and forth on that and can't seem to get a concrete answer.

If it was you would you keep using the older hard drives that I mentioned or would you drop them for something like what the reddit guy linked to pair with the samsung.

What should I look for when it comes to the mobo / ram? I've been looking at the guides in the sidebar of r/buildapc and googling a bunch and honestly I'm mostly just confused when it comes to those two specifically. Googling around the cpu and gpu seemed a bit more straightforward but the mobo and ram seemed a bit more arbitrary and I have no idea what to look for exactly.

[potis]

Alright i will answer everything one by one to make you understand.

1)The R5 1600 and 1600X, is what you call value for money, it is not the best, but its good enough to worth its cost, therefor its the better choice for OVERALL gaming and usage.

Blizzard games are based on older games so they favor Single Thread performance, aka higher Hz on Core 0, (Or 1, call it whatever), the better the Blizzard game will run.

Now as i already said, the R5 1600X is the better choice for someone that will, play WoW, then log off to play a Single player game, then play HoTS, then play WoW again, then next year buy a new single player game, hopefully multithreaded etc etc.

So for the overall gamer, Ryzen is a solid choice, that means someone that will play all sorts of different games, stream now and then, and create videos, without having to spend 150$ extra, while sacrificing a few FPS on older games.

For the pure Blizzard gamer as you seem to be, 7700K is the clear choice for you, there is no discussion about it.

2)The i7 7700K and the 7600K are the same thing pretty much, the difference is in the 400Mhz and the Hyperthreading options, as you can see, 7700K is a 4/8 CPU, the 7600K is a 4/4 CPU which is something you dont really need.

If you OC the 7600K to 7700K levels they are the same thing pretty much in performance, especially in Blizzard games.

Generally i do not advice people that confuse things to buy a CPU and bother with overclocking, its simply safer to get the 7700K, strap it on and never bother again since its what most people prefer, especially if its in the budget.

Now if you wanna learn yourself, and play around then simply get the 7600K, get a good cooler and OC it to 4.5Ghz and enjoy.

3)Wasting money is stupid, your drivers are fine, put your Corsair 256GB for Windows and whatever else you might need like smaller games you dont care if they uninstall, use the Evo for main games, how many there are, or even for storage since if you only play Blizzard games, you wont need more than 100-120GB or something around there.

If you need the 500GB mechanical HDD then simply put it or dont, its up to you, you know how much space you need.

4)For Mobo and RAM, things are easy.

First of all you need to understand, most, if not ALL Mobos after a price range, are almost the same crap, that range is usually around the 140-150$ mark, everything above, or even there is mostly a waste of money.

It all depends on what you want, some Mobos have their extra WiFi, some have extra M2 slots, or more phasing for overclocking , BIOS recovery bla bla bla, the higher you go in price, more (mostly pointless unless you specifically need ) options are added.

In other words, buy whatever the fuck you want, they are all the same mostly, just make sure its a Z270 one that covers your needs for USB slots/SATA Slots, etc etc.

I recommend ASUS or MSI as a first choice, Gigabyte and Asrock as second.

There are so many around, just find the one you wanna look at color wise.

5)RAM wise i would suggest a 3200Mhz kit, Skylake and Kabylake love faster RAM there isnt much of a difference, but there is a variable 10% increase depending on the game between 2400RAM and 3200RAM usually the difference in price is minimal also but their pricing has been weird lately, either way, if you cant afford/dont want, go for 2400Mhz and stay at the default, otherwise, get 3200Mhz ones

If you want suggestions as example i would go for:

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/jjZ...gx4m2b3200c16w

For some reason there arent any 1x8GB sticks o.O

And for mobo

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/m9X...d-prime-z270-k

As the default choice and generally this price range.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/7VZ...d-prime-z270-a

As a few extra waste of money cause i have them choice.

[Baconeggcheese]

@potis Thank you again, really appreciate you explaining this stuff.

As far as the motherboards go, is there going to be much of a difference between sound quality for different boards? If everything else is the same that'd be the one thing that I'd prefer to have or I'd be willing to spend a bit more $ on.

Also I'm going to need a cooler yeah? Any recommendations there? I don't plan to overclock right away but its something I may look into in the future if that affects it.

[potis]

@potis Thank you again, really appreciate you explaining this stuff.

As far as the motherboards go, is there going to be much of a difference between sound quality for different boards? If everything else is the same that'd be the one thing that I'd prefer to have or I'd be willing to spend a bit more $ on.

Also I'm going to need a cooler yeah? Any recommendations there? I don't plan to overclock right away but its something I may look into in the future if that affects it.

Eh, supposedly.

The more expensive motherboards will have the more expensive Realtek chip along, you need to look into that yourself, depending on what you plan to plug on your PC, as example my G633 Artemis are USB, couldnt care less about what Audio chip my motherboard has.

When it comes to coolers, you need to first understand that the 7700K is already clocked high, and whatever overclock you might try to do will require an as powerful cooler.

Of course it depends on the silicon lottery too (How lucky you are to get a good chip that OCs high and remains relatively cool compared to its brothers) but if you plan to goof around with a 7700K a good AIO watercooler would do, no point in putting a bulky air cooler.

Assuming your case can fit it, if you dont change a case, otherwise, Noctua/Cryorig big ones work wonders.

[Baconeggcheese]

@potis I've been looking into the motherboards you mentioned and some others that come up when people talk about them and was really curious about the rog strix series.

From what I was able to research the rog strix series is supposed to be the step up from the prime series, and yet I don't really see people recommending them despite the rog strix z270h being the same cost as the prime K, or the rog strix z270f being only 15$ above the prime A.

Do you have any idea why that is, or what the differences are between these boards that would make someone go one way over the other? I've tried googling a ton to find out and have asked in a few places and I can't seem to get an answer.

[potis]

@potis I've been looking into the motherboards you mentioned and some others that come up when people talk about them and was really curious about the rog strix series.

From what I was able to research the rog strix series is supposed to be the step up from the prime series, and yet I don't really see people recommending them despite the rog strix z270h being the same cost as the prime K, or the rog strix z270f being only 15$ above the prime A.

Do you have any idea why that is, or what the differences are between these boards that would make someone go one way over the other? I've tried googling a ton to find out and have asked in a few places and I can't seem to get an answer.

LEDS, mainly LEDS, Strix is the "Gaming" series, followed by their LED controlling program. Asus AURA was it?

They might have more phases and overall better capacitors for OC but i doubt it.

Already told you, most motherboards at the same price cost +-20$ are the same crap, there is no reason to go higher than ~130$ maybe 150$ for a motherboard for the average consumer, unless you are looking for something -exactly to fit your needs- in a motherboard that might cost much higher.

[Baconeggcheese]

LEDS, mainly LEDS, Strix is the "Gaming" series, followed by their LED controlling program. Asus AURA was it?

They might have more phases and overall better capacitors for OC but i doubt it.

Already told you, most motherboards at the same price cost +-20$ are the same crap, there is no reason to go higher than ~130$ maybe 150$ for a motherboard for the average consumer, unless you are looking for something -exactly to fit your needs- in a motherboard that might cost much higher.

I believe the rog strix z270h doesn't have much if anything going on with lights, and is the exact same price (140$) as the prime K, is there any reason to choose one over the other? It looks like the z270h has the same sound chip as the more expensive one which is supposed to be better than what comes in the prime boards. Is there anything you might be able to spot?

[potis]

I believe the rog strix z270h doesn't have much if anything going on with lights, and is the exact same price (140$) as the prime K, is there any reason to choose one over the other? It looks like the z270h has the same sound chip as the more expensive one which is supposed to be better than what comes in the prime boards. Is there anything you might be able to spot?

Then it just has the name and the black color of the STRIX series, as i said, most are the same crap.

Or "The gaming ethernet"

As i said, its just the gaming series to delude people into buying, variety sells.

[Denpepe]

They are mostly similar, but there are some differences

The prime has VGA out which in these days is usually useless
The strix supports SLI and crossfire, the prime only crossfire
The strix has also better audio if you have the speakers/cans to actually hear the difference

Most of these differences are negligible for most users, just make sure that the board you choose has all the features you want to use.

[teamkiller]

Blizzard games are based on older games so they favor Single Thread performance, aka higher Hz on Core 0, (Or 1, call it whatever), the better the Blizzard game will run.

Just a minor thing, Blizzard games do not just care about core 0 "Speed". A more accurate explain is IPC or Instructions per clock times the speed of the Clock. (I'm stating this only for clarity's sake and the speed is "usually" a good indicator) i7-7820 vs i7 7700 is a good example of this or Ryzen 1600 vs the FX 8350. i7-7820 can achieve a higher speed but since its IPC is lower than the 7700, the 7700 is better than the 7820 in almost all benchmarks (they're both 4/8 c/t). The Ryzen 1600 is 22% "slower" than the FX 8350, but because the IPC of ryzen is drastically higher than that of the 8350, it absolutely crushes it. Im really trying to highlight this point because if the the OP is newer to building or if someone else comes to read this thread, the misinformation could cause them to make the wrong type of purchase.


Other than that, potis is dead on the money. I7 7700 all the way if you have the money. If not, R5 1600x (at least 150$ cheaper).

[potis]

Just a minor thing, Blizzard games do not just care about core 0 "Speed". A more accurate explain is IPC or Instructions per clock times the speed of the Clock. (I'm stating this only for clarity's sake and the speed is "usually" a good indicator) i7-7820 vs i7 7700 is a good example of this or Ryzen 1600 vs the FX 8350. i7-7820 can achieve a higher speed but since its IPC is lower than the 7700, the 7700 is better than the 7820 in almost all benchmarks (they're both 4/8 c/t). The Ryzen 1600 is 22% "slower" than the FX 8350, but because the IPC of ryzen is drastically higher than that of the 8350, it absolutely crushes it. Im really trying to highlight this point because if the the OP is newer to building or if someone else comes to read this thread, the misinformation could cause them to make the wrong type of purchase.


Other than that, potis is dead on the money. I7 7700 all the way if you have the money. If not, R5 1600x (at least 150$ cheaper).

No its mostly "I cant be fucking arsed to type the same shit for the 1000th time on this forum" really, when you can simply guide them to the CPU name when they already researched some stuff themselves since they wont understand any of the "more confusing explanations" there is simply no point typing a second wall of text about it.

[Baconeggcheese]

@teamkiller Thanks for that, I did a metric fuckton of googling before even making this thread and a lot after and I definitely saw that mentioned a bunch of times.

I mostly asked here because I like having multiple opinions (and reinforcement of This or that from separate sources) and only got a response from 1 person on reddit and was curious about the ryzens because after googling the ever loving shit out of it I couldn't find any good data (or at least stuff that made me confident) about how they perform in wow.

There's lots and lots of people asking the same questions but good explanations for beginners who have literally no idea tend to be slim pickings. Can't tell you how many beginner guides and videos I went through trying to figure things out and I feel like there's a lot more answers floating around than good explanations about how people got to those answers that someone like me can digest.

[teamkiller]

@teamkiller Thanks for that, I did a metric fuckton of googling before even making this thread and a lot after and I definitely saw that mentioned a bunch of times.

I mostly asked here because I like having multiple opinions (and reinforcement of This or that from separate sources) and only got a response from 1 person on reddit and was curious about the ryzens because after googling the ever loving shit out of it I couldn't find any good data (or at least stuff that made me confident) about how they perform in wow.

There's lots and lots of people asking the same questions but good explanations for beginners who have literally no idea tend to be slim pickings. Can't tell you how many beginner guides and videos I went through trying to figure things out and I feel like there's a lot more answers floating around than good explanations about how people got to those answers that someone like me can digest.

When it comes to information on this topic, the best place to look are the bench markers (some of my favorites being bitwit, paul's hardware, gamer's nexus, jayztwocents and linus tech tips). These are people who get sample models from the OEM's (AMD/Intel/Nvidia) to test their products in real world applications and post reviews. They will often supply benchmarks and will normally give fair recommendations based on need or cost/performance. The next best way is to use http://www.userbenchmark.com/ and look up the CPU is question. This website takes tons of samples from different computers. Yes there will be outliers but it will give you a decent average. This does provide good insight to what the processor will be good at. If gaming, typically you want to look at single core process speed. The speed on those benchmarks are done with benchmark software that will stress just one core. Quad core speed is usually a good number for newer AAA titles such as GTA V. Multicore stresses all cores all threads. This tells you the overall performance of the CPU if you stress all cores (typically high-bitrate streaming and gaming or heavy compression load)

As you can tell, the best way i've found is using a variation on the scientific method. Is it perfect? no but finding a decent conclusion is much easier when you have real world data to pull from. WoW will remain an anomaly as it is a very old engine that is still quiet demanding and many people play it. This makes things way more confusing than they should be.

[Baconeggcheese]

@teamkiller Yeah I found userbenchmark pretty early into my googling and was looking at that a lot, I tried to look for wow since it has it on there but it seems like there just isn't enough samples to really get a good idea. The rest of it though confused me, I guess I don't really know what the points refers to. Like single core speed is 32-36% in favor of the i7 which sounds a lot more massive than people make the difference sound between it and the ryzen chips.

Yeah I think wow specifically makes it much much more difficult. Lots of people seem totally unaware of how wow is when it comes to parts.

[teamkiller]

@teamkiller Yeah I found userbenchmark pretty early into my googling and was looking at that a lot, I tried to look for wow since it has it on there but it seems like there just isn't enough samples to really get a good idea. The rest of it though confused me, I guess I don't really know what the points refers to. Like single core speed is 32-36% in favor of the i7 which sounds a lot more massive than people make the difference sound between it and the ryzen chips. Yeah I think wow specifically makes it much much more difficult. Lots of people seem totally unaware of how wow is when it comes to parts.

I tend to look at the percentage comparison. Where wow raiding comes into play, its going to be CPU bound. The 7700k really will give a decent size boost in performance for wow. In raiding where you're going to see your frame dips due to heavy CPU load. Where the Ryzen will give you 40ish, the 7700k will give 50ish frames or around 25% more. 25% seems like a lot but when you break it down to FPS, it tends to be how much frame loss will you notice. Now the question becomes is the 25% gain worth the cost. This is where much of the debate comes up with Ryzen VS Kabylake (intels 7th gen). Ryzen gives you improved multiprocessing over the 7700 but at a loss for gaming and at a cheaper price (330+140 vs 210+70 or 190$ difference). So in numerical values; Intel 7700k will give a 25% increase in gaming for a 15% loss in heavy threaded loads for an increased cost of 67%. That 190$ is often times better spent on going from a 1060 to a 1070 or a 1070 to a 1080 (GPU) or even a nice monitor (makes a big difference). The points are just an arbitrary value holder they use. Just like software like cinebench or Ashes of the benchmark will have. Its mostly just used for comparison and by itself, the number is almost useless. You need something else to compare it too.