Building PC - recommendations?

[TCK 2,164]

So I think I'm gonna build a PC for myself finally. Been on this used Alienware for a while now (I would never pay full price for AW but got a pretty good secondhand deal on it 3 years ago).

 

Anyway my friend has a spare Ryzen 2600 CPU that he got sent a duplicate of by mistake, he's selling it at half price; it's enough to tempt me into going AMD for a mobo but I wanted to ask around about opinions first on that. My first PC was AMD and I never had a lot of trouble with it, that said I did have a few compatibility issues with Halo modding from time to time and I remember people saying the biggest advantage of Intel over AMD CPU-wise is compatibility. Is that still true? Also is Intel just generally higher quality? I've heard that as well, that they don't slow down over their life much at all. My experience was always positive with both my Intel PC's but I didn't have a lot of experience with the AMD one when it was new (it was a hand-me-down from my dad) so I have no perspective.

 

I already have my GPU picked, getting one for free from my brother, it's pretty decent (Nvidia 1070). Figure I can always upgrade later if I need to but I don't play any brand new games so it'll be a few years.

Edited November 27, 2020 by TCK

[Sunstriker7 698]

I've had Intel based machines with both Nvidia and AMD graphics and I've had AMD based machines also with both Nvidia and AMD (ATi, actually) graphics and I've never had an issue with compatibility. Somebody else might have a different story, but I never have. As far as quality, they are pretty even. I currently use an intel core i7 6700k that I purchased for 400 USD in late 2015. When I upgrade I will be getting an AMD processor because you get way better bang for your buck and for a run of the mill personal computer used for gaming a mid-range CPU will be all you need. The Ryzen 2600 will be a great matchup with your Nvidia 1070. Maybe if you decide to go for a 3000 series RTX card you also might consider a CPU upgrade but even then I'd wait until it's bottlenecked first. Also, processors don't get slower over time. I think whoever told you that bought into some kind of misinformation floating around in the 90s and perpetuated it on to you. CPUs slow down when they get hot, and that's about it. AMDs do run hotter than Intel, but not enough to be throttling themselves with their stock cooler. Just use good thermal paste, use it correctly, and keep your case clean of dust and you'll be fine.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Sunstriker7

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

The only thing I can think of regarding compatibility is AMD Smart Memory Access on the newer AMD Radeon RX 6000 GPUs. This requires an AMD Ryzen 5000 CPU and boosts performance a little bit. However, Nvidia said they're implementing something similar without such a CPU requirement.

 

Otherwise, provided you have the correct drivers installed, any semi-recent AMD or Intel CPU should work with that GTX 1070 without any performance penalty from using said brand combination.

 

By "semi-recent" I mean you're probably not going to be plugging a GTX 1070 into an Intel Pentium III based system. Not only will you probably not find compatible drivers, but you wouldn't have a PCIe x16 slot, either.

 

8 hours ago, Sunstriker7 said:

AMDs do run hotter than Intel, but not enough to be throttling themselves with their stock cooler.

Funny you say that. For the older FX CPUs and maybe even early Zen CPUs, that was true, but with newer ones? Well... here's the Ryzen 2000 series (GamersNexus):

The Ryzen 5 2700X which is 8 cores and 16 threads (142.68 W) uses around as much power as the Intel Core i5-8600K which is 6 cores and 6 threads (147.6 W). Since they have around the same power consumption, they have around the same heat, since power is given off as heat/infrared.

 

Of course, it doesn't perform as well in games, so here's something more recent, the Ryzen 5000 series (also from GamersNexus) namely the 5950X which has 16 cores and 32 threads:

 

At 21:12, you can see the Ryzen 9 5950X, which has 16 cores and 32 threads (120 W), using around as much power as the Intel Core i9-10900K which has 10 cores and 20 threads (129.6 W). When you overclock the 10900K to 5.2 GHz, it uses 316.8 W, or around 2.64x the power (thus around 2.64x the heat output in that workload). However, even when overclocked, in Red Dead Redemption (17:09), it's only 5% faster than the stock 5950X, and in Three Kingdoms (17:17), it is actually 5% slower despite its overclock. In pure CPU tasks, such as V-Ray (7:59), Photoshop (8:48), 7-Zip (10:58), Blender (12:24), ffmpeg transcoding (14:13), and compilation (14:55), it is utterly trounced, even when overclocked.

[Sunstriker7 698]

Well shit, now I'm definitely shrugging off Intel.

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

4 hours ago, Sunstriker7 said:

Well shit, now I'm definitely shrugging off Intel.

You know, it's weird to admit this, but Intel does have one thing over AMD: price, particularly with mid-range gaming CPUs.

 

Yes, the Intel Core i5-10600K is slower in games than the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, but it's also $40 cheaper and has the same core count. Overclockable Intel boards are only slightly more expensive. I suppose the Ryzen 5 5600X comes with a cooler, but if you were going to overclock, you'd probably have purchased a cooler anyway.

 

Goodness, how times have changed.