steveg Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 My sister had a gaming pc built for her about a year ago (didn't ask me first!) and it has been nothing but trouble, frequently not powering on, then on occasion it will work for no apparent reason. I've stripped it down and rebuilt it, it worked fine for a couple of days then same problem. It is going to be a problem with the motherboard or cpu most likely, or psu / case, less likely. There is enough ram in it to troubleshoot by removing 2 sticks, and it has onboard graphics, so I can rule out graphics card. I don't have a spare cpu / motherboard to try. She now just wants to buy a new case, motherboard, cpu and power supply, and move across the other components. I can then try and work out whats wrong and warranty the faulty component(s). What would everyone go for now? Components moving across are: m.2 drive sata ssd sata hdd 64gb corsair vengeance RGB PC4-21300 (2666) ram (4 x 16) Geforce RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio 8gb graphics card. There is a water cooled cpu cooler as well which can be used if required, it's a closed loop one, happy to ditch it though. Current cpu is an i7 9700k. I'm thinking either a Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9 now to replace it, with a motherboard that supports pcie 4.0 to allow a bit of future proofing for a graphics card upgrade in a few years. I know these support faster memory, but will they work with 2666? Case needs to be good quality and RGB. No specific budget as long as any extra money spent makes sense i.e no threadripper! Primary, and pretty much only purpose of the pc is gaming. 1
VeryPC Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 Hey @steveg Hope you're doing ok?! Just dropping by to let you know that here at VeryPC we also build Gaming PCs and this sounds right up our street. We actually built this impressive beauty which we gave away at the Bett show in January! I've asked one of our awesome sales champions to drop you a PM but in the meantime be sure to check out our Gaming PC webpage. Speak soon - Ryan
synaesthesia Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 Absolutely recommend the Ryzen series - particularly for gaming and paired with that GPU would be a best. Even the Ryzen 5 is quicker than that i7 so you won't be disappointed. Paired with a decent 570 motherboard it'll be an easy winner and will be more than capable of ram speeds of 3200 upwards.
steveg Posted June 30, 2020 Author Posted June 30, 2020 Hey @steveg Hope you're doing ok?! Just dropping by to let you know that here at VeryPC we also build Gaming PCs and this sounds right up our street. We actually built this impressive beauty which we gave away at the Bett show in January! I've asked one of our awesome sales champions to drop you a PM but in the meantime be sure to check out our Gaming PC webpage. Speak soon - Ryan Would be very interested in what you could do, if you can make use of the existing components I listed would be great to have it built by you guys, having purchased computers from you before.
ICTDirect_Dave Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 Whilst i'd suggest AMD any day of the week, the 9700K is by no means a slouch. I'd also be surprised if the CPU was faulty. It sound more like a PSU or motherboard issue to me, You'd be best served (and save loads of money) by finding the source of the problem first and replacing the right part. You'll see next to no real world change by swapping out the 9700k for a different cpu and that 2080 is going to be fine for a while yet. You shouldn't be looking to upgrade that for another year or two. I say fix the problem, have an awesome gaming pc that works again and look to switch to AMD in 2022 when your hardware is looking a little older. 1
steveg Posted June 30, 2020 Author Posted June 30, 2020 Whilst i'd suggest AMD any day of the week, the 9700K is by no means a slouch. I'd also be surprised if the CPU was faulty. It sound more like a PSU or motherboard issue to me, You'd be best served (and save loads of money) by finding the source of the problem first and replacing the right part. You'll see next to no real world change by swapping out the 9700k for a different cpu and that 2080 is going to be fine for a while yet. You shouldn't be looking to upgrade that for another year or two. I say fix the problem, have an awesome gaming pc that works again and look to switch to AMD in 2022 when your hardware is looking a little older. I agree it's not going to be a real upgrade in terms of noticeable performance difference, but having had a faulty pc for a number of months now, and using the one that I previously built her 5 years ago (which works fine, but too slow :-) ) she's fed up and just wants it sorted now. I can look at recovering some of the cost by selling components if i warranty any of them when I work out what is wrong afterwards.
DGardiner Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 (edited) Ive just recently upgraded from a i7 3770 to a i7 10700k, the performance difference is barely noticable to be honest. picked intel because the amd socket gave me anxiety, and the higher single core clock speed in most cases will be of more benefit if the proccessors the bottleneck. that said it boots faster, my nvme disk is now onboard instead of in a pcie slot, its quieter and feels a bit snappier - so im happy with the change! Edited June 30, 2020 by DGardiner
Davit2005 Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 I'd 2nd the Power Supply. It could be a cheap fix but get one powerful enough for now with a bit of future proofing. Do you have a specialist PC parts store local? I wouldn't necessarily choose the likes of certain high street retailers I could mention, those driven by commission.
ICTDirect_Dave Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 picked intel because the amd socket gave me anxiety How so? It'll soon be onto the 4th iteration of Ryzen CPUs and they're regularly smashing intel on day to day tasks & rendering, audio, video etc. They're also tiny a tiny fraction behind in gaming performance too.
DGardiner Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 How so? It'll soon be onto the 4th iteration of Ryzen CPUs and they're regularly smashing intel on day to day tasks & rendering, audio, video etc. They're also tiny a tiny fraction behind in gaming performance too. Multicore workloads are pretty few and far between outside rendering really... the lack of a retention bracket and every other post on the internet being "i removed the heatsink from the cpu and pulled the proccessor with it, bending the pins" just made me anxious about it
ICTDirect_Dave Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 Fair enough I found it delightful to build, can't imagine there ebing much trouble. I will say, that come the official launch of next gen consoles, you'll see a LOT more multithreaded workload in gaming. Both the Series X and PS5 are packing custom Ryzen this time around, that's going to fold back into PC gaming as a benefit for people on AMD chips pretty quickly I reckon.
DGardiner Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 Fair enough I found it delightful to build, can't imagine there ebing much trouble. I will say, that come the official launch of next gen consoles, you'll see a LOT more multithreaded workload in gaming. Both the Series X and PS5 are packing custom Ryzen this time around, that's going to fold back into PC gaming as a benefit for people on AMD chips pretty quickly I reckon. Hope so, competition in the cpu space is always good for the consumer! i almost went for a 3900x but just had visions of me mucking up the paste and killing it before id even turned it on
ZeroHour Posted June 30, 2020 Posted June 30, 2020 Just to say both Nvidia and AMD have new gen cards coming August/Sep they think and it will cause the rest of the range to drop in price so it may be worth holding out until then. 1
synaesthesia Posted July 1, 2020 Posted July 1, 2020 Multicore workloads are pretty few and far between outside rendering really... the lack of a retention bracket and every other post on the internet being "i removed the heatsink from the cpu and pulled the proccessor with it, bending the pins" just made me anxious about it Never had issues with that - anyone pulling a chip up with the heatsink is using the wrong compound! Got quite a beefy heatsink on my Ryzen. Not sure why anyone would think they're a "tiny bit behind" Intel in gaming - my 3600 benchmarks about equal to a 10700 or whatever the model is at a 3rd of the price in all modern games, particularly RDR2 and Doom Eternal
3s-gtech Posted July 1, 2020 Posted July 1, 2020 The 3900XT, 3800XT and 3600XT look like they'll nullify any gaming 'gap'.
sted Posted July 1, 2020 Posted July 1, 2020 How so? It'll soon be onto the 4th iteration of Ryzen CPUs and they're regularly smashing intel on day to day tasks & rendering, audio, video etc. They're also tiny a tiny fraction behind in gaming performance too. theres also the issue with intel cpus you need a new motherboard every gen as they keep changing the socket amd cpus dont when the new cpus come out later this year (early next) they will still be compatible with older boards if you have a 8th gen intel you are stuck with 8th gen chips without a motherboard swap
ICTDirect_Dave Posted July 1, 2020 Posted July 1, 2020 Not sure why anyone would think they're a "tiny bit behind" Intel in gaming - my 3600 benchmarks about equal to a 10700 or whatever the model is at a 3rd of the price in all modern games, particularly RDR2 and Doom Eternal Looking at a bunch of game benches, stock Ryzen are slightly behind Intel in most cases, but really the base ryzen level is so high that you wouldn't notice the change. But you'll get a bonus from OC'ing them. Ten minutes with my 3600X and I had it running at 4.25GHz all cores and it just steams through everything!
chazzy2501 Posted July 1, 2020 Posted July 1, 2020 Your PC is already a beast, maybe buy a preposterous monitor.
HTCPCP Posted July 2, 2020 Posted July 2, 2020 first step would be to replace the Power Supply with something decent - that will rule out that as a faulty component. You haven't specified a make and model of the existing one, or if there are cable extensions too (its an area where people often skimp out, and cheap extensions can be horrendous). Draw should be around 600w, so a 750/850w Gold or better rated modular PSU should be fine (850w should give you a bit more manouverability if next gen GPUs draw more power too) - not had any issues with either Seasonic or the Corsair RMX range. While AMD have closed the performance gap on Intel for gaming, Intel still holds the crown for the fastest gaming CPU in desktop and until the reviews on the XT's come out, its just speculation if AMD can nulify that gap. I would probably stick to keeping the Intel i9 9700K, its a quality CPU with great performance. Add in, if partnered with a decent cooler, and a good motherboard, you can get some great overclocks on it too, which will boost the gaming performance even more. Motherboard - potentially a point of failure - might be worth checking for any damage in the CPU socket, or scratches on the back of the PCB. A decent Z390 motherboard is a good investment to partner a K range CPU. Other things to look at - you say there is an AIO cooler - its probably worth checking that the fans are either the ones that came with it, or are high Static Pressure fans, as other fans can dramatically affect performance.
steveg Posted July 15, 2020 Author Posted July 15, 2020 I did the more sensible thing in the end and replaced just the motherboard and power supply. Could have done them one at a time but she was desperate to get the pc back up and running. Been running fine since the weekend, so hopefully that's it sorted now! 2
ICTDirect_Dave Posted July 16, 2020 Posted July 16, 2020 Good stuff! That's a chunk of money saved also!
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