General help with upgrade bits

[fixeighted]

So I've got this box which is a few years old which I inherited and is my main pc. I want to get some better bits - GFX and chip mainly I think. I'm not good with hardware so only know that it has:
ASUS X99A
i7 5960 3ghz
GTX 980Ti
Corsair Carbide Air 540 Cube Case Black
32 GB DDR4

Obviously it has that cooled chip thing....not sure what other things anyone needs to know.

Question is, If I got an RTX 2080 and a new chip then would that be a reasonable enough upgrade and would that card and e.g. a threadripper or whatever else is recommended actually work with
that motherboard? I'd like to keep the GTX as a second card if that's feasible or worthwhile.

I don't have any specific budget in mind, as I'm unsure of certain things - but I don't have inexhaustible funds so nothing too extreme

All suggestions welcome.

Thanks for any advice incoming

[fixeighted]

So I now realise vaguely that I'll need a new motherboard also. So my initial plea for guidance includes that now.
There are so many choices/configurations and I do not have the knowledge to make a qualitative decision, so really any pointers would be cool, thanks

[Alex_M]

It's going to be hard to suggest the best upgrade without a ballpark budget.

Anyways, the best bang for the buck at the moment seems to be a system based on the 16-core Ryzen 3950x aka baby Threadripper. It's a bit faster than the 16-core Threadripper 1950x and 2950x in rendering while also decently faster in single core tasks. To top it all off, it consumes a lot less electricity than these 16-core Threadrippers. Not to mention motherboards cost less than those for Threadripper. Only drawback is less PCI-E lanes which might be a problem if you plan to use many GPUs for rendering or if you plan to use a lot of storage devices. 3950x is $750 MSRP, but a lot of places sell it for more due to the very high demand. Wait for price to stabilize a bit if you go with this CPU. Good X570 motherboards for this CPU sell for $200-250. If your cooler is not compatible with the AM4 CPU socket, you'll need to get one as well. I think it's safest to go with air. Noctua will be your best bet for performance and silence. So something like Noctua NH-D15 will be very capable. All these will cost you a total of ~$1200 and will be ~2.5 times faster than your current system.

If you've got a larger budget, the next best option is to go with the newest Threadripper CPUs. Namely the 3960x which is a 24-core and costs $1400. A good TRX40 motherboard for it will cost you $550-600. For cooling, again, I think it's safest to go with air - Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 or Thermalright silver arrow TR4. Note that the Silver Arrow will be a bit noisier, but allegedly has a bit better cooling performance. All of these will come at $2000-2100.

I hope these give you some general directions that you can consider.

[fixeighted]

Thanks so much for that, very helpful. I find this part of computers really quite stressy LOL

Your first selection seems reasonable, with a 2080ti on top making it around 2200, which is doable.
The chips are only pre-order for January, so I could wait until then to finalise. Although possibly I should order now if they are likely to all sell, increasing the wait time...hmm
I have a Corsair Hydro H100i I think, so that may or may not be still fine...they're cheap enough so can get a better one anyway.
With GPU rendering, I would like to utilise it yes, especially if I can either have my 980 help out or use it for other stuff.
The storage I have is fine, so if it fits on the existing board I guess it'll fit on the new one.
I just noticed I'd need faster ram than currently, so added expense but fine...if there is anything recommended then saves my headaches trying to work out which is preferrable

It's a good strat anyway, cheers

[Alex_M]

No worries. Yes, you are not mistaken. These CPUs sell out really fast. They are gone as soon as they come in stock.

Your cooler might be fine for 3950x so no harm in trying it out before buying a new one. Worst case scenario you won't be able to overclock the CPU if you are the kind of person that loves to squeeze out every bit of performance out of their hardware.

BTW, what's your current RAM model and why do you think it's not fast enough? AMD recommend 3200 Mhz as the sweet spot, but you can certainly do well with 3000 Mhz for example, it shouldn't matter that much for rendering. Just don't go below 2933 Mhz if possible.

[fixeighted]

The ram is 2133 - it is an old machine, so def needs upgrading.
Bear in mind that I effectively know very little about this side of things - my friend, who built this machine, built all mine that weren't off the shelf boxes - while I was usually in the pub
I sadly get no pleasure from building/tweaking hardware - just need it to go quickly and not break

I think that unless anyone else chimes in with 'no! don't get that chip whatever you do..' then I'll put in an order for it tomorrow and check it off the list at least. It's only money!

[Alex_M]

2133 Mhz DDR4 is definitely slow for Ryzen so it needs replacing. Again, get 3200 Mhz DDR4 as it's the sweet spot for performance and cost. Oh, and another thing I forgot to mention. If you get a Threadripper, you'll need to install either 4 or 8 sticks of RAM to get advantage of the 4 memory channels Threadripper supports. If you go with the small Ryzen (on AM4 socket motherboards), you'll want to install either 2 or 4 sticks because it's dual channel.

[fixeighted]

I have 32gigs on 4 sticks at the moment, so I'm guessing that this or the 64gb option would be the one I'd get for the 3950x...
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/corsa...my-4bz-cs.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/corsa...my-4cc-cs.html

[fixeighted]

So my final list unless anyone can suggest otherwise is below. I have 3 x 1tb drives and 3 x 500gb ssd drives, so please say if you think these will not fit on the mb, (currently they are installed at the bottom of the case and on the other side of the mb in the image) or point out anything I may have missed.
As mentioned, I'd like to keep the 980 card on this board unless it'll cause any problems.
Thanks


£750 Ryzen 9 3950x 16 core
£260 https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigab...mb-57v-gi.html
£300 https://www.overclockers.co.uk/corsa...my-4cc-cs.html
£990 https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-g...gx-34u-ms.html
£76 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Noctua-NH-D.../dp/B01NC06ZYT

and https://www.amazon.co.uk/MorisMos-Gi...xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

....for when it all goes horribly wrong

[Alex_M]

Looks good to me. It would definitely be a very good upgrade over your current machine. From what I'm seeing on Gigabyte's website, the motherboard you've picked has 6 x SATA connectors for SSD and HDD drives so you shouldn't have problems with your storage. It also has 3 x M.2 slots for when you decide to upgrade to those high speed NVMe SSD that slot directly into the motherboard without cables.

[fixeighted]

Cool...I think I'll just go ahead and order all this and wait for the chip to arrive hopefully in January sometime.
That new storage is worth thinking about for sure. Less cables = better.