System Overhaul Advice

Hi all,

Another person seeking upgrade advice.. I intend to only play in VR. I can't go back to anything else. I am able to play at an acceptable level with the graphics turned down, but I would like to get the graphics better so I can have a better looking smoother experience.

Current Specs:

i5-6600k

MSI z270 Gaming Plus

EVGA GTX 1070

16 GB Ram

I wanted to do a system overhaul of the CPU MOBO and GPU but I don't know if I am ready to drop that kind of money yet, however, I have been piecemealing my system upgrades so far which has left me frustrated. So now I think I may just go ahead and get it all at once and get it over with so I can not upgrade for a while. My new system upgrades below.

i7-8700k

z370 Mobo

GTX 1080 Ti or RTX 2080 Ti (having trouble deciding which one right now..)

I have the money to do it all right now, I just cringe at the damn GPU prices.. Any advice on changes? Could I just get by with a GPU upgrade? I do play other games, but I don't have to have perfect FPS. As long as I have a smooth gaming experience that looks good I am good. However, I want the best GPU for VR on DCS.

Will GPU prices ever normalize any time soon?

Thanks for the help

Get a Z390 chipset it will give you more upgrade wiggle room down the road for a CPU refresh. If you can find a 1080 Ti used on Ebay from a trustworthy vendor, grab it. New ones are only being scalped now. For factory new warrantied cards you are looking at 2080 or 2080 Ti.

If you aren't planning a build for the holidays give it a few months. The 1000 series cards are clearing out fast from the major vendors. 2000 series will drop after the Christmas demand dies down. You can take advantage of current sales to get everything except GPU and you'll save but the vendors know you need a GPU. Just throw your 70 in there to burn it in and wait out the demand spike.

Get a Z390 chipset it will give you more upgrade wiggle room down the road for a CPU refresh. If you can find a 1080 Ti used on Ebay from a trustworthy vendor, grab it. New ones are only being scalped now. For factory new warrantied cards you are looking at 2080 or 2080 Ti.

 

If you aren't planning a build for the holidays give it a few months. The 1000 series cards are clearing out fast from the major vendors. 2000 series will drop after the Christmas demand dies down. You can take advantage of current sales to get everything except GPU and you'll save but the vendors know you need a GPU. Just throw your 70 in there to burn it in and wait out the demand spike.

Thanks for the advice! I was thinking I would just do the processor and mobo now and wait for the card prices to drop. Good idea with the z390 call, I will probably go that route now.

Nop. Spare your money for now. What is the speed of the CPU? Clock the CPU higher as you can with a good cooler. A cooler compatible to further socket.

Keep your 16G of RAM or get 32G of RAM, RAM that you can use with your next platform.

Wait for black Friday/Christmas/New year or any bullshit publicity sale for a big video card.

Nop. Spare your money for now. What is the speed of the CPU? Clock the CPU higher as you can with a good cooler. A cooler compatible to further socket.

Keep your 16G of RAM or get 32G of RAM, RAM that you can use with your next platform.

Wait for black Friday/Christmas/New year or any bullshit publicity sale for a big video card.

The CPU now is OC to 4.1, its base at 3.5ghz. Does RAM really make a big difference?

Maybe you can overclock the CPU at 4.4-4.6Ghz before to spend big money. Delid the CPU to go higher.

RAM? I don't know about VR, you have 16G. Monitor your RAM (MSI Afterburner/Settings/Monitoring) and you will know if you have enough.

For big missions ED does recommend 32 GB of RAM... but for your rebuild, yea, I would keep an eye out for a 1080ti, just don't pay too much. For right now a Z390 motherboard and a 8700k/9700k or a 9900k depending on how much you want to spend would be a good choice. Your CPU, while not bad, may be limiting you in DCS a bit since it is CPU intensive.

With the 8/9th gen CPUs you can generally clock them pretty high depending on the silicon lotto, I got my 9700k to 5 GHZ with 1.37 vcore, but ended up turning it down a bit to 4.9 GHZ with 1.35 vcore since 1.35 is what gigabyte (motherboard manufacturer) says is safe, even though it's pretty widely accepted that 1.4 vcore would be safe. Sorry went off subject a bit there.

For big missions ED does recommend 32 GB of RAM... but for your rebuild, yea, I would keep an eye out for a 1080ti, just don't pay too much. For right now a Z390 motherboard and a 8700k/9700k or a 9900k depending on how much you want to spend would be a good choice. Your CPU, while not bad, may be limiting you in DCS a bit since it is CPU intensive.

 

 

 

With the 8/9th gen CPUs you can generally clock them pretty high depending on the silicon lotto, I got my 9700k to 5 GHZ with 1.37 vcore, but ended up turning it down a bit to 4.9 GHZ with 1.35 vcore since 1.35 is what gigabyte (motherboard manufacturer) says is safe, even though it's pretty widely accepted that 1.4 vcore would be safe. Sorry went off subject a bit there.

Thanks for the info. I think I have decided on a build for now. Going with the Z390 board with the 8700k and I am going to go ahead and upgrade my ram to 32 gigs. I'm likely going to transfer my old board and processor to my wife's computer build. I think part of the problem with my system is I am running a single stick of 16gb ram so I feel like I need to correct that issues anyways.

I'm also going to get a 1TB M.2.. probably an 860 EVO. I was wondering if having the OS on the drive with DCS helps it run faster as well.

Right now I am going to hold off on the video card until they get a little cheaper, I hear bitcoin is starting to die down so maybe they will drop to more reasonable prices.

Thanks again for the advice.

An M.2 drive will make a huge difference in load times compared to a std disk drive (or even the latest sata spec SSD) if you buy the pcie nvme variety. 6x the speed of even the latest sata spec. I bought the Adata xpg brand that specs very closely to samsungs 970evo (uses the same controller chip) for sightly over $100us in the 500gb varient.

An M.2 drive will make a huge difference in load times compared to a std disk drive (or even the latest sata spec SSD) if you buy the pcie nvme variety. 6x the speed of even the latest sata spec. I bought the Adata xpg brand that specs very closely to samsungs 970evo (uses the same controller chip) for sightly over $100us in the 500gb varient.

That would be the latest XPG8200 drive with 3D TLC NAND, but this time with a very good controller (as the older models don't quite compare in performance).

But, even with that surprisingly solid budget model, I'd like to see a practical test showing this 'huge increase in loading times compared to latest-spec SATA drives'?

Hello All, so I completed my upgrade and wanted to pass an update. Here is what I went with.

MSI Z390 Gaming Plus

I7-8700k (currently 4.7 Ghz OC)

32 GB Ram

Curcial 1 TB NVME m.2

Ive already seen a noticable difference in performance. I am able to boost my graphics and get even better perofrmance than previously. The NVME is insanly fast! Now I just need to wait for 1080 Ti prices to drop.

B52EW in case you missed that ? : (price seems good)

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=226820