Advice needed: What's the better build?

Mugsy

Posts: 772   +203
My (6 year old) PC spontaneously dropped dead Sunday night. Worst of all, it was the MoBo, meaning a new CPU and RAM for a costly upgrade.

I was an AMD enthusiast for years and have wanted to return, but went Intel years ago for the faster CPU. The Ryzen line finally looked like the opportunity to return to my AMD roots, but I'm finding a "lowly" 6-core i5 9600 is both faster and cheaper than an 8-core 3700X.

I could use some advice:

I'm on a tight budget (maybe $350.) Do I go with the $195 i5 with cheap sub-$100 MoBo and ride it for a few years, or "splurge" on a promised "4000-series-compatible" Ryzen MoBo and put a cheap 3-Series cpu in it until I can afford to upgrade later? (Remember, I must buy at least 8gb of memory as well.)

(Or perhaps even splurge on an Intel MoBo and pray they don't change sockets yet again?)
 
I5-9600 have no chance against 3700X. Unless you are looking Userbenchmark or similar crap.

Intel will change sockets next year, no worries about that.

I would take cheap X570 board, cheapest CPU available (at least quad core still) and upgrade to Zen3.
 
Thx for the reply.

Plenty of benchmarks showing the i5 outperforming the 3700X (surprising), but early info on the AMD 4000 series showing they will be worth the wait.

Biggest drawback I'm finding of going with an 1151(s3) MoBo is that they all use painfully slow DDR4 (and even DDR3) peaking at 2666MHz. Being able to reuse my existing 2133 DDR3 is attractive, but never getting about DDR4 2666???

I've scouted a high-end Asus MoBo for $190, coupled with a $100 Ryzen 3200G and 8gb (2x4gb) DDR4 for $40 for a cheap build I can upgrade later, keeping me under my $350 limit.
 
I5-9600 have no chance against 3700X.
In games, they're pretty even - in some, the 3700X is a little faster, in others, the i5-9600K is.


You can see how they fair with 7 games, in the above review; of course, in productivity applications, it's a one horse race.

Biggest drawback I'm finding of going with an 1151(s3) MoBo is that they all use painfully slow DDR4 (and even DDR3) peaking at 2666MHz.
That's just the default memory speed support of the CPU; any half decent Z390 or similar board will cope with faster RAM than that. I'm using an Asus Z390 Plus Gaming, a cheap and utterly useless board, and it copes with 3000 MHz just fine.

I've scouted a high-end Asus MoBo for $190, coupled with a $100 Ryzen 3200G and 8gb (2x4gb) DDR4 for $40 for a cheap build I can upgrade later, keeping me under my $350 limit.
Makes sense to go with a simple cheap CPU, but a decent motherboard, so you can pop an upgrade into it, when you've got the funds to do so. What Asus board were you looking at?
 
Makes sense to go with a simple cheap CPU, but a decent motherboard, so you can pop an upgrade into it, when you've got the funds to do so. What Asus board were you looking at?

The ASUS TUF GAMING X570-PLUS. It only has four slots but they're all PCI-4.0, Gen 2 USB 3.1 ports, built in Bluetooth 5.0, 8 channel sound, and supports up to 4400Mhz DDR4 when overclocked (hopefully stock speed with a 4th gen Ryzen.)

About as "future proof" you can get for under $200.
 
I have another option I'm seriously considering: Getting a cheap socket 1150 board for $100 as a straight-up replacement so I can continue to use all of my old parts till I can afford to do it right.

I'd basically be throwing away $100, but so is spending $150 on a Ryzen3 and cheap memory for the same amount of time. :confused:

(Note: I still don't know if the remaining components are okay or if something else caused the failure? No indication of power... LEDs on MoBo still off when I plugged in another PSU. But why would it alone spontaneously die?)
 
Last edited:
It will depend on how your old motherboard died, but yes - there is a chance that the CPU and/or RAM are kaput too. If they are, then you could potentially totally waste $100, unless you're certain that it can be returned without issue (should the other components not work).

Of course, it might not be the motherboard - the PSU, for example, could have failed. What issues lead you to identify the board as being the problem?
 
Thanks for the reply.

Sunday night while I was in the kitchen and the computer was idling in the next room, I suddenly heard the computer spontaneously power off (not even going through the Shutdown process.) I tried to turn it back on but nothing happened.

So I opened it up, disconnected the PSU (a Corsair 860) and plugged into my handy PSU tester (I'm a former tech.) The PSU, case fans & lights, all sprung to life.

I then tried plugging an old spare PSU (power straight from the wall, not my UPS) into the 24pin socket and the board remained dead. IIRC, there is a green LED on the MoBo that lights when the board has power, and it has a 2-digit LED for error codes when switched on. Neither lite up.

As noted above, the MoBo is 6 years old. I built the PC myself, watercooled (AIO unit) and overclocked. Plugged into an APC 1200watt UPS with surge-protection. Never had a problem. No warning. No weird behavior, no crashing, prior to the crash. Totally spontaneous and w/o warning.

Shouldn't a MoBo indicate it has power even with NO components plugged into it? If not lights, then at least beeps. I get nothing.

My concern is the watercooler might have failed, but I received no "overheating warning beeps" before the computer shutdown. And would a bad/dead CPU stop lights & warning beeps? I don't think so.

TIA
 
Even reasonably old CPUs have a thermal shutdown mechanism, so it's unlikely to be that. It does sound like the motherboard is dead, especially as you've tested another PSU and no light signals, POST codes or beeps are generated. If you can get a decent 1150 H87/Z87/H97/Z97 motherboard for $100, then that will probably be the best way to go forward, until funds permit a more substantial upgrade.
 
Thanks for the "confirmation" that it is likely just the MoBo.

As you might imagine, money is tight right now.
 
Back