Why Building a Gaming PC Right Now Is a Bad Idea, Part 1: Expensive DDR4 Memory

[Strawman]

The second average frame rate chart, which only includes modern games that tend to utilize processing resources more efficiently, places the stock Ryzen 5 1600 ahead of Intel's stock Core i5-7600K

That's from Tom's Hardware, suggesting that the cheaper (by quite a lot might I add, due to cooler and cheaper b350) R5 1600 is faster than the 7600k in modern titles.

The more I test quad-core processors the less excited I am getting about them. A move to six and eight-core processors to me feels like the right thing to do as I do feel my overall desktop experience is much snappier and faster compared to any brand quad-core CPU, really go ask some users in our forums as it really feels and seems faster.

For 219 USD you can have a high-end processor experience on a very affordable platform. I cannot iterate it enough, this proc is oozing value and performance, and as such comes recommended, even highly recommended. Hence I am issuing both awards to the Ryzen 5 1600.

Guru3rd in the r5 1600 review.

But with the CPUs available to buy right now, Ryzen 5 1600 is our choice as the best mainstream gaming CPU on the market
And for its part, the once unassailable unlocked i5 K chip - beloved of gamers for so long - is overwhelmed in more complex gaming workloads by the wider Ryzen 5 six-core processors, while non-gaming tasks see the full weight of those extra cores and threads put to good use

These are all reviewers that get paid for their opinion. Your own personal biased opinion is irrelevant.

 

[DynamoNED]

I found a deal on a 16GB set of Mushkin DDR4-2400 RAM for $65 USD off a NewEgg Flash Deal. According to PCPartPicker, that same kit is now $213.78 USD. Pure insanity.

 

[Vulcanproject]

No it wasn't documented like that... The Ryzen 7 caught up to the Broadwell E which is what they were aimed at, you said then never caught them... They absolutely did catch the chips they were aimed at with performance equal or better to that of similar core count. Trying to claim the opposite documented is completely false. You can look this up, even gaming benchmarks were similar when the chips were compared. At the launch of the Ryzen 7 the Broadwell chips were at the high end of the i7 price points.

As for the Ryzen 5 1600x, that was the closest of the gaming options for AMD... It actually produced higher FPS than the 1700 even when the 1700 was Overclocked.

All nonsense. No point talking to you if you won't even address evidence proving you incorrect posted by another member, not even by me! Ryzen 1600, 1600X, 1700, whatever. None have proven capable of matching a 7700K on the vast majority of games at the resolutions the vast majority of users play at.

Fact fact fact. End of discussion.

 

[Strawman]

All nonsense. No point talking to you if you won't even address evidence proving you incorrect posted by another member, not even by me! Ryzen 1600, 1600X, 1700, whatever. None have proven capable of matching a 7700K on the vast majority of games at the resolutions the vast majority of users play at.

Fact fact fact. End of discussion.

Yes, the 7700k was on a league of it's own. Intel dominates the ultra high end gaming market. But, when you scale down to the kaby i5's, the R5 1600 was just a way better deal, even for pure gaming. And it actually was cheaper. The pricing and the performance was short of a miracle frankly.

 

[centrino207]

I remember I originally bought my 16GB kit at a mere $100. Now it's worth double that price, it's insane.

So know one really knows why RAM is so expensive these days? I remember reading some theory of some flood in Asia and they had to shut down production.

Other theory I remember reading some factory that got destroyed in Asia.

But if none of these true that what is real reason? Lack of competitions? Or just greed that they make a shortage of RAM to get more profit?

 

[Dimitrios]

5 - 6 core+ CPUs have yet to mature on the tech and software side. Remember how great the intel Q6600 and Phenom IIx4 955 were? Great to OC, fantastic synthetic benchmarks, yet on the intel dual core 8400 was outperforming them in gaming. Fan boys stated wait until games are optimized for multicore...and they were...eventually...when the intel 2500k launched.

I used a Phenom II x4 965 until last December for gaming. And it actually worked. Can't say the same about a Core 2 duo though. Fanboys were right, once again, weren't they? Unless of course you change your CPU every 2 years, (I do, but most people definitely don't) going for the Core 2 Duo instead would be just dumb.

Same here. Phenom 965BE @ 4.3GHZ still runs my games very well. Was going to do a new build with a RYZEN but the prices are crazy with RAM.

 

[harm9963]

My 290X CFX 8370e @4.5GHZ -32 GB RAM -250GB SSD -3TB HDD 1300w PSU EVGA G2 rig is serving me well.

 

[Domeas]

I wasn't really sure about the state of pricing in recent times, so I looked on Newegg for graphics card prices and OUCH! 1070s going for $900+? 1050s for $300?!? Absurd. Just ridiculous. Supply and demand, yeah right. This reeks of price fixing.

MSI 1080- ti $798 on Newegg time now.

 

[Negative 287]

Yes, the 7700k was on a league of it's own. Intel dominates the ultra high end gaming market. But, when you scale down to the kaby i5's, the R5 1600 was just a way better deal, even for pure gaming. And it actually was cheaper. The pricing and the performance was short of a miracle frankly.

No it really doesn't... When you cross QHD resolution, the CPU is almost completely removed from the equation and that's why you're better off getting a better GPU than CPU. Spend less on the 1600(x) and put that extra $150 towards a better GPU.

 

[Negative 287]

All nonsense. No point talking to you if you won't even address evidence proving you incorrect posted by another member, not even by me! Ryzen 1600, 1600X, 1700, whatever. None have proven capable of matching a 7700K on the vast majority of games at the resolutions the vast majority of users play at.

Fact fact fact. End of discussion.

I did address them... I showed that they were targeted at the Broadwell E CPUs and they actually beat those CPUs for half the price.

I also noted that 4K makes the CPU essentially equal as most Graphics cards bottleneck the system at those resolutions. By the time we see Graphics cards that don't have that issue, the multi-threading of the games will favor more cores.

Oh and the IPC was actually better than the Broadwell-E cores.

 

[poohbear]

For those of us old enough to remember, the RAM market is cyclical. If u have a mind, get in on the stock market when ram prices are low, and sell when theyre high. Micron was trading at $9 a share less than 2 years ago. Now its $45 a share. When RAM prices drop it'll drop back to $10-$15 a share. Same old story being played out in the past 20 years.

Again, its cyclical, the same thing will happen 10 years from now. Hopefully ull be ready to take advantage of it.

 

[Negative 287]

True but then you could have even gotten a better return then the ryzen with the i7-7700k, proven facts above.


And that is lie as proven by facts through steam hardware survey with resolution above 1080p at under 5%. You were wrong with the xeons, wrong with the ryzen and wrong with the resolution. Its fun embarrassing you with facts.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

1920 x 1080
76.07%
-0.34%

1920 x 1200
0.44%
+0.01%

2560 x 1080
0.70%
+0.02%

2560 x 1440
3.48%
+0.14%

3840 x 2160
0.45%
+0.03%

Other
0.96%
+0.01%

It is only a lie if you don't know how to read the chart!

Read the heading titled...

Multi-Monitor Desktop Resolution
3840x1080
34%

The problem is, they never tell you what % of people are multi monitor. I am right now, 1 is 1080P and the other is 4K.

You can apologize now!

As for the i7 - 7700 sorry but at $350 it was not a better bang for the buck than the Ryzen 7 1700. The 1700 Smoked it every place but gaming and when you game at 4K (Which is what I already told you I do), then gaming numbers are pretty much identical.

Sorry you guys don't like this, but you're wasting resources if you're buying a faster CPU for $150 more and sacrificing a faster GPU.

 

[poohbear]

It seems I'll keep my core i7 4790K and 16 Gb DDR3 for a long time, but I really want to change the GTX 970 I have.

Im in exactly the same boat! Bought the 16gb DD3 for $65 back in the day. Waiting for Volta...

 

[bohemond1099]

"investigating the possibility of DRAM price-fixing between the major industry players, and this has of course been sparked by the price surge we've been talking about." -Also the fact that Samsung and Hynix were caught red handed fixing DRAM prices in the early 2000s. Lets cut the BS here.

 

[mctommy]

I just updated my rig this past September 2017. Mobo of 5 years died. Didn't want to look around to find a mobo for the 2500k so went all out... RAM prices were 2x8 for about $160 then.

 

[VBKing]

Wasn't there a natural disaster a year or two ago (earthquake, flood, typhoon, cyclone, etc.) that did major damage to some of the fabricating plants which also caused prices to go up? Never heard a follow-up story on whether / when the factories were fixed.

I could google for these answers, but that's no fun.

 

[JAmie71]

I purchased 2 4 stick packs 8gb DDR4 2400 back in March 2016 for £90, I'm still using them in my X99 5820k pc

seems like I got a bargain. Although I could have got the 2667 ram at the same price at the time. But nvm

 

[dirtyferret]

It is only a lie if you don't know how to read the chart!

Read the heading titled...

Multi-Monitor Desktop Resolution
3840x1080
34%

The problem is, they never tell you what % of people are multi monitor. I am right now, 1 is 1080P and the other is 4K.

You can apologize now!

As for the i7 - 7700 sorry but at $350 it was not a better bang for the buck than the Ryzen 7 1700. The 1700 Smoked it every place but gaming and when you game at 4K (Which is what I already told you I do), then gaming numbers are pretty much identical.

Sorry you guys don't like this, but you're wasting resources if you're buying a faster CPU for $150 more and sacrificing a faster GPU.

ROFL, you think one in three people run multiple monitors!! ROFL. that is the percentage of people who run multiple monitors for resolution not ALL gamers! Lol I can't believe you thought that ! That is hilarious and embarrassing for you!lol

 

[dirtyferret]

Thank the gods you are using fresh games that make use of lots of threads! Isn't it obvious that the game is horribly single threaded, due to the i3 beating even an 8600k? Try something more modern, like bf1 64mp, ac origins etc, and tell me how it goes.After all, we need educating

I bet you a paycheck, the vast majority of AAA games released in 2018 are going to choke anything with 4 threads.

What you fail to understand is that is an entire suit of games, I did not link all of them as it would take up too much space. I would say I don't understand why you fail to understand simple concepts but then I read your posts and understand completely. In this thread alone I have at least ten likes and several people posting who agree with me along with professional reviews from anandtech, techpowerup, tomshardware, PC gamer, and more. You have no one agreeing with you, no professional review site, no likes, and just hyperbole with half it contradicting the other half....

 

[ET3D]

Memory prices high? wait for it..I guess most here are young enough to not have bought memory back in the day when 2 x 1 gig of OCZ titainium Alpha DDR2 was 549.00

I bought a 16MB SIMM for $700. But I also bought 16GB of DDR4 for $70. The thing is, the normal progression in tech is getting more for your money. If you're getting less, something is screwy.

 

[Sum Guy]

I built my rig in 2014. DDR4 was $49 for a 16gb kit. That same kit now is $180. I figured I would get more ram later. Here it is 2018 and I still have have not upgraded. I just know the moment I buy it, the price will drop like a rock. The mobo I got for $349 dropped to $109 weeks after I got it. The ram soared. I so badly wanted to set up a ram drive. I dont see that happening ever now.

I am little angry about it, but not much I can do.

 

[Strawman]

You have no one agreeing with you, no professional review site, no likes, and just hyperbole with half it contradicting the other half....

LOLWUT. What's that then?

The second average frame rate chart, which only includes modern games that tend to utilize processing resources more efficiently, places the stock Ryzen 5 1600 ahead of Intel's stock Core i5-7600K

That's from Tom's Hardware, suggesting that the cheaper (by quite a lot might I add, due to cooler and cheaper b350) R5 1600 is faster than the 7600k in modern titles.

The more I test quad-core processors the less excited I am getting about them. A move to six and eight-core processors to me feels like the right thing to do as I do feel my overall desktop experience is much snappier and faster compared to any brand quad-core CPU, really go ask some users in our forums as it really feels and seems faster.

For 219 USD you can have a high-end processor experience on a very affordable platform. I cannot iterate it enough, this proc is oozing value and performance, and as such comes recommended, even highly recommended. Hence I am issuing both awards to the Ryzen 5 1600.

Guru3rd in the r5 1600 review.

But with the CPUs available to buy right now, Ryzen 5 1600 is our choice as the best mainstream gaming CPU on the market
And for its part, the once unassailable unlocked i5 K chip - beloved of gamers for so long - is overwhelmed in more complex gaming workloads by the wider Ryzen 5 six-core processors, while non-gaming tasks see the full weight of those extra cores and threads put to good use

That's from Digital Foundry / Eurogamer.

So, 3 professional reviewing sites (4 if we include hwunboxed) says you are wrong. Your own personal biased opinion is cute, but irrelevant. I posted this already, and here you are claiming no reviewer agrees with me. You are just lying.

 

[Outtheredude]

Towards the end of 2015, I got myself a couple of affordable brand new Christmas presents: A nice (for the time) EVGA GTX 960 SSC 4GB midrange 1080p graphics card, with inclusive backplate, for around £180, and two 16GB DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24 2T kits of premium blinky light Crucial Tactical Tracer red/green & blue/orange LED memory to max out my Z97 motherboard for around £170, with a nice OC applied to all that 32GB of shiny memory to DDR3 2000 10-10-10-30 1T at stock voltage.

Now try getting the same sort of thing in 2018 with, for example, "just" 32GB of Trident Z RGB DDR4 4000 18-19-19-39 blinky light memory for your Z170-Z370 boards. For around 600 quid. Assuming you can even find the stuff in stock. Or get more than one 16GB kit from the same supplier if you do.

Never mind a nice mid range 8GB RX 570 or 6GB GTX 1060 for 1080p gaming at around even 200 quid brand new, in stock.

I guess we bowler hatted sepia people from the long-long-ago time (2015) never had it so good when it came to prices for mid range parts, certainly when compared with the post apocalyptic irradiated full RGB colour PC parts market you young 'uns have to endure today (2018).

 

[dirtyferret]

LOLWUT. What's that then?

You said I was on your ignore list?? Guess you lied about that too huh? Now we both you who's in who's head huh?
P.S. You still owe me your paycheck, pay up!

 

[Strawman]

You said I was on your ignore list?? Guess you lied about that too huh? Now we both you who's in who's head huh?
P.S. You still owe me your paycheck, pay up!

How exactly do I own you my paycheck? Please, quote exactly what I said and explain yourself. And stop lying. And now that I demonstrated that all reviewers prove you wrong, you are ignored. Cya