First upgrade since 2012

[antoninb]

Hi everyone,

My current machine is an ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 with Intel Core i5-3570K overclocked to 4.2 and 32GB in an Antec P280 tower case with AIO water cooling.

I don't do gaming, but do run VMs on a constant basis. I have a low grade video card, but am happy to run graphics directly from the CPU. My main Windows 10 OS is fairly thin, since most of my apps run within VMs, including email. I do not plan on changing that posture.

I built this machine in 2012, and have decided that it's finally time for an upgrade. I plan to keep the case and watercooling but change out the rest of the components with the following:

ASRock Z590 PHANTOM GAMING 4/AC Intel WD Black SN750 1TB M.2 Solid State Drive INTEL Core i7-10700K G.SKILL RipjawsV 32GB(2x16GB) DDR4 3600MHz (I might go with 4x16GB) CORSAIR RM Series RM650 80 PLUS Gold Fully Modular ATX Power Supply Respectful comments are invited. Thanks!

 

[Lysrin]

You haven't mentioned budget, that always is a deciding factor for recommendations.

Aside from that, if you run a lot of VMs you generally want lots of cores and memory. Given that I'd suggest considering the AMD 5900X rather than the Intel CPU. That would get you up to 12 cores/24 threads. 5950X has even more cores but bumps the price up a lot. And 32 GB of RAM is good, but depending on how many VMs and how much work they do, 64 is better Again, budget would be the deciding factor there too.

 

[antoninb]

You haven't mentioned budget, that always is a deciding factor for recommendations.

Aside from that, if you run a lot of VMs you generally want lots of cores and memory. Given that I'd suggest considering the AMD 5900X rather than the Intel CPU. That would get you up to 12 cores/24 threads. 5950X has even more cores but bumps the price up a lot. And 32 GB of RAM is good, but depending on how many VMs and how much work they do, 64 is better Again, budget would be the deciding factor there too.

Budget is about $1200 CDN. Thus, the CPU choice.

 

[moocow]

Go dig up some of Hardware Unbox's reviews because ASRock have some funny business going on.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor ($409.00 @ Canada Computers)
Motherboard: MSI MAG Z490 TOMAHAWK ATX LGA1200 Motherboard ($268.40 @ Vuugo)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($209.14 @ Amazon Canada)
Storage: Western Digital SN750 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($154.00 @ Amazon Canada)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($89.75 @ Vuugo)
Total: $1130.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-06-19 00:17 EDT-0400

 

[antoninb]

Go dig up some of Hardware Unbox's reviews because ASRock have some funny business going on.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor ($409.00 @ Canada Computers)
Motherboard: MSI MAG Z490 TOMAHAWK ATX LGA1200 Motherboard ($268.40 @ Vuugo)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($209.14 @ Amazon Canada)
Storage: Western Digital SN750 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($154.00 @ Amazon Canada)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($89.75 @ Vuugo)
Total: $1130.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-06-19 00:17 EDT-0400

Thanks! My existing ASRock MB has served me well, but I'm definitely not adverse to switching brands. I see that these days, they are having some problems.

 

[moocow]

Gamers Nexus got their hands on the new AMD R5-5600G and R7-5700G and both out perform the Intel (non Iris) i-GPU. So to check out the review video on YT as well. They are coming out in Aug so if you can wait, I would get those instead just as a hold over for basic gaming. Not sure if you will get reduced PCI-E lanes like the older APU. For example, if you use a 2400G with iGPU enabled, the PCI-E x16 goes down to X8 and not sure what happens to the second x16 slot on a X board. when the iGPU is disabled, the PCI-E x16 goes back up to full speed.

 

[antoninb]

Gamers Nexus got their hands on the new AMD R5-5600G and R7-5700G and both out perform the Intel (non Iris) i-GPU. So to check out the review video on YT as well. They are coming out in Aug so if you can wait, I would get those instead just as a hold over for basic gaming. Not sure if you will get reduced PCI-E lanes like the older APU. For example, if you use a 2400G with iGPU enabled, the PCI-E x16 goes down to X8 and not sure what happens to the second x16 slot on a X board. when the iGPU is disabled, the PCI-E x16 goes back up to full speed.

Interesting. I had largely dismissed AMD because this chip series was not available in retail. This does change things. I'm not in a huge rush, and could wait for August. I've built AMD machines in the past, so no problem there. I'm grateful for the info. This changes things!

 

[antoninb]

So, here is what I've finally decided to order. At this point, I'm primarily receptive to comments regarding compatibility and known issues. I'm comfortable with costs and the features of the MB, APU, PSU, etc. Please assume that decisions around memory capacity and no discrete video card have been made deliberately. Thanks!

- Antec Performance Series P101 Silent Black
- ASUS TUF Gaming X570-PRO (WiFi 6) AMD AM4
- CORSAIR RMx Series RM650x
- AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
- Western Digital WD BLACK SN750 NVMe M.2
- Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin DDR4

 

[Sagath]

Looks great. Unsure if your use case with VM's that you might benefit from the extra cores on the 5700g?

The RMX is an interesting listing. Or is it the RM650 from your first post? I believe the RMX were last made in ~2015.

 

[Bond007]

Seems good to me overall, and you shouldn’t have issues. My thoughts:

- case choice is personal preference
- did you pick reasonably fast ram to pair with the APU?
- if you aren’t adding discrete graphics you could get a much smaller PSU
- personally (on a fixed budget) I would reduce the motherboard and case cost a little and up the cpu, but absolutely nothing wrong with your picks.

Looks great. Unsure if your use case with VM's that you might benefit from the extra cores on the 5700g?

The RMX is an interesting listing. Or is it the RM650 from your first post? I believe the RMX were last made in ~2015.

rmx is still a current and quality PSU.