Reason to upgrade from Z77/3570K?

[brettjrob]

I've been out of the building game for quite some time, and also virtually never play games, for that matter. My current rig is Z77/3570K with 16 GB DDR3 and HD7700. I do a good amount of photo editing (including some large composites/timelapses/etc., but it's not my main profession) and a bit of video editing, but otherwise, it's just day to day stuff and media consumption (some transcoding, etc., but meh).

I wouldn't even be looking to upgrade, except for the fact that my ASRock Z77 board has been a POS from day one and the annoyances are really catching up with me lately. Lately it won't even POST except every 3rd-4th boot attempt, and my patience is wearing thin. It's had bent CPU socket pins all along that have caused various issues, and my attempts to fix them have never made things 100% right.

Again, I wouldn't think anything of just swapping in a new board for my uses... except that shitty, heavily used Z77 boards go for practically their original MSRPs five years ago ($100-150). I mean, any board that old is probably at risk of dying after three months... in the past, it would be a no-brainer to jump half a decade forward in tech for a new CPU+MB+RAM ($350-450) rather than make that "investment."

But now? I'm not so sure. Is there anything out there that would be a truly noticeable upgrade from a 3570K if you're not a gamer? A cursory look at benchmarks from recent years seems shockingly stagnant. I mean, even when I went from a C2D to the 3570K, it felt like progress had slowed... but this is on another level. About the only thing really enticing me to upgrade the whole system core is USB 3.1. Hell, it even looks like RAM capacity is exactly the same as five years ago (most boards maxing out at 4x8 GB).

If I were to put up $400 or so for CPU+MB+RAM, could I at least end up with a significantly faster photo/video editing rig? If not, is there any path that makes sense besides dropping over $100 on an ancient and likely heavily-used Z77 board?

 

[PinellasPete]

You definitely could improve things with an upgrade. I would suggest upgrading to a Ryzen R5 1600 or R5 1600X CPU. They are both 6 core 12 thread CPUs that would give you a tremendous boost in any kind of photo or video editing. You might have to increase your budget just a bit though.

Here is an upgrade that I put together using PCPartPicker:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor ($195.69 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-U12S SE-AM4 CPU Cooler ($59.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-AB350-GAMING 3 ATX AM4 Motherboard ($93.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($133.88 @ OutletPC)
Total: $483.45
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-06-20 00:30 EDT-0400

 

[VirtualLarry]

Nice price on that Ryzen 5 1600. I had trouble navigating to that item on their site, but I was able to follow the PCPartPicker link, and order one. I hope it actually shows up, the SuperBiiz site was down for a while, hope things are OK there.

 

[nathanddrews]

@brettjrob I'm in the same boat in that I have two machines with 3570K/ASRock Z77 Pro4/32GB, both OC to 4.2GHz air. The only difference is that mine have been working perfectly since I bought them 5 years ago. Sorry to hear about your mobo problems. Gremlins suck (the movie is great though).

From a gaming perspective, I like really high frame rates (144+). I don't play pro or anything, I just prefer it. Intel is usually much faster in this regard, but when coming from a 5 year old CPU, just about everything else is faster, but it varies a lot by game. Where the 3570K, it really shows its age in online multiplayer, where the minimum frame rates are terrible. So in some instances, Ryzen mops the floor with the 3570K, but in many occasions they are similar. But then compared to something like the 7700K, everything else is left in the dust. Many emulators (that I also play a lot) are also highly single-threaded, so again, Intel usually is better for that as well. For gaming alone, Ryzen is attractive to me, but not ideal.

On the flip side, for the limited video editing that I do and frequent video encoding that I do, Ryzen would be a phenomenal upgrade. I don't do any game streaming, but I'd like to, so again, Ryzen offers up a much better experience for the money thanks to all those cores and threads. Lots of Chrome tabs in addition to doing other things? Ryzen helps with that day-to-day stuff as well. The 1600 is probably a good upgrade for you and for me, but I'm holding out a bit longer. I want to see what ThreadRipper brings to the table before my next big upgrade.

Do you have a Microcenter near you? If so, you can get the R5 1600 and that Gigabyte motherboard in a combo for $249...

 

[brettjrob]

Thanks for the replies. AMD... there's a name I haven't taken seriously in awhile, as someone who only dips his feet in this stuff every few years. It sounds like Ryzen, and particularly the 1600, is probably the most reasonable upgrade path if I choose to move on from my current setup. Compared with the 1600X, I'll sacrifice the 400 MHz clock for the included cooler and $50 savings, since I won't be OCing.

Where I'm a little confused is with this ThreadRipper business. I even saw a popular reviewer say something like "this is a terrible time to upgrade" when skimming earlier. Yet, it looks like Ryzen just debuted over the past 3-4 months, accompanied by all sorts of "AMD is back!" hysteria. Are they really moving on to a greatly improved chip/process that quickly?

BTW, I also forgot to mention that I do run some VMs, so that's another consideration. I have to think going from 4 threads to 12 will be a net boon there, but want to make sure there isn't some major performance advantage Intel has locked up in terms of virtualization that I'd be giving up. (Also, if there's anything I'm particularly annoyed by popping into the hardware world for the first time since 2012, it's that RAM is virtually the same or higher price per GB... sigh).

 

[richierich1212]

Either get the 1600 or wait for Coffeelake 6-core release in a couple of months. Boom, done.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The 1600X is on ebay from "refurbforless" for $219.99. Snag it quickly! (You'll need a cooler, I think, too.)