Question Time to upgrade - need advice on parts

[Gorrillasnot]

Hello all.
I haven't upgraded my PC in a long time. My i7 2600k still does everything I need it to do, but it is starting to show its age.
I am thinking of switching platforms to an AMD x570 board and a r5 3600.
I use my PC for light gaming, heavy web use (usually have lots of tabs open with media rich content like youtube etc.), and some video and photo editing.
My budget is a max of $600 (the lower the better).

CPU: I'm thinking R5 3600 or 3600x (is the extra $40 worth the 200Mhz the x version gives you?) $200ish
Cooler: Use the hyper 212 EVO from my current rig if I can find the AMD mounting parts.$free
Memory: https://www.newegg.com/team-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820331026 $80
HDD: Western Digital WD BLACK SN750 500GB $95
Motherboard: no idea. Would like the best bang for the buck for $150-$200
Windows: Maybe. I have a unused legal copy of windows 7 and I am an old dinosaur that hats to change, but if windows 10 is THAT much better then 7 I could learn to like it I guess. But at $100 it would put me over my budget so I might have to use 7 for now and upgrade later to 10

Going to reuse case, psu, peripherals, GPU, etc.

would appreciate any suggestions or combos you all could suggest that might be better then what I listed.

thanks

 

[RLGL]

Consider, the new boards do not provide driver support for win 7. It can be done but is a PIA. Support for newer peripherals is also lacking for 7. Plus some of the case connectors have changed over the years. BTW don't push your luck on the power supply, the leads have also changed with time. the board will determine the memory. For best results work from the QVL>

 

[Markfw]

You should use an NVME m.2 drive (or is that what you picked ?) This one is cheaper and also WD

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

And this motherboard for $200

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

Also, you might even think about the 3700x with 8 cores instead of 6 for the 3600(x)

 

[Gorrillasnot]

thanks for the info guys

the drive i picked is NVME and pretty fast. Max Sequential Read 3430 MBps and Max Sequential Write 2600 MBps but it doesn't have a heatsink on it. I watched some youtube videos that said m.2 drives tend to run hot on x570 boards..if thats true I might need to pick a different drive.

I would love the 3700x cpu but at $330 it would probably be out of my budget,

would I be better off going with something from Intel or do you think the 3600 would be ok?

thanks

 

[Markfw]

thanks for the info guys

the drive i picked is NVME and pretty fast. Max Sequential Read 3430 MBps and Max Sequential Write 2600 MBps but it doesn't have a heatsink on it. I watched some youtube videos that said m.2 drives tend to run hot on x570 boards..if thats true I might need to pick a different drive.

I would love the 3700x cpu but at $330 it would probably be out of my budget,

would I be better off going with something from Intel or do you think the 3600 would be ok?

thanks

Or you could get one of these: https://www.newegg.com/p/37B-0037-00002?Item=9SIAHB07RX6296

I have like 3 or 4 of them. They work on any nvme drive and work great.

 

[Gorrillasnot]

thanks for the link..will pick one up.

I found a decent price on a 512GB sabrent rocket nvme drive for $60. It seems to be recommended in a lot of budget builds I've seen.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-SB-ROCKET-512-Rocket-Internal-Performance/dp/B07KGMBCKD

Also recommended in a lot of budget builds is the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max motherboard for $115

MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard

pcpartpicker.com

Would this be a good board to pair with a 3600? or should I stick with a x570 based board?

thanks

 

[Markfw]

thanks for the link..will pick one up.

I found a decent price on a 512GB sabrent rocket nvme drive for $60. It seems to be recommended in a lot of budget builds I've seen.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-SB-ROCKET-512-Rocket-Internal-Performance/dp/B07KGMBCKD

Also recommended in a lot of budget builds is the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max motherboard for $115

MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard

pcpartpicker.com

Would this be a good board to pair with a 3600? or should I stick with a x570 based board?

thanks

Either motherboard is fine, the x570 just gives you more speed if you get a gen4 NVME drive. The NVME you linked to is fine, but its PCIE3, so the x570 would not buy you anything.

 

[Gorrillasnot]

Since I don't upgrade very often (as you cant tell from the specs in my sig lol) I upped my budget a little.
For the cpu I got the r7 3700x, tomahawk max motherboard, 512GB sabrent rocket m.2, 16GB Night Hawk RGB DDR4 3200 ram.
I'm going to reuse my case, psu, and GPU for now.
Also I made a flash drive with windows 7 with USB and nvme drivers..hopefully that works for now until I can get windows 10.
If not I'll try some flavor of linux.

My parts should arrive tomorrow then the building fun can begin.

thanks all

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Make sure your current power supply has the 4 pin connector. @Markfw will agree.
Per my experience with a 3800x build machine would not power on without the second 4 pin cpu connector attached.
Also it must be a 4 pin cpu connector, the pcie one will fit but can damage basically everything if you use it.

 

[Gorrillasnot]

Make sure your current power supply has the 4 pin connector.

The tomahawk board uses a 8 pin connector. Luckily my PSU has a 8 pin (and 4pin) psu connector.

I bench built everything outside of the case using an old Radeon 3450 I had laying around, flashed the latest BIOS, installed windows, drivers, and all my other usual software I frequently use.
Putting all the hardware together was super easy, installing Windows 7 was also easy after using MSI smart tool to make a USB drive with USB and NVME drivers, but once windows was installed it was a real pain finding and installing the rest of the drivers and getting windows update to work.
After many hours I manged to get all, but 1 driver installed and found a patch to get windows update to work.
Device manager shows something called PCI Encryption/Decryption Controller that I can't find a driver for.

Speed wise it feels much faster then my old 2600k. I ran cinebench r15 on the 2600k and got 754 on the render test. The 3700x got 2080 on the same test.

Does anyone know of a driver or workaround that would work for the PCI Encryption/Decryption Controller for windows 7?

thanks

Edit: After doing some more research it seems that the PCI Encryption/Decryption Controller driver is for AMD's platform security processor which from what I've read is like Intel's management engine.
With the potential to be a scurity risk I think I will disable it in the device manager and leave well enough alone.

 

[Gorrillasnot]

I've had a few days now to play around with my new upgraded mobo, cpu, ram, and nvme ssd and am a little disappointed.
Boot up and shut downs/restarts take longer then my old system, but more annoying is that launching Waterfox (my browser of choice) takes significantly longer to launch like 30ish seconds and launching bleachbit takes anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute to load.
However after they've been launched once the next time I launch them they load much faster.
On my old system those same apps launched pretty much instantly anytime

What do you think could be the issue causing this?
Is it likely me using windows 7 on the newer hardware that doesn't officially support it? or maybe something to do with not having a driver for the PCI Encryption/Decryption Controller (AMD PSP)?

thanks

btw the only adons I have installed in Waterfox is ublock origins and adobe flash player.

 

[daveybrat]

I've had a few days now to play around with my new upgraded mobo, cpu, ram, and nvme ssd and am a little disappointed.
Boot up and shut downs/restarts take longer then my old system, but more annoying is that launching Waterfox (my browser of choice) takes significantly longer to launch like 30ish seconds and launching bleachbit takes anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute to load.
However after they've been launched once the next time I launch them they load much faster.
On my old system those same apps launched pretty much instantly anytime

What do you think could be the issue causing this?
Is it likely me using windows 7 on the newer hardware that doesn't officially support it? or maybe something to do with not having a driver for the PCI Encryption/Decryption Controller (AMD PSP)?

thanks

btw the only adons I have installed in Waterfox is ublock origins and adobe flash player.

It's Windows 7. I can give you an almost 99% guarantee that if you did a fresh install of Windows 10 on that same hardware it would be significantly faster.

I say that because if you look at the specs in my sig (that i just upgraded to), everything opens insanely faster than on my old Intel i5 system.

 

[Markfw]

I've had a few days now to play around with my new upgraded mobo, cpu, ram, and nvme ssd and am a little disappointed.
Boot up and shut downs/restarts take longer then my old system, but more annoying is that launching Waterfox (my browser of choice) takes significantly longer to launch like 30ish seconds and launching bleachbit takes anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute to load.
However after they've been launched once the next time I launch them they load much faster.
On my old system those same apps launched pretty much instantly anytime

What do you think could be the issue causing this?
Is it likely me using windows 7 on the newer hardware that doesn't officially support it? or maybe something to do with not having a driver for the PCI Encryption/Decryption Controller (AMD PSP)?

thanks

btw the only adons I have installed in Waterfox is ublock origins and adobe flash player.

Windows 7 is not even supported on your hardware, so its not even a question as to why. As @daveybrat said, install windows 10 from scratch, and I am sure you will be happy.

 

[Gorrillasnot]

Thanks guys..Yep it was windows 7.
Switched bios to UEFI for hard drive and did a from scratch install of windows 10 and all my programs work much better.
Getting use to windows 10 will be another story lol but in time it will be ok.

thanks

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Thanks guys..Yep it was windows 7.
Switched bios to UEFI for hard drive and did a from scratch install of windows 10 and all my programs work much better.
Getting use to windows 10 will be another story lol but in time it will be ok.

thanks

Never used windows 7 however I really like windows 10. Similar enough not to be too weird, stable and fast.

 

[jhansman]

You should use an NVME m.2 drive (or is that what you picked ?) This one is cheaper and also WD

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

This. Why boot from a spinner if your mobo supports NVMe? Maybe for storage, but let your OS run from fast silicon.