Ok, so I'm looking to upgrade. My original plan was to wait until Black Friday of 2018 (I know a long time off) or wait until the new Ryzen 2 CPU's are released or wait until Intel released a refresh or successor to Coffee Lake?
So, I mainly game and surf and watch movies. I have an i7 4790k and 1070. I'd love nothing more than to upgrade my whole system, but I currently only have about $680 on hand but I have another $300 that's owed to me. I've used Intel CPU's forever. The last AMD CPU I've owned was the Athlon XP 2500+....great CPU. I've also owned the Athlon 1.33GHz Thunderbird....oh, that was beautiful, but I buy whoever has the fastest CPU and for the longest time Intel has dominated that until Ryzen and even now Ryzen is beat by Intel especially with Coffee Lake.....so.
If I knew AMD's Ryzen 2 (which is just a refresh as I understand it....nothing huge....the Zen2 architecture isn't due until 2019 from what I've heard and I know that will be a big upgrade to Ryzen) or will Intel release a Coffee Lake refresh or a whole new architecture because of Spectre and Meltdown, not to mention AMD's now a real serious threat again.
So, I'll assume nothing amazing is going to come out this year. The reason I actually need to upgrade now, is partly because it doesn't look like anything faster than the i5 8600k. I could get an i7 8700k, but truth be told, I went from an i5-3570k to an i7-4790k and while it was obviously faster, I couldn't visually discern any difference between that rig that had two GTX 970's in SLI and this one. Well, GPU-wise I could tell a big difference between the 970's and the one GTX 1070, but just booting up or loading apps....nothing. What's worse is literally a month later Skylake came out. So, had I waited, I could have gotten a 6700k with 32GB of DDR4 RAM.
So, I'm looking at a few motherboards. I'm looking at the Asrock Z370 Pro4 or an Asrock Z370 for $129.99, Asrock Z370 Extreme4 for $144.99, Asrock Z370 Kill SLI/ac for $149.99 or the MSI Z370 Gaming Plus for $129.99. I'm leaning heavily toward the Asrock Z370 Extreme or the Asrock Z370 Kill SLI/ac....or even the Asrock Z370 Pro4. I actually built a system with the Asrock Z370m Pro4 with Team T-Force Dark DDR4 16GB and an MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Armor OC. This was before the GPU prices doubled. The 1070 was around $500 or so. I was soooo impressed with the UEFI in that cheap Asrock Z370m Pro4. Without any O/Cing, save Turbo Boost feature enabled. I think the difference was I was comparing it to my i7 4790k which is a quad-core against the i5 8600k with an hex-core. It had a Samsung 850 EVO. I had a Samsung 850 EVO too. Mine is super fast, but only takes about 4 to 5 seconds after the UEFI/BIOS screen pops up. This 8600k and that Asrock mobo booted in 2 seconds are under.
For memory, I'm having a really hard time. Pretty much everything I like isn't on the supported list on either. I'm looking at G.Skill 2400MHz and really G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB 2666MHz Model F4-2666C15D-16GVR for $181.99 This seems like the sweet spot. Also, the G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 Series 16GB Model F4-2400C15D-16GRR for $159.99. I like the first one better, but the G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 Series 16GB Model F4-2400C15D-16GRR is listed on the compatible list for at least one (maybe more) for the Asrock boards and it's $20 cheaper. The last one, which I like the least is the CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB Model CMK16GX4M2A2400C16 for $179.99. Corsair is pretty good, but I see this particular memory with pretty much all the bundles. It's listed on most compatibility lists for both Asrock and MSI, but some reviews seem to indicate it's had a few issues. It's good for the most part. Shouldn't any 288-pin DDR4 module work with pretty much any Z370 mobo as long as it's not something like 4200 or something like that?
So, I mainly game and surf and watch movies. I have an i7 4790k and 1070. I'd love nothing more than to upgrade my whole system, but I currently only have about $680 on hand but I have another $300 that's owed to me. I've used Intel CPU's forever. The last AMD CPU I've owned was the Athlon XP 2500+....great CPU. I've also owned the Athlon 1.33GHz Thunderbird....oh, that was beautiful, but I buy whoever has the fastest CPU and for the longest time Intel has dominated that until Ryzen and even now Ryzen is beat by Intel especially with Coffee Lake.....so.
If I knew AMD's Ryzen 2 (which is just a refresh as I understand it....nothing huge....the Zen2 architecture isn't due until 2019 from what I've heard and I know that will be a big upgrade to Ryzen) or will Intel release a Coffee Lake refresh or a whole new architecture because of Spectre and Meltdown, not to mention AMD's now a real serious threat again.
So, I'll assume nothing amazing is going to come out this year. The reason I actually need to upgrade now, is partly because it doesn't look like anything faster than the i5 8600k. I could get an i7 8700k, but truth be told, I went from an i5-3570k to an i7-4790k and while it was obviously faster, I couldn't visually discern any difference between that rig that had two GTX 970's in SLI and this one. Well, GPU-wise I could tell a big difference between the 970's and the one GTX 1070, but just booting up or loading apps....nothing. What's worse is literally a month later Skylake came out. So, had I waited, I could have gotten a 6700k with 32GB of DDR4 RAM.
So, I'm looking at a few motherboards. I'm looking at the Asrock Z370 Pro4 or an Asrock Z370 for $129.99, Asrock Z370 Extreme4 for $144.99, Asrock Z370 Kill SLI/ac for $149.99 or the MSI Z370 Gaming Plus for $129.99. I'm leaning heavily toward the Asrock Z370 Extreme or the Asrock Z370 Kill SLI/ac....or even the Asrock Z370 Pro4. I actually built a system with the Asrock Z370m Pro4 with Team T-Force Dark DDR4 16GB and an MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Armor OC. This was before the GPU prices doubled. The 1070 was around $500 or so. I was soooo impressed with the UEFI in that cheap Asrock Z370m Pro4. Without any O/Cing, save Turbo Boost feature enabled. I think the difference was I was comparing it to my i7 4790k which is a quad-core against the i5 8600k with an hex-core. It had a Samsung 850 EVO. I had a Samsung 850 EVO too. Mine is super fast, but only takes about 4 to 5 seconds after the UEFI/BIOS screen pops up. This 8600k and that Asrock mobo booted in 2 seconds are under.
For memory, I'm having a really hard time. Pretty much everything I like isn't on the supported list on either. I'm looking at G.Skill 2400MHz and really G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB 2666MHz Model F4-2666C15D-16GVR for $181.99 This seems like the sweet spot. Also, the G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 Series 16GB Model F4-2400C15D-16GRR for $159.99. I like the first one better, but the G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 Series 16GB Model F4-2400C15D-16GRR is listed on the compatible list for at least one (maybe more) for the Asrock boards and it's $20 cheaper. The last one, which I like the least is the CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB Model CMK16GX4M2A2400C16 for $179.99. Corsair is pretty good, but I see this particular memory with pretty much all the bundles. It's listed on most compatibility lists for both Asrock and MSI, but some reviews seem to indicate it's had a few issues. It's good for the most part. Shouldn't any 288-pin DDR4 module work with pretty much any Z370 mobo as long as it's not something like 4200 or something like that?
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