Thoughts on CPU upgrade for Rift & RTX 2080 Super?

[Denniss]

Or 3700X if you need two more cores. Both are best paired with good 3200 RAM like Crucial Ballistix.

[Drano]

Or 3700X if you need two more cores. Both are best paired with good 3200 RAM like Crucial Ballistix.

The research I did putting my current rig together all said with Ryzen you're better off with PC3600 RAM like the Gskill Trident Z kit and tightening up the timings for best performance. Something to do with the sweet spot for the infinity clock on the memory processor. That's exactly what I did and after adjusting the timings with Ryzen DRAM Calculator yielded a nice bump up. I'd suggest if you didn't overclock the CPU to absolutely overclock the memory. Of course, 3200 will work just fine and you can do the same thing with a few ticks less of a bump.

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[DaddyAce]

I've done some research as I'm planning an upgrade in the near future and from what I've see Ryzen 5 3600 is bang for the buck.

Thanks for your response!   If I recall correctly my son went with this one for the same reason....

[DaddyAce]

Or 3700X if you need two more cores. Both are best paired with good 3200 RAM like Crucial Ballistix.

Thanks you Deniss!  Part of my dilemma....are more cores useful for Aces High with VR (the Rift in my case, at least for now)?  Or is single core speed more important?  If it is single core speed I now easily get 4.3 Mhz out of my i5 7600K by using the MSI Overclock Genie.  As Bizman pointed out I don't get much gain in single core speed, without going to something like the very top end CPUs......which I'm reluctant drop that much $ since my current setup works fine, just not as smooth as ideal with full on graphics settings.

[DaddyAce]

The research I did putting my current rig together all said with Ryzen you're better off with PC3600 RAM like the Gskill Trident Z kit and tightening up the timings for best performance. Something to do with the sweet spot for the infinity clock on the memory processor. That's exactly what I did and after adjusting the timings with Ryzen DRAM Calculator yielded a nice bump up. I'd suggest if you didn't overclock the CPU to absolutely overclock the memory. Of course, 3200 will work just fine and you can do the same thing with a few ticks less of a bump.

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Another interesting consideration I hadn't thought about, thank you Drano!

[Denniss]

Ryzen 3600+ does indeed scale good with memory speed, not as good as the older Ryzen 2600+ but you still gain some extra speed with faster memory.
Anything above 3200 RAM is OC and may work or not, 3600 RAM is the sweet spot for the Infinity Fabric interconnect used on Ryzen (running at 1800MHz then) which most Zen2 Ryzen 3600+ should be capable of.
One has just to verify that IF is actually running at 1800, it may be possible some Biosversion automatically set a lower clock.
Crucial Ballistix is known for its very good quality memory chips and high overclockability of their modules. And they even have 3600 modules. With second-tier manufacturers like Gskill you often hav the problem with different revisions of modules using the same model number but equipped with chips of different manufacturers.

[DaddyAce]

Just as an update, okay, I know you guys are AMD fans at the moment, and and with good reason because their new CPUs offer the overall best performance for the $.  However I'm currently strongly leaning towards building around the i7-9700K with an ASUS Z-390-E Gaming motherboard.  Info I found online suggests that high clock speed is still tops for VR-Gaming, and that is by far the most demanding use for my machine, and this i7 has a stock Turbo clock speed of 4.9 Ghz and still has 8 cores....all else I do would be fine with the i3 6100 that I have in a nearby drawer....

[Drano]

I have the Ryzen version of that mobo. It's a good one so far.

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[DaddyAce]

I have the Ryzen version of that mobo. It's a good one so far.

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Good to hear Drano.  It is also the board Logicalincrements recommends for the high end intel cpus.  I ordered my new parts earlier.  Now for the extended wait times on shipping these days, but not a big deal as current system still plenty good enough.  This will be a luxury build for me.  I've found that once I started building my own I start getting more fussy about what I expect in my build and develop more appreciation for the finer details in better cases, etc.

[Drano]

Yeah I've been looking to do a new build for a while. Got a feeling I was about to be shut in for a while and started ordering stuff right before the lock down happened. So I had everything ready just in time. Tweaking it has given me something to do and that's a time consuming geek thing. I got the Lian-Li PC011 Dynamic case for this one. Plenty of room. Nice layout. Only thing is it doesn't come with any fans. But all fanned up it's got great airflow. Only thing I recycled from the last build was the 2060. Figured I'll wait and see what happens in the video card world down the road.

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[DaddyAce]

Yes, Lian Li look like some nice cases.  I had some specific things I was looking for.  Given that my best internet "broadband" access is a weak cell signal, I want to keep a provision for an optical drive, as I prefer disk over downloading software when practical.  I also like having a lot of front USB ports to connect to printer, backup drive, etc.  I went with the Fractal Define-7 case.  Very flexible case, got great reviews on Tom's Hardware.  It does come with a few fans, but unfortunately non-PWM.  I have some PWM in my current build and may use some for my new build as I don't expect my wife's needs will push the hardware at all.  For the CPU cooler I went with the Dark Rock 4.  Their cases come with very nice PWM fans.  Spent a lot of time looking at cases and found no "perfect" case for my use, but expect I'll be quite happy with the Define 7.  It seems like once or twice a year or so I'm tinkering with some mod, so a nice case will make it more fun.