CPU Stock Cooler Failure on My i7-4970K Rendering PC

[Mads Barnkob]

The stock cooler for my i7-4970K CPU fell off due to a broken plastic holder, I am not sure when it happened, but my PC had been really slow for a couple of weeks and I was contemplating an upgrade as this PC is from 2009!

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I think I have upgraded the graphics card, added more RAM and a SSD since it was first built. So as today it still sports a 4GHz i7-4970K, 16 GB RAM, MSI Z97 motherboard and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970. 250GB SSD boot drive, 1TB backup and 2TB storage. Corsair RM550 Watt PSU. All installed in a nice sound-reducing Antec cabinet as well as the TB drives are installed in noise reducing blue drive bays seen at top.

Please do leave suggestions for a new PC build Good performance on a budget!

[Fumeaux]

In my opinion, Ryzen is currently better for a productivity-oriented build. Depending on your budget I would recommend a 5900x or 5800x (or maybe a 5900, or 5800 when those come out). The 5600x is also a good CPU, but I'm not too sure if 6 cores are enough for you.

But objectively it is not a good time to buy a new pc. The prices are crazy. You should really consider waiting for the prices to come to a reasonable level and use the other cooler in the meantime.

In Austria, for some products, the prices are not too far off, from the recommended price, but for others...

If you tell me what you want from your PC, I can go into more details. (ie: Price, Formfactor (tower to itx), how futureproof should it be, what do you use your pc for, RGB??) I'd be happy to give you a list of components.

[John123]

Luckily the CPU survived. Never did like the stock Intel coolers of that style, can you not get a cheap aftermarket cooler with a larger heatsink? The stock coolers make the processors of this era run hot IIRC.

[Mads Barnkob]

I am not looking for a PC that is the best money can buy, for all the years I have put PCs together myself I have always gone with 2nd or 3rd best to get a good performance vs. price.

Here are screenshots from my two most bottlenecking applications. Powerdirector and Lightroom. Powerdirector just seems to eat whatever CPU is available whereas Lightroom is much more dependent on many single file writes to disk that seems to keep it from utilizing CPU fully, even here in example with running two export threads.

I like to reuse what I have. So a ATX motherboard in my Antec cabinet, hopefully 550W is still enough for the PSU. A new graphics card for the occasional recreational gaming and enough CPU/RAM/disk write speed for rendering jobs/image treatment (when working with highspeed its usually 20-40k files of 1MB each)

Depending on price, I would consider using SSD for work space as well... not just for boot and programs, but back in the days using SSD for work was generally seen as a bad idea due to quick wear down of it. Hopefully things have improved

[Twospoons]

Just rebuilt my pc after a mobo failure. Went with the Ryzen 5800x - not the cheapest or the dearest, but there was a rather limited selection. That 8 cores / 16 threads. Also went with a 1TB NVME solid state drive - blazing fast.
The old issue with wear on SSDs was more a case of not putting the Windows paging file on the SSD.
One big plus if you go with AMD for your CPU is they seem to retain the same socket, so you can get a lower spec cpu now and upgrade in a couple of years without needing a new mobo.
I would have thought your 550W supply would be a bit light if you're putting a reasonable GPU in too.  I'm running a 750W, but I have a reasonably solid GPU ( not top end, more upper mid).

Motherboard , CPU, 16GB ram and the 1TB drive came to ~$1400 NZD.

[TMaxElectronics]

I agree, ryzen is the way to go at the moment. I have upgraded the old Xeon E3-1230 V3 (I7 4770 equivalent) in my VR pc to a 3700X last year and have been very happy so far. I do recommend getting a new cooler for the thing though, as the stock cooler is very loud (then again I am spoiled by my 100% silent water-cooled main pc, so maybe its not that bad).

There are tools out there that let you calculate how large the power supply in you PC should be:
https://www.bequiet.com/en/psucalculator
But keep in mind that they give some very high recommendations. A friend of mine has a fully decked out 3600X + GTX1080ti pc and he has only a 450W psu and it seems to do fine.
For reference my main PC has a 8700k running at 5.1GHz and a 1080TI in it and I never managed to pull more than 500W from the wall even with GPU and CPU stress tests simultaineusly.

Regarding ssd lifetime:
I have had only SSDs in my pc for two years now and been using them as scratch disks for Premiere and stuff like that and according to the Samsung tool they have plenty of life left. For all the rest I have a large NAS and gigabit ethernet going there.

[Fumeaux]

I think I found a motherboard worth considering: MSI B550-A PRO

It can flash the bios without a CPU installed, it has a good enough VRAM for non-overclocked (to lightly-overclocked) CPUs, good connectivity, Diagnostic LEDs, an ok price, and good reviews.

And this might be an unpopular opinion, but the ryzen 7 3700x from last generation is still a good CPU and offers better price to performance than ryzen 5000. So if you are after a good value that's it.

For Ram there are too many kits. You should look for something like:

• 2x 8GB (more if you want)
• 3200-3600Mhz
• CL16
• G.Skill, Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, ...

As a boot drive

• >1TB
• NVMe 2280
• PCIe 4.0 x4 or PCIe 3.0 x4 (PCIe 3.0 x4 should be fine)
• Samsung, Crusial, Kingston, Corsair, Western Digital, ...

I think you should wait to buy a GPU and make do with what you currently have in your build.

And you don't have to get a stronger PSU if you don't get a new GPU.

I hope this gives you some sort of direction to make your own decisions.

EDIT: I thought about it and the ryzen 7 3700x is a pretty nice option.

[Mads Barnkob]

Thank you for the suggestions

This is pretty much my PC: https://www.userbenchmark.com/System/MSI-Z97-GAMING-5-MS-7917/5175

This is a comparison of my CPU vs. Ryzen 7 3700x: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-7-3700X-vs-Intel-i7-4790K/3485vs2275

While that is a truly nice performance leap, looking at the system builds from userbenchmark, its suddenly not that huge a difference to my PC. Which is a little disappointing after 5 years of development and a system in the same price league.

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-3700X/2384vs4043

It seems to come down to 64 CORE speed that really stands out.

From my point of view I have used most of my PCs/Laptop until there was a reasonable priced upgrade that would perform 200% of the current. Maybe its just not time to upgrade yet...