September 29, 2019

Building a new computer, circa 2019

It has been 6 years since I have taken a look at the state of PC hardware and processors. The occasion now is that my son Paul wants to upgrade his i5 based system, and is considering some kind of i9 processor, with an intent of building a gaming system. This is a bit of a different thing for me since I am always building a machine to run linux. He is looking at socket 1151 parts (my current systems all are socket 1155 with i7-3770K chips).
i9-9900K  8 cores, 16 thread, 3.5/5.0 Ghz, 16M cache  $475
i7-9700K  8 cores, 8 thread, 3.6/4.9 Ghz, 12M cache  $380 - almost discontinued
i7-8700K  6 cores, 12 thread, 3.7/4.7 Ghz, 12M cache  $355
i5-9600K  6 cores, 6 thread, 3.7/4.6 Ghz, 9M cache  $250 -- discontinue
i7-3770K  4 cores, 8 thread, 3.5 Ghz, 8M cache (my current system)

SSD

Modern motherboards have M.2 slots. These can accomodate SATA interface devices, but what you really want is NVMe -- which are much faster.

The final system -- January, 2020

All the parts got thrown together Friday 1-11-2020 as follows: Note that Noctua makes really nice fans -- I should pick some up for my systems.

The CPU, motherboard, and memory total to $800. I reflect on how I might spend the same money. I could get the same trio, or I could get the 44 inch monitor I have been contemplating.

I do not have the following motherboard, perhaps this is what my son Paul used?


Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!