Ok, I'm in a bit of a dilemma, and I humbly ask the pc build community to help a guy out.
Its pc cpu and platform upgrade time, but I'm torn between 2 AMD Ryzen processors, the 2700x and the 3700x.
Im currently running on an haswell i5 4440 which has more then met my expectations since I first got it way back in 2014. Thing has been a champ.
But thanks to vr, and my wife and kids going on holiday for weeks, it's time to upgrade the thing. Add to this with brexit likely pushing up prices next year, and the virus likely putting strain on the supply chain, it's time to cash in before I'm paying a fair bit more for no real reason.
My 970 still meets the requirements for oculus link. Using my current machine with my quest has been ok, but yeah at times you can tell, and hear, the machine running into its limits VR badly exposes. I'm running on an SSD build, with a low power, big storage spindle HDD for my media and stuff. The cpu is the oldest thing in the machine. I have a 650w modular psu and the ram will be doubled from 8gb to 16.
My pc will also be used to play next gen games from next year, with a gpu upgrade, but that can wait. I'm not going to splurge on a guy when new ones will come out by the time I really do need a new gpu in 2021.
Currently, the 2700x is priced and a bloody good £150 here in the uk, the 3700x is around 260, so you can see why I'm apprehensive to jump to that price. It's a big one.
As mentioned above, the wife and kids are going abroad for a long time, so I had to spend a four figure digit because of it. However I don't want the 2700x to be a little redundant next year when games and VR take a big jump in requirments.
I fully intend to put a custom air cooler on it right off the bat, and oc it when needed. But look at the TDP, for both, I'd rather not have a power guzzling cpu that will increase both the energy bill and global warming over the year. It's 105w for the 2700x vs 65w for the 3700x. I've read the 2700x takes a lot more juice to power when overclocked.
What do people think? Save the cash and upgrade to a Ryzen 4000 series from the 2700x say three to 4 years down the line? Or use the 3700x for a few years more?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.