I’ve been toying with this idea for months , either swapping out the 9700k for the 9900k to keep costs down at the moment or buy a new motherboard and an 11900k .
The latter means down time , i have spare Corsair case an PSu but im wondering :
Is it worth just swapping out the 9700k and then jump straight for a 13900k in a couple of years ?
I don’t buy the latest and greatest .
Would there be such a major benefit for the 11900k , i mean i can get a 9900k for a hundred quid , quick flash of the bios , job done .
Short answer : don’t waste your time and money on the 9900k. You would gain HT, but it won’t make a noticeable difference enough to be worth the expense and the risks of opening the hood.
And definitely not go for the 11900k.
Keep your money to jump to 13th or 14th+ in a few years, unless your really cannot work with your 9700k anymore. It’s already a quite decent machine.
If there is no difference what so ever between the 9700k and the 9900k why does it even exist and was considered a really good i9 ? it’s on it’s way so it’s too late anyway , from everything that i have checked out , reviews ,bench marks a lot of things are very similar in performance Gaming wise , but rendering audio and video work the i9 seems to be 20% better than the i7 , so £100 for a swap out to last 2/3 year Max i think is worth the try , if it mean a complete reinstall then … there’s no data on the m2 just OS
Not saying there is no difference.
If you had nothing at all, I would have recommend the 9900 over the 9700 (because of HT is worth the extra 100), but the swap is not worth the hassle, the money and the risks of breaking an already perfectly good machine.
Benchmarks on paper and real-life impacts are two vastly different things.
Swapping a slow HDD (if is the case) for a fast SSD, for example, would be a tangible upgrade, but moving to i9 will be barely noticeable in most workflows.
Bottom line: not a bad move, just please be careful doing the swap.
If the heatsink (and paste) is not properly installed, you will lose more performance than you gained. And if you break a pin in the socket then…
Yes , thanks for the tip , i built this machine anyway and the cooler is a new Corsair i que 100 with a Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 PWM on the radiator for extra ommphh , i’m very conscious about making sure all of the Cpu will be covered with thermal paste , any anomalies and it will be redone , i have CPUz for monitoring so it should hopefully be ok
For the anecdote… I had to “repair” a computer a few years ago that became painfully slow over the years, even after the owner reinstalled Windows and everything…
The solution?? I just opened the box and vacuumed the fins of the CPU cooler! And Bingo! it was like new. The cats hair was simply blocking all airflow… To a lesser degree, poorly installed heatsinks will kill performance and too many people ignore this.
Enjoy your upgrade, and for curiosity… please let us know in what type of workloads you perceive more improvements.
I hear this , and yes i will certainly post about the work load , thanks for the tips , much appreciated , i might go for a complete new install as so many graphics drivers have been on and off of this machine in 2 years fighting the C12 graphic 2dll plague
If you really really want the extra x% DAW performance, then by all means, it’s not hard to swap out the CPU. But is it really worth it in this case? I used to spend way too much time on things like that, and the eventual payoff of relatively small real-world performance increases like that was usually not worth it. Your current machine is still powerful and will last you a while. However, if you feel the performance increase will really save you time, increase your productivity, allow you to overcome performance limitations you are having, and/or make you money with clients, then it’s justifiable. Good luck.
Thanks for your trusted input , i use quite a few Acustica audio plugin so scraping the last little bit of resources out of a machine is a must . I think it’s justifiable for myself , exact power for the next couple of years until i move to another motherboard and processor . I have the best motherboard to handle the 9900k , it a Gigabytes z390 Aorus Master so i might as well get the most out of it .
P.S. I’ve got a 9900k in one of my “old” DAWs in my studio and it continues to work beautifully. I’ve got a bunch of other machines also doing well, some older, some newer, Macs, Windows, Linux, but I see no need to upgrade the 9900k for a while. It’s been basically a flawless machine, maybe one of my most stable DAWs ever. Also running on a Gigabyte motherboard (I forget which model, not the same as yours though), with tons of SSD and NVMe storage, 64GB RAM, nVidia graphics, all Noctua fans, etc., doesn’t break a sweat running large DAW projects and is relatively quiet given the CPU generation. (My Apple Silicon machines are WAY quieter though.) Total downtime with that machine has been ZERO since I built it. I expect several more years of great service. So good luck with your new CPU, just make sure you properly clean the heatsink/CPU and get it installed perfectly with the exact correct amount of thermal paste . And clean out the case while you’re at it, and if you have time, give yourself a fresh OS installation, and it will feel like a new computer to you.
Lovely , thanks for the encouragement , look forward to installing either tomorrow or Thursday . Ive heard great reports over the years and the 9900 isn’t worth upgrading But what people didn’t like on release was the price point compared to the 9700 .
Looking forward to maxing this machine out , cheers
I think you might of been right here , it looks like a complete windows reinstall here , due to the performance being an 8th of the Asio worse than the i9 9700 . tried all most everything i know to find out what’s wrong , the only thing left is raising the power limits in the bios .
Would you happen to have any tips ?
I only have myself to blame . C12 was running perfectly but due to the issues with C13 i thought well , why not update , ive heard good reports ,. Now Cpu 1 Pins on 100% while the i7 shared all cores evenly , i cant work it out .
I think this is my last Cubase update . For the last two releases ive been battling to get a decnt running DAW and then when i do ,it’s new release time .
Do you think a complete win 10 reinstall might cure this , i think this is now my only way to go
Ok
Due to the OS being a Samsung Magician clone i have decided for a fresh install to give this CPU the best start , i think it’s only fair , don’t want the old bugger suffering with an OS thats had more GUI drivers installed uninstalled and what not sooooooo
Ohhh brand new install , bios professional configured for the i9 , no over clocking , just pure optimising .
just the plugin venders tomorrow and then i’ll put it through it’s paces
Sorry you had all this trouble.
A fresh OS install was probably a good move.
Hope it will all be worth this effort.
Last recommendation:
Before starting CB, open Task Manager and identify all the useless processes in the background. Remove the applications (when applicable) or disable them from the Startup tab.
Also disable everything “automatic” like automatic updates because these will kick-off at a bad moment eventually…
It’s fully optimised , all the junk has been disabled win policy has been edited to stop downloads without my say . There’s nothing else
The other OS was getting a bit battered due to the amount of GUI drivers in and out for C12 so i was prepared to go the whole hog if need be , the install has been done by a very good Windows IT guy , very capable and the machine is a lot more smoother than it ever been , worth paying to have it done , plus i got to watch the tweaks
He started from the bottom up , optimised the i9 in the bios first , no over clocking just what the gigabytes z390 master can give . he knows his business