I tend to keep my PC builds for about 4 years. I’m running an i7 4790K/Z97 Extreme 4, with 16Gb memory. I’m in the middle of an album and I’ve hit the wall. The performance meter is stuck to the right and some songs are stuttering. Is the 9700K worth an extra $200 over the 8700? What about the hyperthreading? The big sell seems to be overclocking the 9700 but I’ve never had success with that even with the current rig. Thanks.
hi pkmusic,
I’m in the middle of my new server build, I ended up going with the anniversary 8086K -
( which is about halfway between your two cpu options ).
I’ve had to turn off hyper-threading in the bios so that C9.5 runs smoother.
I’m running the cpu’s at around 4.5 GHZ, with water cooling, and I reckon it can easily go to 4.8 and still be a dead-silent system.
good luck with your build.
Any news on this.?
I’d suspect having the 8 real vs 6 real would be worth it. I’ve been looking at the i5 9600k, no interest in HT but seeing as the new i7 9700k has removed HT (Likely to keep it cool for faster speeds of the added cores), I’m tempted.
The biggest interest in upgrading today has to be PCIe NVME drives (make sure they’re not the ones that still use sata). I suspect these will give us huge improvements when browsing sound libraries, here’s to hope!!! Amazon had an unmissable sale on the Samsung Pro and Evo models yesterday, limited quantities 40% off. The Evo didn’t even stay on promotion for it’s allotted time. Luckily I wanted the Pro.
If choosing between the 8th and 9th gen i7… and price was an issue, I’d get neither. The i5 9600k is the obvious choice. The new i5 is another £100+ cheaper. Same core count and turbo. Thanks to the heat spreader being directly soldered to the chip now, and you use the money for a better MB, you’ll easily lock OC into the turbo and keep it quiet. Many are getting 5.0 even 5.1 but it’s luck of the draw. I wouldn’t want to push it that far and would be happy with 4.8.
Unless any mad sales pop up in the next few days, my choices are new i7 9700k or new i5 9600k. I also looked at the new i9 but priced out here. Better to spend the money on PCIe NVMe, you’ll also need the z390 gen MB for the extra spice. Hope it’s not all hype, like that Optane (accelerators), which really only benefits old HD’s and at it’s price you might as well buy a new SSD, seriously late to the game with that idea.
i7-8700K will do just fine for your need but hey the new 9th gen series offers more speed, hyper-threading, core, if you’re planning to upgrade in another 4-5 yrs this will be the great choice.
The i7 9700k doesn’t Hyperthread. They ditched it for +2 real cores. Which sounds good to me. Why I bought it instead of the i5 9600k. A few places had it on special pricing this week.
For DAW use, the 8700k outperformes the 9700k, Hyperthreading does really help.
http://www.scanproaudio.info
Has some benchmarks .
Discussing this in the other thread. Cubase 10 new build - I7 or I9? - Steinberg Lounge - Steinberg Forums
In most cases the 8700k will outperform the 9700k but…
If you need to turn off HT, expect to see the opposite true.
If you want super tight latency or use power hungry plugins, expect to see them even out.
The 9700k will all core OC easier and higher, which amplifies the 2 points above.
But you would never want to turn off hyperthreading in the first place.
Currently setting up and testing my new 9900k computer, the difference on my preliminary tests are around 40% up to 70%.
Running 5Ghz on all cores right now, Hot and loud 
The 9900k is a different beast altogether. A huge budget jump, not only in price of chip but MB too. Unless buying one of the most expensive z390 boards the VRM’s simply won’t power the extra OC potential of the chip you’ve paid for. It will appear stable but run intel tune and some kind of throttling will reveal itself.
I went for the i7 9700k (£370) and put my money in NVMe instead (easily the biggest leap in current PC technology), lightning fast load times and sound library browsing. Saving on a lower priced z390 board, which meant DVI/VGA ports for my monitors (more savings, no graphics card) and, I wasn’t paying extra for the heat inducing LED’s or top tier Pro Grade Audio (always disabled anyways) that come on the flagship boards.
Quietness and Sound load times were my 2 main factors. All for under £1000.
A bit of off-topic question here, but you guys seem to know a lot about PC’s,
I am thinking of buying a new PC for my home-studio.
In my current PC i have installed an ssd W10 Education Cdrive.
Is it possible to transfer this drive into a new computer and just continue my studio work?
I read a lot about the problems to transfer a windows drive and i would be very disappointed when i had to install all my software from scratch.
I just recently upgraded my W7 for this reason because i read that you had a bigger chance with W10 for this matter.
Thanks!
I’ve never looked into it! I always want a clean fresh install on a new build, even if using an old drive.
I would install fresh on a new NVMe drive. Once it’s set up, copy the project folder/sound archive across from your old SSD, format your old SSD to get rid of the old windows (frees up space), copy your projects and archive back onto it, use it as back up.
We used to partition drives for this reason. Turn 1 drive into 2. When reinstalling the system half, all your data would be safe on the other. No need for all the copying back and forth. I no longer do this, re installation used to be a regular thing.
The installation process will be super quick on the NVMe. Copying from an SSD won’t take too long either.
Thanks.
It is not only a matter of speed/time, but the amount of (R.S.I. mouse-)work to install, authorise and make settings of a whole bunch of software that is killing me by the thought of a new computer.
So I thought why not just mount the SSD drive in a new computer.
You typically will have to get new drivers for a bunch of things which can be fine but it can also be a complete hassle.
In addition to that you’ll have a possible issue with your license, depending on what license you have. With Win 10 Pro I know for sure you can move it around as long as the license isn’t OEM. With an OEM license you might be stuck with one computer and have to buy an additional one.
So apart from the driver issue (where I agree that a new install would be better) you should look into the license of your Windows version and see how that works.
Thanks, I will look into that but I have my own license, so that should be no problem.
It’s not about owning your own license, it’s about what type of license it is.
I meant I have a bought(boxed they called it) version of Windows, not a OEM, pre-installed one.
So that part would be no problem, only the drivers of the new MB I guess.
I am planning to move my Graphics card and FW card to the new PC, because they work just fine with Cubase + W10.
Yes 9700k is worth the extra money. You’ll sure see some big performance difference compared to your older rig.
Glad I found this thread - something else to consider is that Intel has just announced that Z390 MBs will support up to 128GB RAM as long as you got the i7-9700K (not the i7-8700K). This helped me make my decision.
I didn’t know that about the MB… 128GB of RAM is insane.