Hello,

First off, I see alot of help in this forum on this topic and I much appreciate those posters taking the time to help similar posters like me in setting up their PC. I've read over those other threads and it has helped me in my research but I'd still appreciate feedback and recommendation on my specific case.

My current PC and monitors:

CPU: Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3301 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

GPU: 2 GPUs (NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450) and (AMD Radeon HD 5450)

SSD: 250 GB

RAM: 16 GB

Monitors: Dell 30" at 2560x1600, View Sonic 24" at 1920x1080, and two smaller inverted monitors at 1600x900

I'm looking to build or purchase a CPU that improves performance for poker as if you read prior posts from me I'm having issues while playing on multiple sites, mainly because of the CPU usage from the WPN software. My CPU frequently maxes out while playing more than 6+ tables on their network.

The computer and monitors listed above are about 10 years old now. I don't mind spending up to say ~$2K on a new system and I can pass this older one onto my kids or wife. I would not be gaming on this computer other than poker but I am looking for it to support all standard software over say the course of the next five to ten years without being boggled down with CPU issues such as the one mentioned above.

If possible I'd like to also be able to run my current monitors on the new system for awhile before upgrading at a later date to better monitors.

I'm located in Thailand so import and customs plays a role in the purchasing of this product. I was putting together something on here:

https://www.invadeit.co.th/

I was going to pair these two for a start.......

Asus TUF B450M-PLus Gaming motherboard

with

AMD Ryzen 5 3600X with Wraith Spire Cooler CPU

Honestly though I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the information online and this was just one suggestion I found online for a good value gaming pair up. I thought I'd come here and make this post because I'm looking specifically for this system as a poker desktop first. Thanks in advance.

I would wait about a month until the new AMD chips come out. They'll be cheaper than the 3600 and the benchmarks are really good.

Check out guys like bitwit, jayztwocents, linus tech tips and paul's hardware for reviews on youtube. I know bitwit has done a few $800-900USD builds that be helpful with cheaper solid hardware.

That motherboard should be pretty good. I bought the x570 TUF and 3700x about a month ago. Everyone recommends the MSI Tomahawk B450, but that's more expensive on your site than the ASUS TUF.

The cooler should be pretty solid if you're not doing a lot of overclocking, but the Ryzens don't overclock a lot. If you use their BIOS OC, it should be good enough.

SSDs have dropped in price so much. You can get a good 1TB SSD for under $100 now. The 450 boards don't have NVME. Make sure the RAM is supported by the CPU and board. Their websites will have details. AMD will tell you exact models that are guaranteed to work. G Skill ripjaws are pretty cheap and solid.

GPU's are going up a little right now in price. You can use your old ones for now and if you want to upgrade, I would wait until the 3000 series come out this fall (either for black friday or the PS5/Xbox releases) and the other graphics cards should drop in price accordingly.

Also, AMD has re-reversed their position and the next gen Ryzens WILL be compatible with the 450 boards. If you want future upgrade as far as storage and PCIe 4.0 support, then go with a 5xx level. They 520 boards should be coming out next month as well and will compete with the boards you are looking at. So that's another reason to wait for the releases that are supposed to come out next month.

Thanks udbrky.

I put together this build today and I'll leave some questions below.....

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X with Wraith SpireCooler - $260
Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus - $177
RAM: G.Skill 16GB(2x8GB) Trident Z DDR4 3200Mhz - $125
SSD: Samsung 250GB M.2 2290 970 EVO Plus NVMe - $87

Power Supply: Cooler Master MWE 750W 80 PLUS Bronze - $87
Case: Corsair Carbide 275R Tempered Glass Mid Tower Gaming Case - $84

optional GPU: Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1650 Super OC Edition - $202


I'll take in your recommendations concerning waiting and/or researching the upcoming AMD chips. The prices listed above were all converted from Thai baht. It's possible I could order some of these parts on amazon or somewhere and get them delivered cheaper. I'll have to look into it.

questions:

1) These M.2 SSD's can run solely on your system without needing a SATA SSD, right? I went with that Samsung one over the SATA versions because I read that it read and writes more efficiently.

2) If I'm not planning on playing games on this computer other than online poker will the onboard graphics support my four monitors listed in the initial post? Do I even need the additional GPU?

3) The motherboard for about $30 more has built in wifi. I currently have two fiber net services and 4G plan on my phone. I also have a shelved Dual WAN router that I'm not using currently. Is it possible though to set up an ethernet wired connection but then use this built in wifi as a secondary backup connection in case my first ISP goes down? I've used the Dual Wan in the past but there was always a downtime between it switching over so I just scrapped it and this current desktop doesn't have wifi. Long story short, Are there any backup connection benefits with paying the extra $30 for the wifi added to this motherboard with what I've described above?

Which specific Dell 30" model do you have (i.e. Ultrasharp 3008FP)? Does it have a DisplayPort or HDMI 2.0 port? Those are still nice monitors but increasingly difficult to find cards that still have dual link DVI to drive the older ones.

1)Yes, faster peak speeds, not necessarily "more efficient".

2)Ryzen chips outside of the APUs, which currently top out at 4 cores, don't have onboard graphics, so a card with this CPU is mandatory for connecting monitors to it. The ports on the motherboard are just there for when an APU chip is installed (Ryzen 3200G/3400G). The 4xx0G APUs should be coming fairly soon and may go up to 8 cores. If you're not gaming, you can probably find something cheaper than that 1650.

3)Not that I'm aware of in any sort of reasonably reliable way. Your public IP changes when you change ISPs, so you're likely going to have to reauthenticate with the poker site. Dual WAN router with auto-failover is about as good as you'll get here, but as you noted still imperfect.

It's an ultrasharp U3011. Here are my four monitors along with their specs. I invert those two smaller Dells on the sides and the ViewSonic is mounted above the main Dell:

2 x Dell P2012H -

DVI-D with HDCP, VGA, USB 2.0 upstream, 2x USB 2.0 downstream

ViewSonic VX2439wm -

analog: 1x15 pin mini D-sub, digital: 1xDVI-D(with HDCP)/1xHDMI 1.3

Dell U3011 -

2 High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI)
2 Digital Visual Interface connectors (DVI-D) with HDCP
1 DisplayPort (DP)
1 Video Graphics Array (VGA)

Ok guys. Thanks to both of you, udbrky and headtrauma for your suggestions and knowledge on these computer related topics.

I did alot of research on reviews, etc today and while waiting it out for the newer tech might be the smarter move I'm too impatient for that and the wife and I today went to the store and I ordered my parts. One part had to be shipped from Bangkok so I'll get the CPU on Wednesday. I'm excited about it and I'll re-post in this thread after the fact to clarify if I'm a satisfied customer and if it solved my WPN CPU usage issues.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X with Wraith SpireCooler
Motherboard: AM3 ASUS TUF Gaming X570-PLUS
GPU: VGA Asus Nvidia Dual GTX 1660 ti
Ram: G-Skil 16GB(2x8GB) Trident Z DDR4 3200Mhz
SSD: 512 GB SSD Addlink S70 PCIe/NVMe M.2

Case: Corsair 275R
Power Supply: Corsair 750W CX750 (80+ Bronze)
CPU Cooler: Aerocool Cylon 4 ARGB CPU Air Cooler

HDMI to DVI-D converter.


Overall the purchase set me back about $1,250 which was under my budget but also a bit over what I expected to pay after researching the parts all day. I didn't plan on purchasing an almost $300 GPU but atleast down the line if I upgrade my monitors to 4K, etc it should be able to support those monitors. I know I could have probably purchased a cheaper card or cards but this one should support all four of my monitors by itself and it's been reasonably reviewed online as a good card. Hopefully that's the case as according to the tech guy it will support my monitors in this way.

Dell U3011 linked to the display port
View Sonic linked to the HDMI
1 x Dell side linked to the DVI-D port
1 x Dell side linked to the other HDMI via a DVI-D/HDMI converter

If you guys see any glaring holes in my setup let me know. I added that CPU cooler as it was cheap and decided on it rather than an extra fan. My case comes with a fan or two already.

Should I consider just adding another 16GB's of Ram right away? I've never maxed out my Ram usage before but really still don't know what was causing the lag while playing on WPN. Someone mentioned to me that WPN is based off of Google Chrome software and it hogs alot of memory. While on my current machine the memory never showed to be maxed or even close to max when playing on their site but I'm not technical enough to know what was really going on between my CPU and Memory. If 32GB would help in anyway I might as well go and add another 16 now. Let me know your opinions on it. Thanks.

Run with what you have for now. If you're not running solvers or VMs you should be fine with 16GB for the time being.

cneuy3,

You can just pull the graphics card out of your old PC and put it into your new PC. No need to buy any new cards if you aren't interested in gaming.