New Desktop Build for 2023 - CPU Choice?

I'm planning to upgrade my 10 year old PC based on an Intel Core i5-3570K CPU and Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H motherboard (see System 1). I want the upgraded PC to be Windows 11 compliant and future proof for around 10 years as the old system. I do play games including MS Flight Simulator 2020 which stresses the current hardware.

This might be a long thread but I first need to choose the CPU. I've down selected the following CPUs based on a UK price limit of c. £500 and their multithreaded performance in the Passmark benchmark. I'd be interested to hear views on performance, power consumption etc. to help select the 'best' CPU. I'll then have to select a motherboard - probably a Z790 for an Intel CPU or X670 for an AMD CPU. Higher performance CPUs are expensive these days! Feel free to suggest alternative CPUs.


CPU Cores / Threads Socket Passmark Multi Thread UK Price
Intel Core i9-13900 24/32 FCLGA1700 50688 £520
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12/24 AM5 52319 £410
Intel Core i7-13700K 16/24 FCLGA1700 47043 £407

Yellow font makes it hard to read! I had to left click and drag to read

How much do want to spend? Any manufacturer preferences?

PenPusher said:

Yellow font makes it hard to read! I had to left click and drag to read

How much do want to spend? Any manufacturer preferences?

Up to say £500 for the CPU. My research has now moved on a bit. I'm now focussing on the Intel Core i7-13700K CPU for c. £400 and now looking at motherboards. The ASUS ROG STRIX Z790-H GAMING WIFI is looking good for the features I want for c. £300. I'm only looking at Gigabyte and ASUS boards for their better warranty. One irritating feature of many Gigabyte boards is that they only put 2 audio jacks on the rear panel meaning you have to use a front panel jack for the centre / subwoofer speaker. This is a really daft design and I've ruled out such boards.

PenPusher said:

Nice spec for Asus board, Gigabyte can be a little problematic but you can adjust bios from windows .
I went for DDR4 board for my build 1. was cheap memory 2. DDR5 was silly money for 32Gb.
What are you carrying over from your current build?

To carry over:
Nanoxia Deep Silence Case
RTX 2060 Super GPU
HDD & SSD User Drives (new NVME system drive)
BluRay Disk Drive
Windows 10 licence - will do Windows 11 clean install

To buy:
CPU
Motherboard
RAM
NVME drive
CPU Cooler

PenPusher said:

Intel 13700K good choice, be careful with cooling. Are you going air or water? I went for Be Quite on mine because it's has an offset fan so I can still get to the ram slots.

I see the FSB memory speed for the 13700K is DDR5 5600, I don't see much point in going for over clocked ram.
Corsair Vengeance 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 5600Mhz CL36 Dual Channel Memory (RAM) Kit £140... ish

For Nvme you could go for Solidigm P44 Pro 1TB NVME M.2 Solid State Drive/SSD £105.. ish. Ex Intel product line now renamed, so good pedigree.

Thanks. I'll use air cooling. I currently have a Noctua NH-D14 but I don't think I can reuse it.

PenPusher said:

Yes you can reuse the free Noctua conversion kits to LGA1700 NM-i17xx-MP83
NH-D14 & FAQ: 83mm (NM-i17xx-MP83) vs. 78mm (NM-i17xx-MP78) mounting pitch, which kit do I need?

Great news I can probably reuse the enormous Noctua air cooler. The ASUS motherboard I mentioned supports higher RAM speeds so won't it just set a higher speed from the XMP profile? I've done a survey of RAM which I down selected as follows based on their inclusion in the Asus QVL list and UK price. I decided on 64GB (2x 32GB) to future proof the PC.

G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB (6400) F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK £363.00
G.SKILL Trident Z5 (6000) F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5K £280.00
G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB (6000) F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5RK £298.00
Kingston FURY Beast 64GB (5600) KF556C40BBK2-64 £217.00

I'm finding this site useful to record selected components and find the best price Pick parts. Build your PC. Compare and share. - PCPartPicker