I'm considering building a PC, but RAM prices are sky-high right now. I checked my old i5-4670, which has 32 GB of DDR3. Instead of making an expensive upgrade, I'm thinking about getting a motherboard, a Xeon E5-2697 CPU, and keep my RTX 3070. I already have a 1TB SSD and a 750W PSU, plus a case. The whole setup will cost me around $350—$220 for the graphics card and the rest for the motherboard and CPU. This seems like a better deal than spending $300 just on DDR4 memory. What do you all think?
4 Answers
Yep, DDR4 prices are pretty high. They were affected by previous production cuts, but they've stabilized a bit. So, it’s definitely a budget factor to consider if you’re looking to upgrade the whole system.
Keep in mind that the V1 and V2 Xeons are pretty outdated now. They won’t run a lot of modern games due to lack of AVX2 support. The V3s should have no problem handling a 3070, though. Just make sure any motherboard you pick is compatible with them and your budget stays low. Otherwise, waiting could be smarter.
If you’re really set on using Xeon, there are some OEM Xeon V3 CPUs that work with specific Chinese DDR3 X99 boards available online, but be cautious—they're experimental. However, you might want to look into Skylake boards too; some of them support DDR3L.
Skylake for DDR3? That sounds interesting, but what's the performance like with that combo?
You might find that the 3070 will run into a bottleneck with the Xeon E5-2697. While this setup is a step up, the older CPU could hold back the GPU big time. My advice? Consider just getting the 3070 for now, and hold off on the CPU upgrade until you can invest in better hardware. Trust me, it’ll likely save you frustration down the line since I experienced a similar issue with my own setup.
Thanks for the input! I was thinking the same. It looks like I’ll have to rethink my upgrade strategy since I'm mainly doing data analysis and gaming.
I thought about going with a 2070 instead. It’s a much cheaper option and still provides decent performance without bottlenecking too much.
I had no idea! I thought only DDR5 prices were inflating right now.