i7-9700K

3 Best Graphics Cards for Intel Core i7-9700K Builds

April 30, 2020 by BuildPicker Leave a Comment

With the release of the i9 series of processors by Intel, the i7 was replaced as the most powerful CPU available in their lineup.

However, when it comes to gaming, you don’t always need the very best processor available; more often than not, it is your GPU’s power that serves as a gate to limit the performance of your games.

So, as long as you get a decently good GPU, you don’t have to pay huge amounts for an i9 processor; you can just get an i7 – with the latest version being the i7-9700K.

The i7 9700K has quickly become one of the mainstays for CPUs catering towards gamers, as it offers all of the power needed to run pretty much any game, but at far less cost than most other PCUs. In essence, the i7 has become the premier gaming CPU.

So, to help make your gaming build setup even easier, here is a list of the three very best GPUs for your i7-9700K build – depending on your particular needs.

Related: Best RAM for i7-9700K Builds
Related: Best CPU Coolers for i7-9700K Builds

Best GPUs for i7-9700K – My Recommendations

Best Overall Value GPU for i7-9700K

Figuring out the ‘best’ GPU for a specific CPU is a surprisingly large challenge because it isn’t just about raw power, but a careful balance of features, price, and usability.

You can pick up the most powerful GPU ever, but if your CPU can’t make the best use out of it, what’s the point?

With that in mind, perhaps the best option for GPU for the i7-9700k is the GTX 1080 Ti.

But wait, I hear you ask – the 1080 Ti? Isn’t that the ultra powerful, incredibly expensive GPU that was the hot ticket a few years ago?

Here’s the thing; the 1080 Ti used to be the very best thing since sliced bread. If you built your PC in 2017, the chances are that everyone you knew was desperately trying to convince you to get a 1080 Ti, as it was the very best thing on offer at the time, assuming you didn’t want to remortgage your house to get a Titan X.

However, the GPU market is constantly changing, with new and improved GPUs coming out all the time. While the 1080 Ti was the pinnacle of graphic card technology at the time, it really isn’t that expensive anymore.

But the thing is, the 1080 Ti is still massively powerful – it can run basically every modern game these days with no problems whatsoever, offering up incredible quality and clock speed for a super reasonable price. Also, according to PC-Builds.com, it is the GPU that best limits your bottleneck potential, ensuring you get decent use out of your GPU’s power.

If you buy a i7 9700K and want to still utilize its power to the fullest, then you shouldn’t really delve below the 1080 Ti in quality; it’s still incredible, but just not as incredible as some of the very best options available these days.

But what if you need to be a bit more conservative with your budget? What GPU should you go for if you are looking for something a bit cheaper?

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Best Budget GPU for i7-9700K

Looking for the budget option for your GPU can sometimes feel a bit disheartening because people’s definition of ‘budget’ varies hugely between different people.

While you could certainly get the cheapest GPU available, there is a certain cut off point where you are wasting your CPU’s potential in getting the cheapest GPU imaginable.

So, when looking for a budget GPU for the 9700K, you don’t want to go for the cheapest option, merely the cheapest best option.

With that in mind, consider the RTX 2060 Super.

This is the best GPU when it comes to combining price value and effective capability when gaming. While it might not be able to handle a huge amount of 1440p gaming, if you are fine to stick to 1080p, then you won’t find a better option.

While the base clock speed could be higher, at only a paltry 1470 MHz, the effective boost clock fo 1815 MHz makes it so that it can decently handle most high intensity gaming with minimal problems.

With a surprisingly decent allocation of memory bandwidth of 448 GB/s and 2176 CUDA cores, this GPU can also handle some CUDA rendering if you are interested in working with video editing using your new setup.

If you do have money to burn, however, you might as well get the most powerful thing imaginable. Something like…

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Best Enthusiast GPU for i7-9700K Gaming Builds

As the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti was considered the most powerful and viable option for new GPUs a few years ago, so too is its newest update considered the best option nowadays.

While there are more expensive and powerful options, sometimes even reaching into the realms of absurdity with monstrous price tags, it is the RTX 2080 Ti that is perhaps best considered as the enthusiast gaming option for the 9700k.

With a huge 4352 CUDA cores and a massive 78T RTX OPS, this is the card to get if you want to try and play with 4k resolution. The 2080 Ti also represents a huge leap forward in terms of base performance from the 2080, making this an even better investment than any of the other RTX line of cards.

With a new and improved Turing architecture and great Ray tracing capabilities, this GPU might cost a lot, but will certainly future proof you for a long time as well. If you end up getting this GPU, it is doubtful that will feel a need to upgrade it for several years at least.

Thankfully, it comes with a surprisingly decent thermal setup, as well as plentiful tensor cores for DLSS. Ultimately, this GPU is a beast and more than capable of achieving anything you want to achieve with your computer, providing you don’t mind the somewhat frightening price tag.

Just make sure that you ensure you have sufficient wattage to be able to properly run this GPU, as it is a behemoth in power requirement even compared to its predecessor the 1080 Ti.

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Final Thoughts

While there are endless options for GPUs that will fit well with the i7 9700K, there really is only a few options properly worth considering when it comes to balancing price, effectiveness and usability.

People will recommend all sorts of different options for a GPU, but they will be entirely dependent on what they consider to be the most important qualities of their computer.

Whether you are looking for the most powerful option, or the cheapest one, or simply one that is the most efficient, make sure that you know what you are looking for and buy what fits properly for your ending setup.

While it does feel awesome to get the newest and greatest GPU imaginable, make sure you actually have a use for it as well.

4 Best CPU Coolers for Intel Core i7-9700K Builds

April 27, 2020 by BuildPicker Leave a Comment

Intel’s mid-range option, promoted primarily for gaming setups: The Intel i7-9700K. This CPU includes eight cores and eight threads, an L3 Cache of 12 MB, and operating and overclocking speeds of 3.6 and 4.9 GHz respectively; also built with Intel’s 9^th generation 14 nm lithography. What the i7-9700K does not come with, however, is a CPU cooler, and given that this processor has a TDP of 95W, it is going to need a significant amount of cooling to maintain temperatures under 70 degrees Celsius, especially for the use of its overclocking capabilities.

Choosing the right cooler isn’t the easiest of tasks. Depending on the use of your PC setup, the demands in terms of cooling will change significantly. Some important questions to ask include: Will the CPU be under high loads regularly? Are you looking to overclock your CPU regularly? Are you simply looking to play online multiplayer games, and rarely overclock or play triple A, single player, titles? Depending on your answers to these questions, the CPU’s cooling needs will differ. Also, if you are looking to make a small form factor build in order to reduce the footprint of your PC, then you will need an appropriate CPU cooler to fit your case. Lest we forget the every so popular RGB displays on the CPU coolers, which will demand AIO water cooling, rather than airflow cooling, as choices for the former with RGB lighting and sufficient cooling are quite limited.

To help you choose the best CPU cooler for the i7-9700K, we’ve come up with the best options for SFF builds, for airflow cooling, and for RGB AIO water cooling, including multiple options for some categories, depending on your level of CPU usage with the 9700K processor.

Best CPU Coolers for the Intel Core i7-9700K – My Recommendations

Best Airflow CPU Coolers for i7-9700k

Noctua NH-D15 & NH-U12S

Noctus NH-D15 — *Pictured: Noctua NH-D15*

Noctua-NH-U12S — *Pictured: Noctua NH-U12S*

So, depending on how you’re looking to use your PC, the choice in this category will change. If you’re looking to play demanding games regularly and overclock your CPU often, then the Noctua NH-D15 is the best cooler for your needs. On the other hand, if you rarely overclock your CPU, and enjoy playing multiplayer online games rather than playing demanding AAA single-player games, then the NH-U12S is the cooler for your needs.

The NH-D15 uses two premium 140mm NF-A15 PWM fans, equipped with low-noise adaptors, acoustically optimized frames with antivibration mounts, and SSO2 magnetic bearings. These fans are situated onto an all-aluminum heatsink with six, nickel plated, direct-contact heatpipes attached to the CPU with Noctua’s acclaimed NT-H1 compound cooling paste. The NH-D15 is one of the most powerful CPU coolers, perhaps being the most powerful airflow cooler with the least amount of noise output, as proven by benchmarks carried out by TweakTown.

The NH-U12S is a bit scaled down in comparison to the NH-D15, but will provide sufficient cooling for the aforementioned conditions. It uses a single 120mm NF-F12 PWM controlled fan which is optimized for a high static pressure of 2.61 mmH2O, allowing it to thoroughly cool the heatsink throughout. This fan is connected to a similar aluminum heatsink with five, direct-contact, nickel plated heatpipes. Once again, TweakTown has provided benchmarks for the NH-U12S, showing that it idles at only 50 degrees Celsius, and overclocks at a slightly increased 75 degrees, a temperature which you wouldn’t want your CPU to be at for extended periods of time, but for overclocking on occasion it’ll work just fine. The noise output from the U12S ranges from 26-40 dB, so it is near silent at low to medium loads.

Depending on your needs, these two air coolers from Noctua are the best your money can buy. The NH-U12S currently sells for $64, while the NH-D15 sells for $89, both optimal air-cooling choices for cooling the Intel i7-9700K.

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Best AIO (& RGB) CPU Cooler for i7-9700K

Corsair H115i RGB Platinum

Watercooling options have always enjoyed popularity for high-end, enthusiast level, gaming builds, and currently if you are looking to light your case up with some RGB glamour, then these AIO coolers are pretty much the only safe options that will not sacrifice the performance of your CPU – other of course than maybe RGB halos placed onto air coolers.

If you’re looking for such a water cooler, then worry not, the Corsair H115i Platinum AIO cooler has all the RGB style and sufficient cooling performance you’ll need for the Intel i7-9700K. The cooler uses two ML Pro Series 140mm, magnetic levitation, PWM fans, situated onto a 280mm heatsink with a low-noise design pump and a header with a thermally optimized cold plate. Performance-wise, this cooler has three controllable modes, Quiet, Balanced, and Extreme; each used depending on the level of load the CPU carries, with Quiet and Balanced modes being sufficient for most applications while maintaining noise levels low, and Extreme is suggested to be reserved for prolonged overclocking and heavy loads, as the resulting noise (~50 dB) may become annoying.

These modes are controllable via Corsair’s iCue software, which can also be used to control the lighting display of the CPU cooler. The fans and the pump head feature 16 individually controlled RGB LEDs, so there is plenty of customization to be made.

This RGB spark does come at a price, as this CPU cooler is currently selling for $169, but if RGB lighting displays and style points are important to you, then this is the cooler to buy, adding that extra visual zest to the Intel i7-9700K’s setup.

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Best Low Profile CPU Cooler for i7-9700K SFF Builds

The Scythe Big Shuriken 3 is a 69mm tall, low-profile, cooler fit for SFF setups. The included fan is the 15mm thick, 120mm, Scythe Kaze Flex slim PWM fan, situated onto an asymmetrically designed heatsink (to minimize interference with other components on the motherboard), and five sintered heatpipes on a copper base layout.

In terms of benchmarks, OptimumTech has put out some tests that show us the Scythe Big Shuriken 3 operating at temperatures of 53.8 (idle) to 63.4 degrees (15-min AVX2), which can go up to 77.2 degrees when overclocking, and noise levels reaching 41.4 dB at maximum RPM. If you don’t plan to overclock often, then these results will more than suffice for your use, but if you do plan to overclock your CPU, then you might need a bit more cooling power.

Probably the coolest (ha!) feature of the Scythe Big Shuriken 3, is the fact that it allows you to change the Scythe Kaze Flex fan with another 120mm fan of your choice, and what better fan to change it with than the 120mm Noctua NF-A12x25?

Though this will increase the height of your CPU cooler from 69mm to 79mm, so it may not fit in some few cases, but if it is compatible with yours, you will always have the option to further upgrade your CPU cooler using this Noctua fan, effectively decreasing both the overclocking temperatures of the CPU, as well as the noise output of the cooler, considerably.

The Big Shuriken 3, alone, currently sells for $46, which is a great price for its performance, while you can also add the 120mm Noctua NF-A12x25 fan for an extra $31; an overall great combo to maximize the cooling efficiency of your CPU cooler, and the performance of your Intel i7-9700K build.

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Best RAM for Intel Core i7-9700K & i9-9900K Builds

April 6, 2020 by BuildPicker Leave a Comment

When building a PC setup, you will always want to link each individual piece of hardware together the same way you’d do a well-built chain, or an artistic puzzle. You want that chain to be strong, and that puzzle be beautiful, the same way you need all your hardware pieces to work together in harmony.

To avoid bottlenecking your PC, you’ll want the specifications of your hardware to maximize the capabilities of your main components. This way, your computer will function in an effortless symphony of maximized output; an optimization of its intended purpose.

The relationship between random access memory (RAM) and your core processor is what enhances the overall performance of your build. RAM is what enables your CPU to properly engage in running software, transferring data, avoid slowdowns, freezes, and crashes.

How much RAM for my 9700K/9900K build?

If you’re looking to purchase Intel’s mid-range i7-9700K, or upper-mid-range i9-9900K, then there will be certain key elements you will need from your RAM, depending on the intended purpose of your computer.

First, let’s speak of RAM size. If you’re looking to make a computer for browsing, low-intensive work-related programs, or even for modern-generation popular online multiplayer gaming, you will want a minimum of 8GB of RAM. This will be sufficient for these low-demanding games, programs such as Microsoft Suite, web-browsing, and so forth. If you’re looking to build a gaming setup, then 16 GB RAM is the way to go. This amount of RAM is more than enough to play even the most demanding of games; and if you’re looking to future-proof your build for the new generation set to appear with the next-gen consoles, it has been announced that both Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X will feature 16GB of RAM, so you will be safe no matter what. Now, if you’re looking to stream, edit raw-file photographs, and render high-resolution videos, then there really is no limit in how much RAM would be best – but 32GB of RAM would a sufficient standard to start. The more RAM you have, the easier (and faster) it will be for your computer to render together multiple stacks of high-resolution videos – and with 8K just around the corner, it would be best to future-proof your PC by buying sufficient amounts of RAM. Of course, you can always upgrade as you go.

What RAM speed for Intel 9700K/9900K?

Next, you will want to choose the speed of the RAM you are to purchase (which is measured in MHz) depending, of course, on your needs. For a budget build, 2400-2666 MHz will work sufficiently, while for gaming speeds of 3000-3200 MHz are best. Anything above these speeds will bring you diminishing returns, and are generally not worth the cost. The same applies for workstations, though if cost is not an issue, the higher the speeds the better.

Best CAS Latency for Intel Core i7-9700K & 9900K builds?

Depending on the speed of the RAM, what is also very important is their inherent latency, measured in CAS (Column Address Strobe/Signal). This latency figure relates to the cycles it takes for the RAM to access data in one of it’s column addresses, in contrast to the speed which refers to how many transfers are conducted per second. The lower the CAS latency, the better. Having high-latency RAM will also bottleneck its speed and overall performance. Let’s take for example two identical G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 RAMs, one with a speed of 3600 MHz and latency of C16, versus the same RAM with a speed of 3200 MHz and latency of C15. The benchmarks between the two sets of RAM show a difference in overall, effective, speed in favor of the 3200 MHz C15 RAM, as opposed to the 3600 MHz C16 RAM. For both gaming and workstation, the CAS measure is highly important.

With all this in mind, we will provide you with the best 2020 RAM options for all three of the aforementioned types of builds – a budget build, a gaming build, and a workstation build.

Best RAM for i7-9700K & i9-9900K Builds – My Recommendations

Best RAM for Budget i7-9700K/i9-9900K Builds

Crucial is just an overall great brand for RAM and ROM alike when shopping on a budget. They make high quality components at just a fraction of the cost of their competitors. Here, too, they’ve made a single-rank 8 GB DDR4 SDRAM card that has respectable speeds of 2666 MHz, and is low-profile enough to fit in cases where the CPU cooler/heatsinks take up considerable amounts of case-relative space. It does have a high latency of 19 CAS, though if you aren’t looking to play demanding (mostly single-player) games, or running hardware-intensive programs, the 2666 MHz speed is more than enough to perform sufficiently for your build.

The best part of this RAM card is its extremely-low current $36 price. Given the fact that the 8GB of RAM comes in a single-rank, means that you will also have available slots in your motherboard for upgrades, so you can buy multiple units of this RAM depending on how your needs evolve with time. Overall, a great investment for its money.

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Best RAM for i7-9700K/i9-9900K Gaming Builds

Let’s face it, if you’re going to make a gaming setup, you’re going to want some RGB pizazz – the more the components that have it, the better. Despite the existence of some components where the RGB lighting seems to have a negative effect on the overall performance of the unit (such as for case-fans for example), when it comes to the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro, there is no compromise to be made. These have both style and substance, as they come in high speed, low latency variations, and have top-of-the-line performance to match their looks. These RAM units have dynamic multi-zone RGB lighting that can be controlled via Corsair’s iCue software interface, while also being compatible with MSI, Gigabyte, and ASUS’s different light-syncing software.

We recommend going for the 3000 MHz, C15, 16 GB (2x8GB) option, as this will be optimal for any gaming setup, and is currently selling at a very low price of $90. Of course, there is also the 3200 MHz, C14, option, though the price increases significantly (more than double the cost) for this variation, and is most likely going to be overkill for most gaming setups. For its looks, price, and performance, it’s hard not to recommend this RAM for any type of setup.

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Best RAM for i7-9700K & i9-9900K Workstation Builds

The T-Force Dark Pro series are the absolute best RAM units you can buy for their price, in regards to speed and latency. This model is incredible fast, has great heat dissipation, and is optimized for the Intel’s XMP technology. XMP allows you to change multiple memory settings via the use of different profiles, so that you don’t have to worry about changing frequencies, voltages, or timings when you’re overclocking.

To dissipate heat resulting from these overclocking speeds, the T-Force Dark Pro has a five-piece heat sink with a unique trench design and an aluminum heat spreader. In regards to transmitting performance, these use a JEDEC RC 2.0 customized circuit board, which increases the distance between the power and signal layers. The lower the interference between power and signal, the higher the stability when overclocking, and the better the overall performance.

In regards to speed, this model has 3200 MHz, and an ultra-low CL 14-14-14-31 (C14) latencies. Effectively, it can transfer 25.6 GB/s. At its $130 price range for 16GB of memory, and a lifetime warranty, it faces no competition for its price. Buying four 8GB ranks – for an all-together 32GB RAM setup ($262.72 total) – is recommended for most workstations, though depending on the line of work to be produced more RAM may be necessary. The more the RAM the better, and for using the i9-9900K to its maximum overclocking capabilities, the TeamGroup T-Force Dark Pro is the best RAM money can buy.

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