Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unbox today I'm discussing what I feel were the worst CPU and GPU purchases of 2017 now some of these were just bad from the get-go while others started life as viable options that sadly proved poor choices before year's end so let's get into it kick starting 2017 Intel released the new KB Lake series which actually didn't turn to be all that new at all apart from a small factory overclock these were basically skylight parts and when matched clock for clock we found zero IPC gains so a few owned 2015 6700 K there really was no need to buy the 7700 K which was a shame because the same could be said if you owned either a Haswell or Broadwell core i7 cpu and arguably the same could also be said if you add a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge core i7 still if you're coming from an AMD FX series CP or maybe a core i5 something along those lines then the 77 Eriko offered noteworthy gains for those rocking a higher-end graphics card and that was therefore quite a viable option unfortunately those have invested 340 dollars u.s. and a 77 RK ended up getting completely hosed by Intel is really no other way to put it less than nine months later for almost the same price Intel released the 8700 K which is essentially the same CPU but with 50% more cores and threads the 77 ok is still a very capable gaming CPU but the 8700 K will no doubt prove to be a significantly better investment down the track I should also note that while I am focusing all my attention on the 7700 K the same can really be said for all the cable a core i7 Core i5 and core i3 CPUs they've all been heavily upgraded with the arrival of coffee like their only CPU that still remains a worthy investment is the G 45 60 and there really is nothing better for $100 even today that said though I would probably recommend you guys go and stretch that budget a little bit for the core i3 81 that would be a much smarter choice now anyway if you bought a 7700 K in the first quarter of 2017 you're probably not too upset that said there are those seeking the ultimate gaming CPU midway through the year and ended up pulling the trigger on Intel's quad-core CPU yeah those people will be quite livid not only is the 7700 k's resale value completely plummeted after the release of the 87 okay but you can't even upgrade to the 87 okay from the 77 okay without a motherboard change and while that brings me to part two of the intel roll job this really is a continuation of the kb lake cpus but it has to be said compounding the issue as intel's crazy decision to remove backwards compatibility for new coffee-like cpus despite using the same LGA 1151 socket intel's decided that the configuration needs to be changed and therefore 8th gen cpus won't work with 100 or 200 series motherboards while skylake and cable lake cpus also won't work on you 300 series boards whether or not it was absolutely necessary for intel to eliminate compatibility here I honestly don't know I can just tell you that from a consumers point of view is a massive inconvenience if I had to guess I'd say there's really no legitimate reason why Intel's had to drop or has dropped support for the 200 series motherboards I said this even before reviewing the coffee-like CPUs and quite a few Intel fans did shoot me down on that one however not that long ago bit tech interviewed the product manager for ROG motherboards out of seuss that's Andrew Wu and he said a few interesting things when asked if Intel let them could they make it said 270 motherboards compatible with 8 gen core processors Andrew said yes it would require a BIOS update but Intel somehow locked compatibility in the end this means those who invested in a 200 series motherboard this year and now at the end of the road those core i7 77 ok owners are now faced with having a ditch not just their CPU but also their shiny new said 270 motherboard if want to upgrade to a six core CPU truth be told right now the move from the 77 error cage of the 87 okay isn't worth the investment even if it was supported or or possible on the same platform that said the option to make this upgrade in a year or so time well that would probably be very welcomed by Intel customers anyone who spent $200 plus on his head 270 motherboard will surely be upset with Intel's decision here moving on if you're a core i7 77 ok owner and you feel robbed well then can we please have a moment's silence for anyone who bought a core i7 7800 X with Rison already out and about before the arrival of the Scylla hex range there seemed to be little point in buying the core i7 78 20 X and in particular the six core 7800 X processor nanano dollars USD 70 her ex was a step up from the Seven Samurai okay for productivity workloads no doubt about that it was a bit of a step back for gaming but it's more of a Productivity platform so that wasn't a big issue but it was very poor value and positioned next to the Rison 7 1700 still those that bought in the last 4 months well they knew what they were getting and the newly alternatives were and they purchased anyway what they didn't know though was that the 8700 K would come along for basically the same price and offers the same amount of cores and threads while supporting much higher operating frequencies and more level 3 cache along with what is in my opinion a superior method of connecting 10 or less cores and that is of course to use the ring bus 3,700 K is also supported by significantly cheaper motherboards at the cheaper Zed 370 board for example is about half the price of the cheapest X 299 board in fact the only real advantage of the 70 100x would be those extra PCIe lanes but if you want PCIe lanes I'd probably just skip sky like X altogether and get yourself a thread Ripper CPU oh and it also has quad channel memory let's not forget about that but based on my own practically benchmarks yeah the 8700 K schools to 1700 K out of the box and what overclocked so that extra memory bandwidth isn't coming in handy I suppose they're only saving grace for the 700x is the upgrade path I suppose if you saved $10 each week and just under four years you'd be able to get yourself an 18 course 79 80 XC maybe three years of the second-hand markets kind now for the GPUs last year was a mega year for GPU releases the GeForce 10 series was mighty impressive in terms of performance per watt and AMD at least made the mid-range stuff for the mid-range to low-end segments interesting let's say 2017 has been more of a mixed bag I think it's fair to say that the GTX 1080 TI was an exciting product a very impressive launch and many appreciated the fact that it did knock the GTX 1080 down to $500 u.s. from AMD though I think it's fair to say that the Radeon refresh was a pretty affair I did bring more competitive pricing at least initially very initially our Vega was pretty much another shoulder shrug from AMD though Vega 56 looks somewhat promising the recent Vega performance in new titles has been decent the big problem for AMD and even Nvidia to a certain degree has been pricing and availability thanks to an extreme demand from cryptocurrency miners which has kept up now for about five months so if you bought a Radeon graphics card in the last few months chances are you paid too much heavily overpaid in fact and some will no doubt have been caught out by these price hikes despite offering a strong bang for your buck at the MSRP aim DS Radeon GPUs have turned out to be one of the worst buyers of 2017 for PC gamers that's pretty much for the simple fact that you can't buy them anywhere near the MSRP and even buying one at an inflated price has been quite challenging that said though I was almost going to pull this little segment from this video because as I was putting it together I did notice that Vega 56 is starting to sell at the MSRP it was previously $500 or more and I am seeing quite a few examples now selling for $400 us and availability seems to be improving or at least matching demand and so prices are starting to normalize so yeah I mean it doesn't change the fact that for quite a few months there you were getting steamrolled if you buy port an AMD card so I guess it's still valid to a certain degree the next AMD item on the list of those X rated CPUs like Intel's too hot for TV range most of the X models don't really make a whole lot of sense that said though I shouldn't note as was the case with the GPUs and when I initially put this video together the horizon 7 1800 X was selling for $450 and the 1700 X was selling for $360 and in the u.s. at least they are now on sale for much more affordable prices so it does make them a little less ridiculous but anyway in my opinion the risin 7 18 hundred x is still the biggest waste of money AMD set the MSRP at $500 u.s. which makes no sense at all today it can be found though selling for as little as $400 at least went on sale the 1700 X which is essentially the same CPU anyway can be had for $300 right now so again they're still even with the sale prices no point paying $100 more for 1900 x1 you can get the same CPU for $100 less and then it is kind of hard to say well there's by these 1700 X because it is only slightly more than the 1700 but the 1700 you get a box cooler so you're getting a box cooler included and you're getting to keep 15 dollars of your own money so so yeah I can't really think of any real genuine reason why someone would spend more money on these X chips even if they were bend but they still don't guarantee a 4 gigahertz overclock and I've tested quite a few retail 1800 X chips now and for 1700 chips and I've felt all of them hit 4 gigahertz and they did work with ddr4 3200 memory of course though overclocking rise in CPU to 4 gigahertz is far from guaranteed as I said but I've found that you have just as much luck with the cheap bargain-basement models as you do the expensive X models so I guess that's the point I'm trying to make their Aizen 5 1600 isn't as bad in my opinion only costs a little over 10% more than the non X version but again you're paying 10% more for the same CPU while foregoing the included cooler and again I'm not sure why you would do that the 1500 X in my opinion is also a bit pointless because it's priced so close to the r5 1600 and that's a much better CPU the 1600 offers 50% more cores for a mere 13% increase I think it is in price the extra l3 cache of the fifth and Reks over the 1400 really is little advantage as well with even a mid-range to high-end graphics card you'll see no real gains in games when they're clocked at the same frequency finally the risin thread repair 1900 s is more of a niche product it's not completely useless but if you're going to jump on the extra nine platform just cough up the extra dough for the 1950 X it's a serious bargain now as well eight hundred and eighty dollars u.s. in some way I wouldn't say that the X models are absolutely terrible buyers or anything like they just don't really make that much sense certainly not like what we saw with the 77 or okay we're you know within the same year that products kind of dead so we haven't seen that with Verizon but still I mean spending the kind of money you go from the 1700 to the 1800 X is a bit crazy when you're not actually really securing anything extra now if I made this a yearly feature invidious titan product line would no doubt make they cut each and every year late last year we got the mighty tight necks and I'm of course talking about the Pascal version not the or not to be confused with the Maxwell tight necks from 2015 anyway the Pascal tight necks arrived late last year and it was the biggest baddest GPU Nvidia Helen offer of course as always those that bought into the Titan con got completely hosed just three months into 2017 and the gtx 980ti arrived sure it had one gigabyte shaved off the 12 gigabyte memory buffer but with higher core and memory clock speeds it was a faster product but today DCI also benefited from vastly superior adding board partner coolers making it much faster once overclocked allowing all 3584 cuda cores to work much more efficiently despite the gtx 980ti quickly putting down the Titan X Nvidia came back for round 2 and released the Titan XP branded with the same insane $1200 us asking price means that it's over 70% more expensive than existing ttio models so what do you get for all that extra mauler a 7% increase in CUDA cores and a teeny tiny increase in the vram capacity once again the Titan XP can only be purchased with the founders Asian cooler and that is directly through in video so as a result it runs hot and throttles under heavy load so it's actually slower than custom 1080 TI cards at this point gamers with deep pockets really ought to know better than to buy a Titan but I'm sure there'll be those that still do anyway just for the bragging rights though it has to be set at this point it's getting more embarrassing than anything speaking of embarrassing what about those new Star Wars collector edition models actually I do have to admit those look pretty awesome still though imagine if you were a huge Star Wars fan and you could afford stupidly expensive hardware and just a few weeks prior to the announcement of this collector's edition model you bought a Titan XP for $1,200 us I wonder what's the return policy on those Nvidia surely you'd be absolutely spitting chips at the announcement of a $1,200 collector's edition Star Wars graphics card but you've just bought the standard plain old Titan XP version I suppose it's you guys are probably sitting there going well it's hard to have any sympathy for people who spend 12 and roll's on a Titan XP but yeah I suppose that's the life of a Titan arena you just know it's only a matter of months probably a month or two before you're gonna get completely hosed but I guess the fun part is finding out how so 2017 has been an exciting but also frustrating year for PC hardware and although a few early adopters and those seeking bragging rights got a little bit there's been some great value options as well has to be said though Intel probably pounded consumers the hardest and much of that pounding could have been avoided if they just kept compatibility for their 8th gen Core series with the previous 7th and 6th gen series anyway that's going to do it for this one let me know if I missed any products or if you disagree with any of my choices or perhaps just have a bit of a different take on things I'm your host Steve see you again soon guys