It’s not a silly question.
@ericlp asked me the same thing so I’ll just copy my answer here:
A couple of reasons.
When I bought my current i7 920 / X58 rig I got the best of basically everything.
- Best platform - triple channel RAM with 6 DIM slots, 40 PCIE lanes - all the bells and whistles
- Price to perormance - the cheapest X58 cpu the i7 920 could OC past the most expensive i7 outside of the $1K extreme edition.
- OC’d It gave the best gaming
- OC’d it gave the best productivity.
Today you’re lucky to get 2 out of the four.
- X399 Is the best platform - most CPU PCIE lanes, NVME support including RAID, and hopefully upgrade-ability. (Intel neutered the X299 with anything less than the 7900 and it still has less CPU lanes)
- Best gaming is the 8700K - even better than the 7980xe
- Best productivity - is probably the 7980xe
- Best overall price to performance is the 1700
I found the HEDT platforms to be the best- easy to add extra RAM, storage, PCIE cards, (video capture, next gen connectivity USB3 and SATA 6). So I wanted to keep that capability in my new rig.
Also this is going to be for home use. We don’t currently have anything that needs 16+ threads and the higher clocks on the 1900X give better guaranteed single core performance. For gaming I tend to max out visuals at 25x14, so the 1900X should be more than enough.
Finally with X399 I have the option to upgrade the CPU in the future so that’s good from a hobbiest perspective. My first rig I ended up building on the last gen of socket 478 and AGP. Made it difficult to upgrade. My current i7 is still in the same case as my original 478 rig and it’s been thermally limiting. (Small loud fans no room for AIO or even decent sized air coolers).
So long story short I wanted:
- The best platform since I keep my rigs for 5-7 years
- Solid productivity
- Acceptable gaming
- Cheapest price of entry for the best platform so I can upgrade later.
- I also wanted a chance to push a Threadripper OC for single core performance just for fun.