How impractical is a $3000 build?

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Westwood

[H]F Junkie
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Nov 17, 2012
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I can't decide if these forums are the best or worst place to ask this. Kind of like posting on Ferrari forums and asking if spending $250,00 on a car is worth it. heh

Just a quick background, I'm into motorcycles. Got a few in the garage. Got a street bike I'll be selling in the Spring. Was going to use those funds to pick up a touring bike. But, I also have a young kiddo. Since becoming a Dad, my ability to get up on the bike for a 10h ride just because I feel like it has become near impossible. I can do a few planned weekend trips a year, but that's about it. No biggie. So is life. I can stick with the couple bikes I already have. Because of this, I'm a bit tied down to doing stuff around the house. I've been in front of a PC just about everyday of my life since Windows 3.1. So I figure, instead of dropping ~$6,000 on a used touring bike, why not just build a full tilt PC? Biggest downside will be instead of buying a buying a bike for $6k then being able to sell it for $4k in a few years, I'll get little-to-nothing back on building a PC.

That being said, I was thinking perhaps getting into the-whats the term here? "Enthusiast builds" maybe? Was thinking just getting into liquid cooled just for the hell of it. I have zero intention of performing any BenchMarks or anything. Just the typical gaming on monitor one, and web browsing/movies on monitor two. Games would range from some MMOs (Warcraft, FFXIV) to some AAA titles now and then. Would be nice to put all graphics on max and not worry.

Current PC is really dated. 2012 I think. 3470 and a GTX770.

Something I had in mind:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/s9wM6s

I currently have dual monitors, so one of them would become my browsing monitor. The one listed would be my primary. My current PC now would go to my wife to use.

So yea. How nuts is it to drop $3,000 on a build for typical daily use? This would be thrown together in the Spring since I'd get ~$1,500 more selling at the start of riding season. So I'm sure that will have an effect on pricing as well.
 
I dont see your plan as unreasonable whatsoever. If you were giving up *all* your motorcycles, then that would be one thing, but updating your computer would be like swapping a horse and buggy for one of your current gen motorcycles.

You could easily get away with not spending anywhere near $3K for what you are looking to do. But you could get a very nice setup for that amount of money for sure. The only aspect I dont see worthwhile in your part picker is the sound card. If you wanted to get something notable as far as sound is concerned, I would recommend getting a separate USB DAC and some powered monitor speakers (especially since you have a lot of money left in your budget). The other consideration would be going AMD. Both 2700X or even 1920X (or Threadripper 2) would be good alternative. The 2700X is not really a performance compromise in your scenario and you get more CPU cores. If you wanted more PCIE lanes (for storage) you could go the Threadripper route.
 
My 2 cents.

If you have the money and need the parts (to play at a certain resolution and refresh rate) then it's not impractical.

That said, I would suggest a couple of changes to you pcp list. You don't necessarily need 32 gigs of RAM for gaming. I would get 16gigs and add the money saved to a high refresh rate monitor. I would also do a 500gb SSD instead of 250 (OS drive fills up quickly these days) and get a 2 TB mechanical drive instead of two 1TB drives (unless there's some specific reason you want separate drives).
 
manny1222 said:
My 2 cents.

If you have the money and need the parts (to play at a certain resolution and refresh rate) then it's not impractical.

That said, I would suggest a couple of changes to you pcp list. You don't necessarily need 32 gigs of RAM for gaming. I would get 16gigs and add the money saved to a high refresh rate monitor. I would also do a 500gb SSD instead of 250 (OS drive fills up quickly these days) and get a 2 TB mechanical drive instead of two 1TB drives (unless there's some specific reason you want separate drives).
Click to expand...
I currently have two WD 3TB HDD and two 960 250gb SSD. I run Win7, Rainmeter, browsers, etc on one 960 and any current games I'm playing on the other 960. If/When I build this, my current 960 with Win7 and the 1TB HDD in my pcp list will be used in the computer that will be going to my wife. The 970 in the pcp list will be for the new build. And the 1TB drive will be for the old system; I somehow added two drives in the list-oops.

RAM- I ran through a few articles on the whole 16vs32. Seemed like anyone that had 16 were happy and those with 32 said they were glad they had 32. I figure if I'm spending ~$3,000 why not just spend the extra $150. More future proofing I guess?

Monitors- I haven't researched monitors since I built my current rig about six years ago. So I'm way out of the loop there.

H2R2P2 said:
I dont see your plan as unreasonable whatsoever. If you were giving up *all* your motorcycles, then that would be one thing, but updating your computer would be like swapping a horse and buggy for one of your current gen motorcycles.

You could easily get away with not spending anywhere near $3K for what you are looking to do. But you could get a very nice setup for that amount of money for sure. The only aspect I dont see worthwhile in your part picker is the sound card. If you wanted to get something notable as far as sound is concerned, I would recommend getting a separate USB DAC and some powered monitor speakers (especially since you have a lot of money left in your budget). The other consideration would be going AMD. Both 2700X or even 1920X (or Threadripper 2) would be good alternative. The 2700X is not really a performance compromise in your scenario and you get more CPU cores. If you wanted more PCIE lanes (for storage) you could go the Threadripper route.
Click to expand...
Yea, I'll always have a bike in the garage. Its a big part of my life. If this was ten years ago, I was single, no kids, house paid off, and seven weeks of vacation a year; I'd have a dozen bikes in the shop. I probably wouldn't even have a computer, heh. But this isn't ten years ago, haha.

As for the $3,000, I was just throwing that number out there. Was just wondering how practical something like this would be. Sort of like the guy asking if he should buy a McLaren to go grocery shopping in. Like, dumb do I sound for building something like this?

The sound card is the same one I'm using now. I have some Logitech seven piece thing I've been using for like 15 years now. Works just fine. 9/10 times now I have headphones anyways.
 
Get the 32Gb if you heavy multi task. I have 16Gb and heavy browsing, creating, researching etc once in a blue moon I will have to kill other applications when light editing at same time.. so as programs get more memory hungry, that will become a more often thing. Let alone gaming thrown in the mix when I have time, so then yeah definitely have to close some stuff! The few ram limitations during heavy work in extremely busy periods of time means the time saved is worth the investment for me in the next rig, maybe even 64Gb or more if DDR5 allows this without any noticeable latency/speed penalty.. or use a Threadripper setup. Depends on if you will do biz with it and what you will do.

P.s. when people were fapping about gaming on SSDs I always laughed. Ramdisks are faster than any SSD and great fun to play with. I use them for some tasks (occasionally games too) and it makes things usually a little smoother and faster.
 
A hardware site did a test recently with 4gb, 8gb, and 16gb of ram. Every game they tested got the same FPS at 16gb vs 8gb, only when they dropped to 4gb did it make a difference, and only in some games. Now that is with nothing running in the background, but 16gb will still leave you 8gb+ for that stuff. For some reason there seems to be a large group of people who refuse to close browser tabs and want their PC to not slow down when they have 100+ tabs open. If you are one of these people then STOP DOING THAT. If you want to spend more on ram then get faster ram, which will actually make a difference in performance. If you were doing some media creation/editing stuff then more ram is worth it, but you didn't say anything about that.

I'd still think about getting a 500GB SSD and selling your 250GB. I just like having less drives, less complication. Used SSD prices are crazy high so you shouldn't lose too much by selling your current drive.

I would get a different CPU cooler, you can easily get a better cooler for less money. Noctua and Thermalright make great quality sinks, or you can look into a 240-360mm liquid cooler.

A high refresh rate monitor is very nice for gaming too
 
So maybe you should research a monitor first and find one you like. Honestly with the monitor you have selected 1080ti could be Overkill (just noticed it's 1080 ultrawide, not 1440P). You can look for a 3440 x 1440 ultrawide wide 144hz refresh to fully maximize use of the 1080ti.
If you have the cash for 32gigs of RAM, by all means get it. "future proof" is relative, because realistically by the time games fully start using that much ram we will be using DDR5 for desktops or something more fancy.
 
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/DhWM6s

Perhaps something like that is a bit more practical. EVGA has its B-Stock and there are 1080ti's for ~$600. For non-electronic stuff (case, CPU cooler) I'd wait for eBay to have another 15% off deal. And come Spring time (if I can wait that long to assemble this) prices should come down quite a ways too.

I think I'll do it. Just wasn't sure how crazy spending this amount sounded.

I'm 50/50 on the water cooling bit. I understand its more of a hobby thing for most people.
 
32Gb is now what 16Gb used to be for future proofing though.
More and more games and apps use more ram or can when you push it, let alone try to do more than one thing at a time with a PC. Many of us are not just gamers, we do many other things.
No Mans Sky can use 8-10Gb if it wants to... so yeah good luck running that optimally on 8gb of ram lol.

I've had 16Gb since 2011, that plus a 1440p were the best investments I made into a PC for productivity for a long time... Before that I used to go for less, faster ram, because muh fps and mhz and % and bestest fastest epeen/OC records/etc. These days that (outside of Ryzen) is a few percentage difference at most, you're far more likely to notice the minimums due to ram running out, than the faster ram giving you a few fps... You can still get a lot of fast ram these days without a performance penalty. Just not lots and lots...
 
So chatting with a few folks, some suggested that I start off piece by piece before I drop a chunk of change on this all at once. For what I'm using this PC for, I'm going all out on something that I will barely use half of its potential. They said to check places like here, and nVidia's B-Stock for a 1080ti (1070ti if something comes up too cheap to pass up), and throw that in. If not pleased, then a MoBo/RAM/CPU package with a new case and cooling. If I feel like my dual monitor setup is subpar, bump up my main monitor to stretch the GPU's legs a bit.

I kind of like that idea. Seem like a more reasonable approach? I mean, can I swing the ~$3,000 for a complete new system? Sure. But just because I can, doesn't really mean I want to.
 
I understand I've been mostly talking out loud here, but it helps making the decision what to do. I don't have any people I know in person to talk about this stuff, so this is where I come.

Wife and I chatted, and we both agree she'd be far better off with a tablet/laptop to use instead of taking over my complete system. That way she can take it with her to work, the kitchen, spare room, outside, etc, as opposed to being anchored down in one spot.

So that leaves a few options. I'll be able to reuse a few things from my current setup. SSD/HDD will be used. PSU will be used. And, for now, the monitors will be used. Yes, 1080, but I'm fine with them for now.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/4TFGtg

That's a rough copy list. I'm sure it will change as the time goes on. But that's the gist of it. My 770 has lasted, like, five years. If I can get that out of a 1080ti, I'd be pleased. I do want to try the AIO water cooling. Not that I think I'd need it, but more for neatness factor. One day I would like to do a open loop system. Again, not that I'd really need it, but more for the hobby aspect of it. I'm actually more antsy to actually build a system than use it. Be a neat thing to get further into with my son, as I think this sort of skillset would be a nice thing to have nowadays.

I picked up one of those electric air dusters. Going to strip down my system now, rework my cable management, clean it all up, and tinker around with it.

Annnnd these plans may all change by the end of the day. haha
 
if water cooling is a thing, make sure ekwb makes a waterblock for your specific videocard. some venders change stuff up. a $20 212 evo air cooler is plenty for most cpu's to maintain very close to their max frequency (just does not look as interesting) but that 1080ti runs faster the cooler it is kept. water cooling your video card has much better real world results
 
32GB of RAM for gaming doesn’t have a single real world use case where it beats 16GB of RAM. We just aren’t there yet.

You’d only need > 16GB of RAM if you do lots of productivity work on your PC (say your day job, or keenest hobby was 4K video editing or RAW image photo editing, or you work with memory intensive applications like Forensic software). Otherwise 16GB is all you need, and as mentioned 8GB is even fine for gaming 99% of the time.

“future proofing” in the PC Enthusiast world doesn’t usually end up saving you money. Buy what you need, when you need it. By the time you need more capability, the new stuff you need will be faster and cheaper.

If you aren’t counting monitor price, probably spending $3k is spending too much on a system for someone asking your type of questions. In casual use one would never notice the hands on performance difference between a $2k system and a $3k system outside of observing a very small uptick in benchmark numbers. But the true subjective gaming experience delta would be immaterial. You can get a heck of a lot of PC for $2k these days.

Also, since you are running at 1080p, I’d consider a monitor upgrade as potentially a good way to make a significant leap in your gaming experience.
 
Not all money from PC hardware is bad investment.

Good monitors are not upgraded quite as often. Look at 27"-34" options and you will realize that 2560x1080 is a low end resolution and your budget shoud aim at 25x14 ou 34x14 offers.

Ryzen 2700X is cheaper, and the stock cooler is good enough.

1TB SSD shoud be considered. As well as a 1000w PSU.

Any card above Vega 64 performance is priced without competition. As such, the best gang for the buck are found on the GTX 1070/ Vega 56 range.

On the gsync side, Acer Predator Z1 stands out as a mean 32" 25x14 display.

On the freesync side, there are many 34" 3444-x1440 ultrawides, but i favor the samsung 32" 25x14.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Lm87nH
 
I'm not sold on the whole AMD/Radeon setup. My first card ever was a Radeon. Lasted about four months and it died. This was, like, 1998. Been jaded ever since. haha

Was just going to wait for a 1080ti at a decent price to come up, install that, then "finish" the build in the Spring. But now that the 1080 has been discontinued, I may just have to go with a 1070ti. I want to see how the RTX prices level out first. Just seem like a lot of extra money, for not much more performance from the 1080ti.

I can see a monitor in the future, yes. Right now my 1080p's are holding up just fine. I'd rather build the system first, then do a decent monitor afterwards.
 
1070ti prices are OK, because its is a card with Radeon competition, unlike the 1080ti.
Freesync monitors are cheaper, so you can choose a bigger monitor with larger resolution in the same budget.

2700X is a better/much better CPU than the 8700k for your usage scenario: more cores, less heat, does not require delidding or an aftermarket air cooler to extract most of its potential.
the total price gap on CPUs brands is almost enough to upgrade from a 1070ti to a 1080ti. if freesync monitors do not please you.
 
I'm not sold on AMD. I got sucked back in World of Warcraft which only runs on a single core. There is talk of it going multi-core, but until it happens I'm building on the current status of single core.
 
i would check out the for sale section 1080tis are going for $550-$575 pretty regularly.
also theres this from the bh listing- More on the Way Expected availability: 7-10 business days
 
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