New system build. Need advice.

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Dexter007

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
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I have a LG 27GL850 on the way over the next week or so, as well as a Fractal Define Mini C. I'm looking for advice on the internal components to drive this monitor. I'm coming from a 2500k and a GTX670 I've been rocking for years on a Dell U2312HM.

My budget is around $1500. Obviously the less I spend the better, but I want make sure the money I spend on this new build is worth it. It will mostly be used for gaming.

Components that I will be re-using include:
Mouse
Keyboard
Sound card - Sound Blaster Z
SSD for OS
Dell monitor as second display

What I am looking for advice on are the main guts of the system:
Processor - Historically I've gone Intel, but I'm open to both Intel and AMD. I don't overclock, so if I can save some money here going with a non-K (or AMD equivalent) that works for me. My main priorities here are performance, stability, and thermals. Speaking of thermals if buying an aftermarket cooler is necessary I'm fine with that. I'm not interested in water cooling and I would guess it's not necessary anyway if I'm not overclocking.

Motherboard - All I know here is it has to be compatible with the CPU chosen and it needs to be M-ATX due to the case I chose. I will run a SSD for the OS, one for games, and possibly one or two mechanical drives for larger storage. So I need enough connectivity for those.

Memory - If it works with the budget I'd like to go 32GB (2x16GB). I don't need anything flashy, just appropriate for the build and good quality.

Video card - Historically I've gone Nvidia, but here again I'm open to green or red. I'm just looking for something that fits into the budget and that is going to take advantage of the monitor. Looks like the Mini C is limited to video cards 315mm or less with the front fan mounted.

PSU - The only thing I'd like here is that it's efficient and modular, either semi or fully (fully preferred if budget permits).

SSD for games - I'd like to go with 1TB.

If there's anything I'm overlooking please let me know. I tend to keep a system for a good long while, so I don't mind spending the money on quality components. I appreciate the help!
 
Hitting your budget will be easy.


I represent the "buy AMD" camp currently. Firstly, at any given core count the AMD options are cheaper. Secondly, if you want your core count to go higher than 8, they're currently your only option without moving into the HEDT platform territory. Lastly, they're the only one that stands a chance of being upgradable in the future. I've picked a Ryzen 3700X for my build, though honestly if all you're going to do is game the regular 3600 or 3600X is just as competent and save the $120 price difference. Later down the line, if you want you can pick up a 4000 series chip if they turn out to be compatible, or at a minimum you can grab a larger 3000 series chip if you need more cores when folks are selling them used for pennies. The 3700X has a better cooler, though it won't matter since you aren't overclocking.

For your motherboard, I still recommend a B450 chipset based board. With no overclocking planned, and PCIe 4.0 performance being a complete non-issue for normal and gaming workloads, the cost differential for the X570 chipsets is completely unjustified in my mind. Plus, if you go with B450 it is both cheaper and has no active cooling fan you have to care about in the future. I've included a B450M Pro4 in my build, which is a board I've personally deployed (along with the regular B450 Pro4 it's ATX cousin) with no issues a bunch of times. You can also look to the B450 TOMAHAWK from MSI, which a lot of folks seem to like. The B450 boards are *supposed* to be forward compatible with the Zen3 chips coming in the future, but it's not a guarantee. Hell, it's also not guaranteed the X570 boards will be either, so it's all a gamble at this point.

With RAM, I picked the kit I literally own. There might be cheaper, but I'm just going with what I know here. Mine runs at the XMP 3600 speeds with 100% stability, allowing the Ryzen fabric clock to run in lockstep at 1800. I am not much of one to tweak manually or overclock much, so the pick-XMP-and-go is fine for me.

For your GPU, given that gaming is your primary goal I would wager you're looking at a minimum of a RX 5700 XT from the AMD camp, or somewhere in the 2070/2070 Super or better camp from Nvidia. The 5700XT and 2070 Super trade blows in terms of raw performance, but the Nvidia card has much better on-GPU video encoding with NVENC and has the raytracing support. If neither of those particularly matter to you, the 5700XT is $100 cheaper than the 2070 Super. WItht he amount of budget you have left over you could aim even higher on the video card if you want, but it's probably not worth it- I'd save that cash for the next next gen of GPUs. Your monitor is GPU agnostic, supporting both Nvidia and AMD via Freesync, so you get your choice here.

For SSD, I picked an inexpensive 1TB SSD. There is zero perceptible performance difference between a SATA based SSD and an NVME SSD for gaming and normal desktop purposes, so there's no reason to target one or the other. This is an item where I tend to like to "buy whatever is on sale".

Your power supply can fall into that category too. Likely power utilization for your system will be ~350-450W under load, so if you get a 80Plus-Gold type PSU and aim for the 650-800W range or so you'll be running at a nice efficient point along their load curve, resulting in quieter operation. I've got a TT 750W Toughpower Grand RGB unit similar to the one in my recommendation (got mine on sale for $100), and it is inaudible under load and my system draws more power than yours.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/MgxyRk

Well that's my list. There is definitely a little bit to be saved on - you could drop to the 3600/3600X, choose cheaper RAM, and buy both a SSD and a power supply that are on special sale if you wait a little bit and keep an eye out for deals. If you've got a local Microcenter that's the place to buy the CPU+Mobo as well; they have the 3700X for $270 and when you bundle a motherboard you get $20 off, making that mobo $60. Hell, when I bought my 3700X+B450 Pro4 from them the discount was a bit bigger and I got the motherboard for $29.99; tell me that's not a steal!
 
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Thanks for putting all this information together, sinisterDei! I'll do some research based on what you provided and make some decisions. It's good to see that I'll be able to put a system together within my budget with no problem. I'll update this post with what I decide on. I'm not in a major rush to get everything together so if anybody else would like to chime in I'd welcome additional comments. I'll also post any questions i might come up with after doing more research.
 
This might be a stupid question but I want to clarify before making any decisions. As mentioned in my original post, I'll be re-using a Sound Blaster Z sound card. I'm assuming, looking at the layout of the ASRock board (B450M Pro4) that m.2 SSD's fit underneath any card that is plugged into the PCIe 2.0 x1 slot. Would I be correct with this assumption?
 
Correct. As long as the M.2 drive doesn't have some huge heatsink or whatnot, there should be no problem with coexistence.

In addition to that, there is a second M.2 slot in the bottom-right of the motherboard that only supports SATA type M.2 drives. The SSD I mentioned is a SATA SSD, despite its M.2 form-factor, so you can put it in the lower SSD slot to keep it out of the way anyways.
 
Also, just a note, the video card I put on the list is apparently one of the crappier 5700 XT cards. They were apparently shoddily assembled with regards to their cooling apparatus. I suppose that's why it's the cheapest 5700XT by $20 or so. Apparently they're a bit better now, but you might consider spending an extra few bucks to move up to a different model 5700 XT. If you are going with the 2070 options, then obviously none of this matters.
 
sinisterDei said:
Correct. As long as the M.2 drive doesn't have some huge heatsink or whatnot, there should be no problem with coexistence.

In addition to that, there is a second M.2 slot in the bottom-right of the motherboard that only supports SATA type M.2 drives. The SSD I mentioned is a SATA SSD, despite its M.2 form-factor, so you can put it in the lower SSD slot to keep it out of the way anyways.
Click to expand...

Ah, thanks for pointing out the second M.2 slot in the bottom right corner. I missed that. Also thanks for the confirmation I could use both the PCIe 2.0 slot along with the M.2 slot beside it and for noting the differences between the M.2 slots. I'm assuming there is no perceptible difference between the SATA type M.2 drives and the PCIe?

I did some research on the 5700 XT vs. 2070 Super that is making me lean toward the 2070 Super. Read about some bugginess with the 5700 XT's. Maybe that's all been sorted out, but still it makes me a little uneasy when I'm looking for stability. Since I'm not in a major rush either I may wait a little bit yet and see if I can get something on sale with the announcement of the 3000 series GeForce cards.
 
Dexter007 said:
there is no perceptible difference between the SATA type M.2 drives and the PCIe?
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Yep. They'll be the same for any workload that isn't specifically storage I/O intensive. Gaming isn't one of them, nor is general computing work.

Dexter007 said:
I did some research on the 5700 XT vs. 2070 Super that is making me lean toward the 2070 Super. Read about some bugginess with the 5700 XT's.
Click to expand...
I think some of the RX 5000 series had some driver roughness in the beginning, but a lot of that seems to be smoothed out. There will of course always be outliers - one has only to visit /r/amd to see that - but Nvidia isn't 100% spotless with their record either. I personally know exactly one person with a RX 5700 XT and they love it. On the other hand, I know 10+ people with Nvidia 1000 and 2000 series cards all of whom are happy with them too. I think currently the Nvidia card is better overall, especially if you care about NVENC, but it is also more expensive. And historically, AMD GPUs seem to age a bit better / be more performant for future tech; there's been a lot of talk recently about how the 7970 GPUs from significantly yesteryear have held up performance-wise far better than their at-the-time contemporary Nvidia competitor the 680. I'm not sure I buy into this myself - it's true for the 7970 specifically, but that's no guarantee the RX line will age better than the Nvidia cards of today. Historically AMD cards have favored DX12 and Vulkan a bit more than Nvidia cards, and that speaks well to performance in the future, but only time will tell.
 
sinisterDei said:
Yep. They'll be the same for any workload that isn't specifically storage I/O intensive. Gaming isn't one of them, nor is general computing work.


I think some of the RX 5000 series had some driver roughness in the beginning, but a lot of that seems to be smoothed out. There will of course always be outliers - one has only to visit /r/amd to see that - but Nvidia isn't 100% spotless with their record either. I personally know exactly one person with a RX 5700 XT and they love it. On the other hand, I know 10+ people with Nvidia 1000 and 2000 series cards all of whom are happy with them too. I think currently the Nvidia card is better overall, especially if you care about NVENC, but it is also more expensive. And historically, AMD GPUs seem to age a bit better / be more performant for future tech; there's been a lot of talk recently about how the 7970 GPUs from significantly yesteryear have held up performance-wise far better than their at-the-time contemporary Nvidia competitor the 680. I'm not sure I buy into this myself - it's true for the 7970 specifically, but that's no guarantee the RX line will age better than the Nvidia cards of today. Historically AMD cards have favored DX12 and Vulkan a bit more than Nvidia cards, and that speaks well to performance in the future, but only time will tell.
Click to expand...

I don't mean to hijack the thread but you've helped me before with an AMD build. What is the best board to get that doesn't require a BIOS flash to support a 3700x?
I will also be using a Sound Blaster card for the quad dac to power my DT 770 pro headphones since they are 250ohm headphones. If the board can power the headphones then I won't have to worry about a sound card.
I guess that begs to question if there are any good boards for the 3700x that also has a built in dac/amp for higher end headphones.
 
Dirtytape said:
What is the best board to get that doesn't require a BIOS flash to support a 3700x?
Click to expand...

By this point, almost any board purchased new at retail should be 3000 series ready. The 300 and 400 series boards needed BIOS updates, but most (if not all) of the stock of those boards with old BIOS revisions should have sold out months ago, and manufacturers tend to apply newer BIOS revisions to boards over time. ASRock started shipping their B450 boards with a "Ryzen 3000 ready" sticker on the outside of the box within 2 months of the 3000 series release.

As for your other question, I'm not much of an audiophile and barely pay attention to onboard audio. Not much of an authority on that topic, sorry!
 
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