1st build since 2017...

DavePa

DavePa

DavePa

Associate
Joined
19 Feb 2017
Posts
23
Location
UK
It will be 6 years in May since my last build and it's time for a new system :)

My financial situation has changed recently so I am able to spend more on my new system than I was originally planning and have decided to go all in and get a high spec system that should last at least another 5 years and hopefully more than that. I appreciate that this build is probably over the top and there are places that money could be saved but I'm more interested in whether or not it will all work together :)

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £4,347.54 (includes delivery: £15.90)​



​

I've always gone Intel/nVidia and although I was considering AMD/AMD this time around it seems the 7900XTX isn't that much of a bargain - had the price been lower or the performance higher I may have gone for it but it seems that, at the moment, if you want best performance you need a 4090. Another habit is using same motherboard/GPU manufacturer even though I am sure there is no advantage in doing so. Current setup is Asus/Asus prior to that I was running Gigabyte/Gigabyte and the Gigabyte RTX4090 is available from Overcloskers with a small price reduction so I'm happy to go with it. Other bits are latest versions of things I have used before - Corsair, Noctua and WD usually feature in my builds somewhere! I've not used Fractal Design cases before but have seen good reviews of them. My PC sits on a shelf alongside my desk and RGB is of no interest at all so a windowless case is ideal for me. I have added some case fans but may reduce the number - I probably don't need 4 of them. I already have KB/Mouse/Speaker/Monitor/Headset so no need to add them in, if I do decide to change them I will do so later on. I also don't need 64Gb of memory but I retire in a couple of years and want to play around with virtual machines so I may as well get a decent chunk of RAM to start with.
 
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC 24GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card
GX-1FC-GI
£2,100 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Intel Core i9-13900K (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail
CP-6AZ-IN
£579 (incl. VAT)
£480 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Noctua NH-D15S Chromax Black CPU cooler - 140mm
HS-03R-NC
£110 (incl. VAT)
£105 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Noctua NT-H2 Thermal Paste (3.5g)
TH-001-NC
£12 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
I would get:My basket at OcUK:

Total: £3,510.05 (includes delivery: £11.10)​



​

Check case can fit the 360mm cooler, change to 64GB if you think you will use it, 32GB will be more than enough for at least 3 years and much better RAM kits will be available then.
 
Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard
MB-6J4-AS
£550 (incl. VAT)
£530 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Sixteen Core 5.70GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail
CP-3DE-AM
£600 (incl. VAT)
£450 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Asus GeForce RTX 4090 TUF OC 24GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card
GX-48B-AS
£2,190 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Last edited:
FredFlint said:
I would get:My basket at OcUK:

​

Check case can fit the 360mm cooler, change to 64GB if you think you will use it, 32GB will be more than enough for at least 3 years and much better RAM kits will be available then.
Click to expand...
Is a 360mm CPU water cooler much better than a good air cooler? Is it quieter? I recall having a Corsair HS100 a few builds back and it sprung a leak after about 2 years which put me off them! I'm not going to be going mad overclocking the system - low noise levels and longeviety are more important to me
 
I get AIO coolers as I don’t like big block coolers that can obstruct the RAM slots and other things, I have an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360mm so I know its comparable with AM5 and its nice and cool & quiet. I have been lucky, not had any issues with AIO's yet but a good air cooler would work fine. Also, 280mm AIO's seems to be the sweet spot for performance, I got the 360 so it had a bit extra as it was very hot this summer.
 
FredFlint said:
I would get:My basket at OcUK:

Total: £3,510.05 (includes delivery: £11.10)​

​
​
​

Check case can fit the 360mm cooler, change to 64GB if you think you will use it, 32GB will be more than enough for at least 3 years and much better RAM kits will be available then.
Click to expand...
Why Ryzen isn't it worse for gaming and hundreds more? Also why pay extra £200 for GPU? Might as well us that on ram right?
 
Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard
MB-6J4-AS
£550 (incl. VAT)
£530 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Sixteen Core 5.70GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail
CP-3DE-AM
£600 (incl. VAT)
£450 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Asus GeForce RTX 4090 TUF OC 24GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card
GX-48B-AS
£2,190 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
OP said he likes all the same make so ASUS MB + ASUS GPU, the Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero is the MB I would go with but Choose Gigabyte if that’s preferred. The 13900K and 7950x are very close, sometimes Intel wins other times AMD wins. As the OP will be keeping the PC for 5+ years, AM5 should age much better and offer the opportunity for several generations of drop in CPU upgrades if required. Think it also has better PCIe gen 5 support for M.2 if that matters.
 
FredFlint said:
OP said he likes all the same make so ASUS MB + ASUS GPU, the Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero is the MB I would go with but Choose Gigabyte if that’s preferred. The 13900K and 7950x are very close, sometimes Intel wins other times AMD wins. As the OP will be keeping the PC for 5+ years, AM5 should age much better and offer the opportunity for several generations of drop in CPU upgrades if required. Think it also has better PCIe gen 5 support for M.2 if that matters.
Click to expand...
I can't be the only one that does this though right? Right? I'm 100% confident that a mix-and-match MB/GPU would work fine but I just prefer to buy the same manufacturer. Thankfully I am in a small minority as otherwise the likes of Palit and Inno3d would need to start making motherboards.

Good point about the future upgradability of the AM5 slot but I've only ever gone for a complete new system - wife always gets the old one - she is about to get my Asus ROG z270 MB with the i7700k, 16Gb of DDR4 (3200) and an Asus GTX1080ti - also an M.2 and a SATA SSD :)
 
DavePa said:
I can't be the only one that does this though right? Right? I'm 100% confident that a mix-and-match MB/GPU would work fine but I just prefer to buy the same manufacturer. Thankfully I am in a small minority as otherwise the likes of Palit and Inno3d would need to start making motherboards.

Good point about the future upgradability of the AM5 slot but I've only ever gone for a complete new system - wife always gets the old one - she is about to get my Asus ROG z270 MB with the i7700k, 16Gb of DDR4 (3200) and an Asus GTX1080ti - also an M.2 and a SATA SSD :)
Click to expand...
I normally get ASUS motherboards, Sapphire/PowerColor GPU's, everything else i just look at reviews and get whatever is good at the time.
Also, The NVME drives, I would consider getting them without heatsinks on as a lot of new motherboards include M.2 heatsinks.
 
I do want an ATX 3.0 PSU but they seem to be a bit hard to get hold of ATM, particularly something over 1Kw which I want to make sure nothing is stressed - I could possibly get away with an 850w but it would be running flat out on occasion.
 
Read about cooling the CPU. I seem to recall these being ridic hot, so perhaps a triple aio is mandatory, check it.

Edit: it might be smarter to get the 13700k, or even 13600k.
 
Last edited:
I kept most of your build and followed your notes, but I like cheap, so I tried to make it cheaper. Hopefully I didn't miss anything in the original spec.

Intel Core i5-13600K (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail - £329.99
Gigabyte Z790 Gaming X AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard - £279.95
Corsair Vengeance 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-41600C40 5200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK64GX5M2B5200C40 - £278.98

WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E) - £159.95
WD Black SN850X 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2X0E) - £109.99

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC 24GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card - £1,829.98

Noctua NH-D15S Chromax Black CPU cooler - 140mm - £99.95
Noctua NF-A15 PWM Chromax Premium Grade Fan - 140mm - £29.00
Noctua NT-H2 Thermal Paste (3.5g) - £11.99

CORSAIR HXi Series HX1500i Fully Modular Ultra-Low Noise ATX Power Supply - £279.95
Corsair PCIe 5.0 12VHPWR Type-4 PSU Power Cable - £18.95
Fractal Design Meshify 2 Midi Tower Case - Grey TG Light Tint - £184.99

Grand Total: £3,716.54 (includes delivery @ £15.90)

Rationale:
CPU: everything bottlenecks a 4090, so you'll probably want to replace it eventually anyway and to me, a 13900K really only makes sense when you need all those cores. The gaming performance of the 13600K is good enough that at higher resolutions there's not enough difference I'd want to pay twice as much. The 13600K productivity performance is also excellent (at least, for an i5), since it has 6 fast P-cores and 8 E-cores, making it competitive with (or beating) some previous-gen flagship CPUs with more cores.
Motherboard: I haven't actually seen many reviews for Z790 boards, but I can't imagine any Z board would throttle a 13600K when gaming. If you need the features of more expensive boards, then fair enough, but I can't see that I'd get £100 extra value in the Aero.
Memory: if you're planning to stuff the board full of memory then my understanding is that it is pretty much pointless to buy high-end DDR5, because it doesn't work (there's also little difference in games at higher resolutions), but if you're only dabbling with VMs then even 32GB may be sufficient. You may want to check if there's been any developments since, as it may have matured (and got more stable).
SSD: The SN770 performs extremely well and from what I've seen, you get a few seconds benefit at most (in game level-loading times) between high-end and low-end PCI-E 4.0 drives (at least, if they use TLC, rather than QLC), so I'd just have the one high-end drive and replace the other for general games/app storage. If one is only storing files that are rarely moved, or accessed, then I'd honestly just get the SN570, but it looks like it has gone back up to £150 (from £120 or whatever it was), so not worth the downgrade anymore.
Cooler/PSU/case: as you were.
 
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Thanks all for the feedback which I am taking on board and changing specs - 13900k might have been overkill but I currently have a 7700k - which replaced a 3770k. I seem to usually pick the i7 and so have included the 13700k. I've also changed to 4*16gb for RAM, it means no expansion without removing some RAM but I'm hoping 64Gb will see out the life of this PC. The Gigabyte Aero has gone although I've replaced it with a different board to the Gaming X AX kindly suggested by @Tetras above - I've gone with the Aorus Elite AX which is more expensive than the Gaming X AX but still £70 cheaper than the Aero and is also in stock so I'll have to see what it available when I actually place the order this week. Same with the PSU - the Corsair HXi 1500 is currently not in stock at Overclockers - I may be able to pick one up elsewhere but my last 3 or 4 systems have been 100% from Overclockers - I always try and buy everything from the same place which is just another of those odd habits I have!

I've changed the cooler to the dual fan version and removed the thermal paste as the CPU cooler includes this. I've also reduced the additional fans - 3 instead of 4 and these may replace the original fans rather than give additional cooling although once I've read a few reviews that could change either way :)

The Gigabyte boards include a cover (heat spreader?) which may clash with the heatsinks on the M.2 drives (thanks @FredFlint ). Non-heatsink versions are available and are cheaper so that may be an option.

Key things for me are:
  • Good performance - I used to play MS Flight Simulator 10+ years back and keep thinking about trying it again and don't want to have a max of 30fps
  • Low noise levels in general use - I'm hoping that overspeccing everything means nothing is stressed. I don't mind hearing the fans if I am gaming but want office work to be silent!
  • Longeviety - I hope to build it and then only go back to it every few months to clean the dust filters. In 5 or so years time I'll be on here again asking about an upgrade to a nVidia 8000 series and an Intel 18900k with 256Gb of RAM :)
My basket at OcUK:

Total: £4,046.64 (includes delivery: £15.90)​

​
​
​
 
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC 24GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card
GX-1FC-GI
£2,100 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Intel Core i7-13700K (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail
CP-6AX-IN
£348 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Noctua NH-D15 Chromax Pure Black CPU Cooler with Dual 140m Fans
HS-03M-NC
£110 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard
MB-5BK-GI
£200 (incl. VAT)
£185 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Last edited:
DavePa said:
I've also changed to 4*16gb for RAM, it means no expansion without removing some RAM but I'm hoping 64Gb will see out the life of this PC.
Click to expand...

Oh, it's the right choice to go 2x32GB, in my opinion, I was referring to the fact that I switched from 5600 to 5200, which is often considered toward the 'slow' side, but is a nicer price (for this particular kit). My rationale being that if you went for 128GB, it runs dog slow anyway.
 
Last edited:
Journey said:
I'd be buying Samsung 990 Pro's not WD 850X's especially at those prices.
Click to expand...
I added these in place of the WD drives as I ended up buying different components from different suppliers - not something I usually do (sorry overclockers) but I was able to put in the 990s to replace the WD drives and up the memory to 6000mhz (2*32Gb) and still save £100 even after paying delivery charges.
 
Decided to build this weekend so ordered everything on Tuesday from 6 different suppliers. Everything turned up Wednesday - apart from the bits I ordered from Overclockers :(

Called Wednesday PM to check my order had shipped and was told there was a delay but they hoped to get it out that day so I was still on to build this weekend but the order didn't arrive on Thursday...or Friday. I called Friday PM and was effectively told 'Oops, our bad, we've not shipped it yet' so I guess that means I have a weekend free to do things other than build a PC.
 
DavePa said:
Decided to build this weekend so ordered everything on Tuesday from 6 different suppliers. Everything turned up Wednesday - apart from the bits I ordered from Overclockers :(

Called Wednesday PM to check my order had shipped and was told there was a delay but they hoped to get it out that day so I was still on to build this weekend but the order didn't arrive on Thursday...or Friday. I called Friday PM and was effectively told 'Oops, our bad, we've not shipped it yet' so I guess that means I have a weekend free to do things other than build a PC.
Click to expand...

That is mega annoying, I'd be fuming. How many/what parts are you waiting on?
 
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