Advice on a 78003XD build

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Hi all,

So as per a recent post I made, I'm in the market for a full system upgrade. I had some comments from a couple of people in a previous post here recommending that I just upgrade my system and upgrade my CPU to a 5800X3D rather than splurge on an entirely new system and they raised valid points, but in all honesty after having the bones of this PC now for over 8 years (with upgrades obv.) I'm just ready for a whole new build :D This PC was an OCUK pre-build back in 2015 and has served me well, the case for the time was an absolute cube monster (Corsair Carbide Air 540) and has served me well, but it's time for a change. I'm likely looking to order another custom build from OCUK yet again rather than build my own, mostly for convenience's sake.

There are a couple of components that I'm pretty set on now, so I've included my basket below. The first is the 7800X3D. I was waiting on the reviews to drop on that and now that they have, I'm fairly confident that's the CPU I want to go for. Obviously demand outweighs supply on that and likely will for the next few months, but I don't mind waiting it out. I'm also quite taken with the Phanteks NV7 case, which isn't included in any of the custom build options on the store so I'll need to contact OC directly once I'm ready to order. I've gone with an Asus ROG MoBo since my current 5 year old ROG (X470-F) has served me really well. I don't really buy into brand loyalty though, especially when it comes to PC so if there's a board that offers better value for money I don't mind switching out.

I'm torn on the 4090, last time I bought a GPU I paid <£500 for a pretty top end card (GTX1080 which I'm still using today), it's hard to get my head around spending nearly what I paid for my entire system last time on a single component, but such is the current market. With all that said, the 4090 might be overkill as right now I only play on a single 1080p monitor. I'm planning to upgrade to the Dell Alienware AW3423DW in a couple of months so definitely need a GPU with a bit of oomph, but the most demanding game I'll likely be playing this year is probably Star Citizen which is mostly down to their lack of optimisation, so I'm not sure the 4090 is worth it. I will be playing some newer titles but most of them will hopefully be pretty well optimised and not really tax this kind of system. I'm out of touch with GPU's though, so any viable alternatives that are pretty high end that will last me for at least the next few years? On a related note, there are some B-grade 4090's available directly from OCUK that are around £400 cheaper than the same models new, are these worth considering?

Whew, so that covers the items in my basket. I'm a little confused over the Phanteks D30 fans. I've added a triple pack of regular D30's and some reverse D30's to my basket, but how many fans realistically would I be wanting with the NV7? Maxing out the amount of fans the case can hold seems a bit overkill to me, but if it's worth doing for optimal cooling then so be it. Does anyone know if the case comes with any fans included or do they all need to be purchased separately? I had a look on the product page but couldn't see anything that suggests it includes any fans and if it does I'm assuming that they're not the D30's...

On the subject of cooling, I'm stumped when it comes to a CPU cooler. Would I be best going for a higher end air cooler vs an AIO? I'm not confident with water cooling at all, but if I do end up plumping for a high end card such as the 4090 what's the stock cooling like on those? Would that benefit from water cooling? Custom loops terrify me :cry: But obviously spending this kind of money on a system, I'm concerned about keeping things running as optimally as possible.

Finally, I'm also torn on RAM and PSU so any advice there would be appreciated :D In regards to RAM, Star Citizen and a lot of newer games are pretty thirsty with memory so I'd like a minimum of 32GB and 64GB isn't out of the question if my budget could stretch to it. I'd like to ideally keep the cost around £2500 - £3000 (excluding build cost) and don't need any peripherals.

Cheers!

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £3,001.88 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

 
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you are kind of choosing the same components as me, but i will go with the Lian Li O11 Air mini probably as its smaller and it is only about £100.
you still have choices on the SSD, CPU cooler and PSU i am currently looking at the Samsung 990 Pro 2TB M.2 / WD Black SN850X 1TB SSD, the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 280 and the MSI MPG A1000G PCIE5
many other people have helped me out with my build on here which has been great.
you could also maybe spend less on the fans to save some money and pay for other components. i reduced the "bling" but it still sat between 3 - 3.5 k with the extorionate 4090 taking up half the budget :mad:
 
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You have a lot of questions in your post so I doubt I can answer them all but I will give my thoughts on some of them.

GPU - Why did the person send back a 4090 ? What I would be worried about is that it got returned because that particular card had terrible coil whine. Now you can plug a card into another system and the coil whine can go away but not always. I do not know what the returns situation is with B grade items if you are not totally happy with it. The stock coolers on the 4090s are absolutely huge and run relatively cool and quiet so no real need to go into full custom loops ...unless you want to.

Cooling - The 7800x3d does not need extreme cooling so anything from the £40 Thermaltake peerless assassin to a 420 AIO will cool it just fine. With the case you want then surely it is to showcase the components so go for an aio imho and make the pc look as nice as possible. The problem you have with an AIO is do you want to change the fans on it to the D30s you want to use ? it can get significantly more expensive than a simple tower cooler but that case is quite large and if all you put in it is a mobo + gpu + fans then it will look quite empty.

Ram - If buying new get 6000mhz DDR5 , is not too expensive now and if I was buying I would be getting EXPO cl30. Not had updated memory timing scaling for the X3D chips yet but if it is similar to the 5800X3D it doesnt make much difference.

PSU - Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 1000w or be Quiet 12M 1000w are good choices. The be quiet is outstanding value.

Monitor - You sure about the AW34DW ? not going for the cheaper AW34DWF ? Pretty much the same monitor and all you lose is gysnch. Nv gpus still work with freesynch.

Hope that helps a little.
 
AMD/AMD alternative option:

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail - £440.00
Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard - £269.98
Kingston FURY Beast 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C40 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KF556C40BBK2-64) - £230.00

Gigabyte Radeon RX 7900 XTX AORUS ELITE 24GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £1,159.99
AMD Radeon™ Get The Game Bundle - The Last of Us™ Part I - £0.00

WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E) - £136.99

Phanteks Eclipse P600S Glass Silent Midi Tower Case - Black - £152.99
Phanteks M25 140mm PWM High-Airflow Chassis Fan - Black - £9.95
Phanteks Glacier One 280MP All In One CPU Water Cooler D-RGB Black - 280mm - £129.95

MSI MPG A1000G UK PSU 1000W 80 Plus Gold certified Fully Modular - £159.94

Grand Total: £2,701.78 (includes delivery charge, £11.99)

Case: case includes 3x 140mm fans pre-installed, so you only need 1 to kit it out completely, together with the AIO.
Graphics: your future monitor (if AW3423DWF) supports AMD FreeSync and according to TPU's review, it can hit over 200 average fps at 2560 x 1440. The Gigabyte has a 4 year warranty.
Board: solid VRM, 8-layer PCB, supports 3 M.2 drives, wireless. Does lack PCI-E 5.0 graphics, but I don't think it'll matter, even a 4090 only loses a few % with PCI-E 3.0 (article).
Memory: from HUB's results, the X3D CPUs aren't as sensitive to memory speed as the other AM5 CPUs, so I think this speed will be fine and it is fairly cheap for 64GB.
Cooler: I chose this cooler to be installed in the roof, but if you want to go air, I think this would do the job.
 
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Thanks @Haz123. I'll definitely take a look at some of the components you mentioned. In regards to the monitor, I wasn't actually aware that there was a cheaper variant just lacking Gsynch so I'll take a look at that.

AMD/AMD alternative option:

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail - £440.00
Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard - £269.98
Kingston FURY Beast 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C40 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KF556C40BBK2-64) - £230.00

Gigabyte Radeon RX 7900 XTX AORUS ELITE 24GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £1,159.99
AMD Radeon™ Get The Game Bundle - The Last of Us™ Part I - £0.00

WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T3X0E) - £136.99

Phanteks Eclipse P600S Glass Silent Midi Tower Case - Black - £152.99
Phanteks M25 140mm PWM High-Airflow Chassis Fan - Black - £9.95
Phanteks Glacier One 280MP All In One CPU Water Cooler D-RGB Black - 280mm - £129.95

MSI MPG A1000G UK PSU 1000W 80 Plus Gold certified Fully Modular - £159.94

Grand Total: £2,701.78 (includes delivery charge, £11.99)

Case: case includes 3x 140mm fans pre-installed, so you only need 1 to kit it out completely, together with the AIO.
Graphics: your future monitor (if AW3423DWF) supports AMD FreeSync and according to TPU's review, it can hit over 200 average fps at 2560 x 1440. The Gigabyte has a 4 year warranty.
Board: solid VRM, 8-layer PCB, supports 3 M.2 drives, wireless. Does lack PCI-E 5.0 graphics, but I don't think it'll matter, even a 4090 only loses a few % with PCI-E 3.0 (article).
Memory: from HUB's results, the X3D CPUs aren't as sensitive to memory speed as the other AM5 CPUs, so I think this speed will be fine and it is fairly cheap for 64GB.
Cooler: I chose this cooler to be installed in the roof, but if you want to go air, I think this would do the job.

Thanks for taking the time with this build list @Tetras. Some nice components there! In regards to the case, what are the benefits of the Phanteks case you listed vs. the NV7? I still prefer the aesthetics of the NV7 personally, but might consider that case if it offers some features over the NV7. If not, am I correct in assuming the parts you listed would fit OK in the NV7 with it being an ATX case?

Cheers!
 
what are the benefits of the Phanteks case you listed vs. the NV7?

I'm afraid I was only looking at the impact on the overall build price (because of the included fans) and the fan / radiator support relative to cooling compatibility & performance. I like it because it is so roomy and can be configured for airflow or for quiet. The NV7 is more of a display case, whereas the P600S is a traditional config with a side window, so I'm not sure they're comparable.

If not, am I correct in assuming the parts you listed would fit OK in the NV7 with it being an ATX case?

Yup.
 
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