Intel vs AMD for mini-ITX build

[wavehunter]

Seasons greetings!

It's been a few years since my last build and it was all Intel at the time.

I'm going down the mini-ITX route now and already have a Streacom DA2 waiting to be filled with a Corsair SF750 on order.

Next is which processor. Will mainly be gaming, a bit of non-taxing Office work and occasional 4k video work. I'd be looking to go high-end so either i9 or Ryzen 9. Ryzen boards come with PCIe 4.0 but only 1Gb LAN so swings and roundabouts. It will probably be combined with a 3080 eventually but in the meantime I'll use a 1070 from a previous mining rig. Just about everything I've read and watched shows that AMD comes out on top as core count appears to overcome a slightly lower clock speed.

So, is it really as clear cut as that? Are the Ryzen 9 5900/5950X the top dogs currently?

 

[clv101]

For a mini-ITX, mostly gaming system the 65W 5600X is the obvious choice.

 

[mods1965]

Mini-ITX lends itself to air cooling due to case size restrictions, so always consider the CPU TDP and its here where Ryzen does so well.
I recommend you have a look at reddit\r/sffpc to see what people have been doling with the Streacom DA2. The difference with this cases is that it support 240AIO, so you can consider Intel as well.
The Price/specs of the mobo should also be taken into account to decide the CPU choice, if you want to use a M.2 PCIEx4 drive (which is a must for M-ITX) etc.
What GPU are you going to use?

 

[q974739]

If you're looking high end, as you say, 5900x. As long as the rest of the build can manage the thermals.

Question is, do you really need 12 cores. What are you coming from?