New build for £1800

Seearbe

Seearbe

Seearbe

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31 Jul 2019
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545
After a little bit of faffing around in another thread talking about upgrading etc, I've had a serious offer to buy my existing PC which means a full build is now on the cards. Budget is £1,800 give or take to include everything except windows, keyboard and mouse. I also have 4gb of hdd and 2 x 256gb ssd I can reuse but would like a good sized m2 drive for primary drive and game installations. I also want to be able to use my existing internal bluray drive, which limits case options.

Style wise, I'm more interested in sleek and classy rather than jazzy lights. That said I do like windowed cases, assuming it's not too much of seen effort to get it neat and tidy inside. Also, if I'd be forever needing to get the dust out if a windowed case, I'd rather not bother! I like my computers to be quiet.

Usage will be general desktop, lightroom and light gaming. I'm more interested in visual quality than lightening frame rates, so perhaps 4k rather than a fast 1440p monitor.

I do have a shield TV so being able to use the gamestream feature is a must. So nvidea graphics only.

I can't say I'm much of an overclocker either if it matters. Although I would give it a go from a windows based utility rather than through the bios.

Space isn't an issue and don't need wifi.

Of course, not itching to spend the entire budget if I don't need to but would rather not have to upgrade again for another 5 years.

Have I missed anything!?

Cheers!
 
Fashion has pretty much raped cases with no 5.25" bays for accessories/future feature additions and leaving little choises.
Full window side panels also require lots of attention and work in cable managements, so partial windows would be lot easier.
But fashion has pushed also that window part to ludicrous excess.
If you can find one, Fractal Design Define R5 has partial window side versions and checks classy look and noise damping design boxes.
But it's pretty much either full window and all the cable management work, or fully windowless side.
Newer Define R6 got further raped by fashion in only one 5.25" bay for less future flexiblity along with other fashion cruds.

If wanting door to cover drives beyond Define Rs it's pretty much down to case like BeQuiet Silent Base 600
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/be-quiet-silent-base-600-midi-tower-case-black-ca-105-bq.html

For CPU Ryzen 3700X would be bang per buck choise good for couple years.
After which there would be no doubt good priced 12 cores available for upgrade BIOS/drop CPU in upgrade.

X570 motherboards also offer plenty of expandability with lots of fast PCIe lanes.
Asus Prime X570-P and better featured/equipped Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite are pretty much the most sensible choises of those.

Memory could be upgraded later, but 2x16GB is available for pretty sensible amount.

For NVMe SSD Phison E12 controller/Toshiba NAND based Corsair MP510 is good choise with lot better write endurance spec (another limit for warranty) than in brand overpriced Samsungs.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cors...d-state-drive-cssd-f960gbmp510-hd-065-cs.html
There are also other good choises for bang per buck, but OcUK's selection is pretty slim in those.


In monitors 3840x2160 requires awfully lot GPU power to keep high settings and good frame rates.
And Nvidia graphics cards don't exactly shine in bang per buck even at best.
And next years likely bring lots of advance and certainly lot more competion making currently expensive cards lose value fast.
 
Many thanks for the response. Much of this is along my lines of thinking but I think you've also solved the case quandry as the R5 looks to be perfect. I'm thinking a black and white theme would be good, so this is where I've got to (with a few changes noted below as I can't get everything through Overclockers):

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,966.00 (includes shipping: £14.10)
​

Other than adding in Fractal Design R5 case, I would change PSU for the white version. I already have the Noctua cooler in my current build which I'm guessing I would reuse (just adding for reference) - although that said, it would be £7 for the AM4 mounting kit, £20 for a new 1155 cooler to replace in the PC I'm selling, possibly another £25 for new fans to colour match, so wonder whether it makes sense to go the whole hog and just get a quiet AIO cooler?

I'm also not sure on that RAM - the simple vengeance 3200 (https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cors...md-ryzen-tuned-ddr4-memory-kit-my-4bz-cs.html) might make more sense and save a bit of money.
 
Define R5 stocks are pretty slim, so might be hard to find windowed version.

Thanks to overcomplicated attachment NH-D14's fans aren't easy to swap, if you're planning to change its fans to fit colour style. (and they use 120mm attaching)
In Finnish forum one user recently hit to that snag while trying to quieten it in market PC motherboard lacking fan control options.
Otherwise it's certainly good to keep when you have it.

For fans those Corsairs are pretty brand overpriced for measly 2 year warranty fans.
Arctic has 6 year warranty fans for £5
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/arctic-cooling-f12-pwm-fan-120mm-fg-029-ar.html

In X570 motherboards there's actually slight challenge in that chipset cooling:
Because of marketroids as designers most boards have that chipset fan exactly where most graphics cards spew out their heat.
Which is "less optimal" for both noise and fan life span.
In Finnish PC forum couple people have actually tried moving graphics card to another slot because of rising chipset temps and fan ramping up.
More sense making chipset cooler is one of the reasons why I have Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite as first motherboard choise for coming PC upgrade.

For power supply Seasonic Focus is better priced.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seas...w-80-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-06u-ss.html
Though also 650W would be well enough with frugal power draw of 3700X.
Seasonic actually has some white coloured PSUs, but they just have hefty fashion extra in price. (Snow Silent models)

Unless you play strategy games etc I would recommend 2560x1440 monitor for higher refresh rates.
3840x2160 is very demanding without cutting settings in heavier games.
 
Thanks again for responding.

The psu can be had for £20 cheaper with a bit of shopping around. I've given up on reusing the noctua already as I realised replacing fans might be tricky. I'll probably stick with the stock cooler now and possibly get an aio down the line.

Good advice on the chipset cooler. Will look into that further. I like to keep my components as cool as possible so blowing gpu heat directly onto the chipset isn't ideal.

On the monitor, photo editing will be the main use, possibly with some 4k video editing. Gaming will be secondary, and 60fps is fine for me. Presumably I could scale resolution down to compensate, if it's in the same aspect ratio. Or does that not really work too well?
 
Updated build:

Probably replacing the Define R6 with a black Define R5 if I can get it.

Hmm, budget is creeping up a bit, although I suspect I can get it all in under £2k.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £2,075.82 (includes shipping: £28.02)​
​
 
At the risk of continuing my monologue, any thoughts on the x570 Gaming Pro Carbon Wifi vs Aorus Elite?

I'm taking @EsaT 's advice and avoiding situations where the GPU covers the chipset cooler. Preferring the MSI board because the air flows over the M2 drives from the chipset cooler and because the wifi is a nice-to-have bonus. But it's also slightly more expensive.
 
Seearbe said:
At the risk of continuing my monologue, any thoughts on the x570 Gaming Pro Carbon Wifi vs Aorus Elite?

I'm taking @EsaT 's advice and avoiding situations where the GPU covers the chipset cooler. Preferring the MSI board because the air flows over the M2 drives from the chipset cooler and because the wifi is a nice-to-have bonus. But it's also slightly more expensive.
Click to expand...

IIRC, I've read reviews that suggest its one of the best mid-range to high end boards.
Also, drop the SSD for the Sabarent Rocket. Their 2tb NVME is £20 cheaper elsewhere.
 
snips86x said:
IIRC, I've read reviews that suggest its one of the best mid-range to high end boards.
Also, drop the SSD for the Sabarent Rocket. Their 2tb NVME is £20 cheaper elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Thanks - always nice to get a bit of reassurance on these matters!

I probably will go with the Sabrent Rocket. The only thing making me still consider the MP510 is that I've read somewhere that the ability to update any firmware is a lot easier with Corsair's utility. But will I ever need to update firmware...

I think the RAM is getting changed to 2 lots of Patriot Viper Steel Series DDR4 16GB (2 x 8GB) 4000MHz which can be had for less than £82 per pack.
 
Seearbe said:
Preferring the MSI board because the air flows over the M2 drives from the chipset cooler and because the wifi is a nice-to-have bonus. But it's also slightly more expensive.
Click to expand...
Whole lower end of MSI's X570 doesn't make sense.
MSI literally copypasted CPU VRM components from £100 level B450 Gaming Plus/Tomahawk, which makes those boards poor for X570 standards:
https://youtu.be/kxJ8rB5DiUE?t=5m14s

With no doubt increasing CPU power demands of heavier games swapping CPU to 12 core Zen3 could be option in two years and VRMs of those MSIs aren't good for such.
 
Seearbe said:
On the monitor, photo editing will be the main use, possibly with some 4k video editing. Gaming will be secondary, and 60fps is fine for me. Presumably I could scale resolution down to compensate, if it's in the same aspect ratio. Or does that not really work too well?
Click to expand...
Using lower resolution in games certainly helps to get more fps out from graphics card and 2560x1440 has lost of details.
But it won't help to frame rate limit of monitor.


Seearbe said:
I probably will go with the Sabrent Rocket. The only thing making me still consider the MP510 is that I've read somewhere that the ability to update any firmware is a lot easier with Corsair's utility. But will I ever need to update firmware...

I think the RAM is getting changed to 2 lots of Patriot Viper Steel Series DDR4 16GB (2 x 8GB) 4000MHz which can be had for less than £82 per pack.
Click to expand...
Firmwares are likely fully mature now and focus is likely in PCIe v4 controllers. (Phison E16)
PNY CS3030 would be another Phison E12+Toshiba NAND drive.


With Ryzen fastest memory bus speeds aren't automatically good.
3600MHz and tight memory latencies would be one of te best for overall performance.
That's how high CPU's internal InfinityFabric bus can be surely kept coupled/synced with memory bus.
3733MHz would be achievable for most better CPU individuals, 3800MHz again needs really good CPU.

When IF bus speed is decoupled from memory bus speed it causes IIRC ~10ns extra latency to memory accesses.
That hits performance of anything which depends on speed of memory access.
Again uses which rely on continuous transfers of big amounts of data can benefit from faster memory speed more than latency.
 
Thanks. I'll stick with the aorus unless something really tasty drops on black Friday.

M2 drive also seems to be a case of waiting until the day and going with the best idrive between the two.

On the RAM, I was reading that dropping the clock rate to 3600 can deliver some tight timings, so that was pretty much the plan, subject to a bit of trial and error. At the price, I couldn't see a reason to not go for it.
 
Looks like the sale of my current PC has fallen through. I'm therefore wondering to change approach slightly.

I'm wondering whether I stick with the 2 x 670 GPUs for now and see what comes out in the next year or so. Similarly, I'll stick with my 27" 1440p monitor. I'm not gaming a huge amount at the moment and my bunch of slightly older games are all OK with what I have, so there is some sense in that I think.

Question I have is that most motherboards are not saying they support SLI. Is that the more recent version that they don't support (I think there was a technology change a couple of years back) and actually the older tech would still work? :confused:

More general question given my budget, a focus on the non-gaming side for now (but one eye on it in the future) and the desire to not replace the PC in the next 5-6 years if possible, is what sense would it make to go 3900x now? Does that change the mobo requirement?

Edit: I guess I'd keep my existing Corsair TX 850w PSU rather than getting a new one too. Although it's not modular, I think the Define R6 would do a good enough job of hiding the spare cables. Again, assume there's not a compatibility issue there with more modern mobo and GPU?
 
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So I'm confused about my existing PSU and whether I need to replace it.

I have a Corsair TX850 which must be about 7/8 years old. Solid power supply and never had an issue with it.

However, it looks like the x570 boards require more power than my z77 board. My current board had the 24 pin atx connector plus another 6 or 8 pin connector. The x570 needs 2 of those additional connectors, which I'm not sure my psu has.

Is that correct? Do I need a new psu or is there something I can do?

It's not the same as the GPU power cable is it?
 
Seearbe said:
So I'm confused about my existing PSU and whether I need to replace it.

I have a Corsair TX850 which must be about 7/8 years old. Solid power supply and never had an issue with it.

However, it looks like the x570 boards require more power than my z77 board. My current board had the 24 pin atx connector plus another 6 or 8 pin connector. The x570 needs 2 of those additional connectors, which I'm not sure my psu has.

Is that correct? Do I need a new psu or is there something I can do?

It's not the same as the GPU power cable is it?
Click to expand...


Up to you if you want to reuse it. That is getting on a bit though if it is 7/8 years old.

As for the motherboard you only need to plug in the 24 pin ATX and an 8 pin CPU connector. Unless you are doing fancy LN2 overclocking then the 8 pin is more than enough.
 
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