New build for AI, gaming and VR

[xyphic]

It's been 10 years since I built my last PC, and it's time for a whole new system. I'm quite out of touch.

It'll be used for AI / ML learning and general coding, so ideally needs decent compute capability. Also will be used for gaming though that's secondary, and PCVR - I have a Quest 3 and would like to tether it.

Budget is £2k to £2.5k (may stretch a bit further potentially) and will need to include a monitor, keyboard (mechanical preferably) and mouse.

I'm thinking something along the lines of a 9700X with a B850 mobo. 64 GB RAM at minimum, and perhaps a 5070 Ti (though I wonder if it's worth waiting until next year when models with more VRAM appear).

Any and all suggestions welcome. Thanks!

 

[Tetras]

Max budget option.

I can't recommend a monitor, mouse or keyboard.

Is your compute mainly on the GPU, or does it use both heavily?

If it uses both heavily, I'd suggest a 360mm AIO rather than the peerless assassin.

If storage is rarely a bottleneck for you, then you could dump the PCI-E 5.0 SSD.

64 GB RAM at minimum

At the moment, I'd just look around for deals because of the recent price increases. If capacity is important to you (and you're actually making good use of it) then I wouldn't care about speed. Note that 128GB (2x64) kits exist now.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x OcUK Gaming Z87 Bundle - Intel Ultra 7 265K - MSI Z890 (SKU: PRO-INT-05764) = £449.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance 96GB (2X48GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C40 5600MHz Dual Channel (SKU: MEM-CRS-02844) = £239.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 5080 Solid Core 16GB GDDR7 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-04544) = £999.94
• 1 x NVIDIA Game Bundle - Arc Raiders Deluxe Edition PLUS Astro Cosmetic Pack (SKU: DIG-NVI-06436) = £0.00
• 1 x Crucial T705 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen5 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01870) = £192.95
• 1 x Gigabyte Aorus 7300 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-GIG-05732) = £119.99
• 1 x Lian Li Lancool 216 Mid-tower PC case - Black (SKU: CA-7BG-LL) = £85.99
• 1 x MSI MPG A850G PCIE5 UK PSU 850W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply (SKU: CA-00Y-MS) = £109.99
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02665) = £29.99
• 1 x ASUS TUF Gaming VG32AQL1A 32" 2560x1440 IPS 170Hz 1ms FreeSync Widescreen Gaming Monitor (SKU: MO-0CF-AS) = £248.99
• 1 x ASUS U2000 Copilot Wired Keyboard and Mouse Desktop Kit USB 1000 DPI - UK Layout (SKU: PER-ASU-05953) = £24.95

Total: £2,502.77 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[xyphic]

Thanks. At this point, I'm not sure whether I'll be doing compute on the CPU or GPU (though I would expect eventually the latter), so a good all-rounder would be appropriate.

I assume you went for the Intel CPU for its better multicore performance?

 

[Tetras]

Thanks. At this point, I'm not sure whether I'll be doing compute on the CPU or GPU (though I would expect eventually the latter), so a good all-rounder would be appropriate.

AI/ML isn't something I'm super familiar with, but my understanding is that the GPU is mainly used and nvidia is strongly preferred? I'd imagine VRAM (you mentioned waiting for the Supers) would be very helpful too.

I assume you went for the Intel CPU for its better multicore performance?

Yes. The 265K is a good multithreader. The 285K is a lot more money for not a lot (4 E-Cores), so I discounted it and put the money into the graphics card.