New Build time

spikey57

spikey57

spikey57

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Joined
23 Sep 2008
Posts
492
Location
Sunbury-on-Thames
Hi There,

So my PC is 5 years old, specs are as below:

Asus Z97 Micro ATX
Intel Core i7 4790K @4GHZ
MSI R9 290X 8GB Graphics card
16GB Ram
Various SSD's + a 4TB disk for data

Currently plugged into a Samsung 4K tv.

Budget 4K Max

been out of the PC build game for a while, since I built my last machine specced up above.

Requirements:

Quality gaming experience but also used for work
Needs to drive 2 or 3 monitors ideally one 4K for gaming, the others can be lower if required but that needs to be included in the budget.
Storage requirements are mostly taken care of as I plan to re-use my SSD's with the exception of adding an M.2 drive as an install disk.

Don't want...RGB don't care for it whatsoever.

Needs to last at least 5 years.

Ideally would like a single 3090 as the center piece purely as this is going to get me through gaming for a little while.

Thoughts and advice much appreciated.

Ideally want to get this done for new year, or as close to it at possible.
 
Thanks for the feedback.

With availabiltiy of parts, I would have liked to go for AMD as they are crushing it at the moment.

I don't know where to start on the AMD side, so if you could put together a potential spec, that would be really helpful for a rough comparison.

Currently sitting in my basket:

Intel Core i9-1900K - £499.99
Asus Rog Maximus XII Hero MB - £369.95
Samsung 970 EVO Pluse 1TB m.2 - £158.99
Asus GeForce RTX 3090 - £1729.99
Kolink Continuum 1200W 80 plus Platimum Modular PSU - £174.95
Team Group 8Pack Edition 32GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM - £259.99
Corsair Hydro Series H100i 240mm liquid cooler - £134.99
Total £3340.55

Would this look like a solid build?

Just need to find a case, and 3 monitors.
 
So gamingwise I play a variety:
Halo MasterChief collection
GTA V
Cyberpunk when they iron out the glitches a bit more
Forza
Command and Conquer
Rocksmith


Workwise, I work in a helpdesk environment, but it's all virtualised so it's not dependend on my machine apart from the speed of my internet connection, it's a pretty broad role where I need access to a lot of different systems.

Before WFH the TV worked well as it was casual use and gaming with the occasional log on for weekend cover. However I use 3 screens at work for better workflow management - ticket systems, emails, backend system access and I've found that one screen even if it's quite large just doesn't work as well for me.

So whilst the horsepower would be underutilised for work, my gfx card and the TV are both on the way out. Backlight on the tv is starting to flicker, and only one port of the gfx card works properly, and even then it is starting to show artifacts on the screen.

Thanks
 
So current build looks like:

ASUS hero xii 369.99
intel core i9 10850k 428.99
Samsung evo 970 m2 1tb 158.99
ASUS 3090 1729.99
Patriot viper steel 32gb 149.99
Kolink continuum 1200w psu 174.99
Alpha cool eisbar 360mm aio cpu cooler 109.99
Total 3129.34 before case and monitors

case and monitor suggestions would be helpful.

thanks
 
Ok, so out of stock, but looking at alternative suppliers, Corsair 1000w RXi PSU. Won't say from where for forum rules.

Monitor wise, ideally 3, current total for buiild before case and monitors is budget can be stretched a bit to get monitors into the build:

ASUS hero xii 369.99
intel core i9 10850k 428.99
Samsung evo 970 m2 1tb - sourced from alternative
ASUS 3090 1729.99
Patriot viper steel 32gb 149.99
Alpha cool eisbar 360mm aio cpu cooler 99.95
Corsair RXi 1000W Gold certified PSU - Sourced from alternative

Total:
£3114.04
 
I am simply building a PC based off of recommendations here.
If there is another alternative that provides similar performance / offers similar features for less, I am open to suggestions.
This build is to last at least 5 years.

So in the here and now it might seem a bit overkill for my requirements, I'd much rather spend more within reason, for quality parts that will provide the potential for future games, and if my work requirements change.

I also in need to get this build done ideally before my return to work on the 6th Jan with components that are available.

I'm aware about the rule of diminishing performance gains after a certain price point which is why is stepped the processor down a level and also switched out the RAM.

If there is money to be saved I'm open to it.

As I said in my OP, I've been out of the PC build game for a fair while so require some guidance on what is good VFM vs just paying for minimal gains.

Thanks for the input.

Current build:

ASUS hero xii 369.99
intel core i9 10850k 428.99
Samsung evo 970 m2 1tb - sourced from alternative
ASUS 3090 1729.99
Patriot viper steel 32gb 149.99
Arctic Luiquid Freezer II 360mm AIO - Sourced from alternative
Corsair RXi 1000W Gold certified PSU - Sourced from alternative
FRACTAL DESIGN MESHIFY S2 - £131.99
Current cost: £3256.07
 
Thanks for the suggestion build looks as follows:

MEG Z490 Unify (Socket LGA 1200) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £239.99
intel core i9 10850k 428.99
Samsung evo 970 m2 1tb - sourced from alternative
ASUS 3090 1729.99
Patriot viper steel 32gb 149.99
Arctic Luiquid Freezer II 360mm AIO - Sourced from alternative
Corsair RXi 1000W Gold certified PSU - Sourced from alternative
FRACTAL DESIGN MESHIFY S2 - £131.99

I think it's almost there, probably looking to order tonight once I've found 3 screens.

Current build total: £3139.31
 
So a few more tweaks, and the gfx card going out of stock.

MEG Z490 Unify (Socket LGA 1200) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £239.99 - 149.99 after cash back
intel core i9 10850k 428.99
WD 1tb 3D nand m2 86.99
Zotac 3090 1729.99
Patriot viper steel 32gb 149.99
Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360mm AIO - Sourced from alternative
Corsair RXi 1000W Gold certified PSU - Sourced from alternative
FRACTAL DESIGN MESHIFY S2 - £131.99

build total 2987.61 after cash back

so the search for monitors begins. I think that’s the build sorted. Need to add maybe a few case fans but might be able to salvage some of my existing case fans
 
I’m aiming to get 3 monitors with the remaining budget.

yea, stock is unpredictable especially with whatever happens come 1st jan.

I have a feeling a lot of things will be coming in from up north if the France/ Dover situation continues on for much longer
 
The ssd selected is the sn550.

I don’t have time to wait for things to become available as I have a short window to get the machine parts ordered and the machine built.

I totally get that the 3090 does not represent the best price/performance, however this is a small luxury I’m affording myself for this build

it represents over 50% of the build cost, but it’s available now, the 3080 is not.
 
No, the one in the basket is listed as:

Western Digital Blue SN550 1TB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (S100T2B0C)

  • 1TB SSD
  • WDS100T2B0C
  • WD Blue PC SSD M.2 2280
  • NVME Interface
  • 3D NAND
  • Read 2400MB/s
  • Write 1950MB/s
  • Read 410K / Write 405K IOPS
  • 5 Year Warranty
There is another WD blue but the read/write performance is around 560mb which isn't fast enough.

I have plenty of other SSD's in my current system that I will repurpose for storage, that will be fast enough.

Although I should repurpose some of them I have 2 500GB Samsung Evo SSD's a 1TB 970 Evo SSD and a 4TB WD RED drive.

One of the 500GB SSD's currently has the OS installed, so that will get repurposed as storage for games.

trying to find 3 monitors. Not sure with what to go for, either 3x 24", 2x 24" and 1x 27" and whether to go for 4K or step down but go for a higher refresh rate.

Is it possible to find 3x higher refresh screens for 1k that are decent?

Currently using a 4k 40" tv as a monitor but it's slowly dying.
 
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Right, pulling the trigger on the build. The only thing I need to do is look for Monitors now.

Thanks for all the input and help.

I will attempt to put a build log together.

Watch this space...or the build log forum...
 
No problem, thanks.

the only question I have which I missed is do I need a sound card for this motherboard.

My current board just has audio channels that I plug the speakers directly into. 5.1 audio.

Nothing fancy required.

Thanks
 
So everything arrived....and pc was running for about 30 minutes and then just died.

I don't think I overloaded a rail or anything like that as the system was running seemingly happily for about 30 mins.

There were no pops or smells coming from the PSU.

I think it's the power supply, it' a Corsair 1000W Gold rated PSU.

Motherboard flickers, fans attempt to spin up and then it just dies and it just repeats.

Code 37 flicks up for a split second but not sure what that means.

Replacement PSU coming tomorrow.

I've checked other things like making sure that there aren't any potential shorts on the motherboard, and that it's sitting correctly on the standoffs.

The one I wanted was out of stock so the replacement is a bit beefier...1200W.

I don't think it was a lack of power that was the issue.

I'm not driving anything overly demanding at the moment with the exception of the 3090.

3 SSDs an m.2 drive and a 4TB WD Black.

I took the 3090 out of the equation and it still did the same thing.

Plugged the power supply into my old rig, and it also did the same thing.

Am I right in thinking it is the power supply?


Thanks

spikey57
 
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Will do. Motherboard seems to be great, no issues building with it, haven't had the opportunity to actually look into it properly.

I forgot to format the SSD with my previous Windows install, and it booted up too quick for me to do anything...It was in the process of 'setting up your machine' when the PSU gave out, so will be sorting that out when the PSU arrives.

Order of the day will be plugging in the new PSU, installing windows, and assorted apps.

Fingers crossed it should be fairly straight forward.

I'm hoping it comes relatively early in the day so that I can get on with getting everything set up.

The only thing I need to do is unscrew the radiator so that I can plug the CPU power in as the radiator is obstructing those plugs.

The motherboard power is easily routed, and so are the SATA power cables.

With the PSU issue, I took my time to then do some proper cable management and tidy things up at the back so that when the replacement arrives, it will be a case of routing things accordingly.
 
Machine is up and running...The only thing I'm concerned about is the relatively high temperatures of the processor.
Coretemp reads the processor at the moment whilst it is pulling emails and downloading a few games at around 50 degrees.

I've had to reseat the cooler a few times as I've had a message at start up saying that there is poor contact with the cooler, or had the processor hit its thermal limit.

I've reached out to arctic to see if there is anything that they can do as I'm not convinced that the bracket on the back is allowing the screws to go down enough in order to allow for the copper to make consistent / adequate contact. I've confirmed that I am using the right mounts for it, and i've tightened it as much as I dare to prevent damaging the motherboard.

I've put what I would normally put on in terms of thermal compound (about the size of a grain of rice) and its clear that when you remove it that it isn't spreading as you would think.

Any ideas or is 50 degrees 'normal' for this processor with this sort of cooler.

I thought it would be sitting at around 35-45 under light loads / not really doing anything.

Thanks
 
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