New Build

[nuke997]

Hey Guys,

I am currently looking to build a new gaming machine which will last me well into the future, I have come up with the following build:-

RYZEN 9 3950X SIXTEEN CORE 4.7GHZ (SOCKET AM4) PROCESSOR
G.Skill TridentZ RGB Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 3600MHz (PC4 28800) Desktop Memory, Unbuffered | F4-3600C16D-32GTZR
ASUS AMD Ryzen X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Hero WiFi AM4 PCIe 4.0 ATX Motherboard
Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB AORUS XTREME Turing Graphics Card
Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD/Solid State Drive
Seagate BarraCuda ST4000DM004 4TB 5400 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drives Bare Drive OEM
Corsair H150i PRO 360mm RGB AIO Intel/AMD CPU Water Cooler
Corsair HX1000i 1000W Modular Power Supply
LIAN LI O11 DYNAMIC XL (ROG CERTIFIED) ALUMINIUM MIDI-TOWER - BLACK

My budget is around 3-3.5K can push it a little if needed.

I would love your feedback and comments for improvement, open to suggestions on monitor keyboard, mouse and fans

Cheers

 

[EsaT]

For best longevity it would be best to take now 3700X and upgrade to improved architecture Zen3.
And 12 cores goes long way.
Certainly Zen2 and likely also Zen3 will be falling behind in single core performance well before games need 16 cores.
For comparison Intel is bringing only no doubt bad availability 10 core sometime this year...
And until they get actually new manufacturing node they likely have to drop core count for next architecture.


2x16GB is again good amoung to last heavy games without background stuff like multi tab web browsers becoming problem.
Though that price kit is hard to justify over lot more affordable ones.
Difference in CPU bottlenecked situation would be likely few percents, while in gaming most of the time GPU will be bigger bottleneck.


And for longevity Asus "planted palm tree into face" in X570 boards.
In properly designed X570 boards, weakness of them, chipset cooler has chances to stay most of the time passive saving both noise and fan life.
But in Asus boards it's certain to spin like there's no tomorrow:
Asus marketroids crapped that cooler directly under graphics card to be bathed in its heat!
And then further restricted it with marketing excrements in many boards!

In Finnish PC forum one user with precisely that super expensive marketing hype board had chipset running at 83C in longer gaming session under such GPU.
And that was in December with around freezing outside temperature and no doubt cool room.
And while not exceeding chipset's critical temperature, it's pretty sure that temperature won't help board to last.
Now imagine what happens, if you don't have AC and room temperature climbs with outside temperatures, or just in general like warmer room.

I myself had Nvidia chipset Asus board for Athlon CPU like 15 years ago and its chipset fans just didn't last.
Asus should have basically bundled board with three replacement HSFs for it to be enough for warranty period.
After second fan wearing down even faster than original I didn't bother installing second replacement, but got passive IIRC Zalman heatsink.
So I have little faith in such "no brain cells were forced to do work" chipset cooler designs dropped from rear hole of brand marketing.


Gigabyte did the most balanced job in X570 boards with sense making chipset cooling and good CPU VRMs.
In fact there's no need to pay any luxury.
Already good £200 level boards have overkill VRMs for all CPUs at stock, like Gigabyte Aorus Elite.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...4-x570-chipset-atx-motherboard-mb-57w-gi.html

By replacing stock paste chosen for price and absolute stability/endurance with good paste (or maybe Carbonaut) that chipset cooler might stay passive nearly always.
And going upward chipset cooler actually gets progressively more retarded:
Aorus Pro moves it couple cm closer to graphics card's heat and Aorus Ultra craps marketing excrement to restrict fan to make sure it needs to spin faster.
Higher price simply has no automatic correlation with overall quality!


And I think better cut this to multiple posts to avoid this becoming like some hard to read novel...

 

[EsaT]

And for part two now is literally historically bad time to buy any expensive graphics card.
Especially super luxury brand scam priced one with only 35-40% more performance than sub £400 Radeon 5700 XT!
Nvidia has simply focused last years into pumping user butts... err prices.
And as result of Stockholm syndrome infected just asking for more, bang per buck has turned into complete gangbang to butt.

Even hyped capacity for next-gen game feature, raytracing, is so and so:
Actually using it makes performance crash all the way down to 30% or even 50%.

So if you want any true longevity instead of sinking money into black hole, only choise is to take now sensible priced bang per buck card and upgrade once all next-gen cards are out.
Besides overall performance increase per money those are also certain to improve raytracing performance.


Unless raising cattle and feeding them banknotes PCIe v4 NVMe is another black hole for money.

There's very little Windows and game loading time difference even between NVMe and SATA SSDs:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nvme+ssd+hdd
In low queue depth/thread count random reads even SATA has actually way more than enough bandwidth for capabilities of NAND Flash.
(though SATA protocol itself has more latency than NVMe)
Actually whole way how game data is stored on drive would have to change for mass storage to become replacement for RAM.

So PCIe v3 and more space per money to actually fit games on SSD instead of old spinning rust is the the way. (+ more than enough RAM)

Availability and prices have been going toward bad, but good 2TB NVMe can be gotten for £300-350
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cors...-state-drive-cssd-f1920gbmp510-hd-066-cs.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seag...olid-state-drive-zp2000gm30021-hd-3bc-se.html


If wanting longevity and worry free cooling without risk of sudden catastrophic cooling losses heatpipe coolers are the way to go.
They work by laws of the physics and only thing, which can fail in them is easy and cheap to replace fans, whose failure doesn't kill all cooling.
Besides only very few waterpipes coolers can actually beat best heatpipe coolers in continuous cooling per noise.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/noctua-nh-d15s-dual-radiator-quiet-cpu-cooler-hs-031-nc.html

Ryzen isn't even such Chernobyl hot as Intels, whose TDP is half the actual 100% all core load power consumption/heat output.
(Intel's 10 core is going to need nuclear reactor to power it and another's cooling system to prevent core meltdown)


Grossly oversize PSU is only going to drop actual achieved efficiency, which is only second rate/outdated in the first place.
True top is 80+ Titanium, which is actually the first standard to set any demands for below 20% load efficiency.
Would need pretty extreme and basically overclocked PC to exceed 400W power draw in gaming.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seas...-titanium-modular-power-supply-ca-076-ss.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seas...-titanium-modular-power-supply-ca-06l-ss.html

 

[EsaT]

For monitors 2560x1440 is the sweet spot, if you want consistently high frame rates.
Also choise is very good, except for lack of IPS in 32" size.

3840x2160 developments is still awfully much "in phase" and choise is really limited in above 60Hz models.
Myself I'm stuck waiting for those, because of having used 2560x1600 for over six years and won't tolerate any cutting of vertical resolution.

IPS or VA panel being better depends on your environment.
IPS has the most stable colours/viewing angles and consistent response times with latest LG panels actually challenging many TNs.
But its contrast its at usual LCD level and if you prefer dark/dimly lighted room, VA's way best of LCDs contrast smashes IPS.
At the expense of problems in dark colour stability ("black crush") and darker shade transitions being either sluggish ("black smear") or with lots of inverted ghosting from RTC overshoot.


With such budget you should also make sure that other part of gaming immersion, sound is at approriate level.
Meaning good surround home theater set, if you have decent room for their positioning and space isn't problem.

If that's not option, then good headphones and sound card with HRTF can give even feel of distances besides directionality.
And for ridiculously low price.
Sound card capable to driving most headphones you could buy don't cost much over £100.
And headphones good for gaming with well balanced "fun factor"/bass immersion and details from actual audio makers don't cost much more.


For keyboard to fit well we need to know what you're using currently.
Different switches have gross differences in behaviour and feel.
And no matter how technically good, unfamiliar feeling switch would only slow you down and cause accidental presses.

Also would you prefer slim keyboard or high profile and what about do you want to avoid unnecessary noise?
Most "mechanical" switches fail to give damn about noise and some even add additional extra sound effect for mechanical typewriter like ruckus.

 

[nuke997]

Firstly thank you for the very detailed and thorough reply, it took me a few days to go review and think about my build.

Regarding processor, I was thinking 3900x as it will probably be a while before new cpu’s are released and even then I won’t be needing to upgrade straight away. Also if I go the route of a super 2080 card, then I don’t want my CPU to be the bottleneck? Not sure if this is true or not – just what I have read. The Price difference wasn’t too significant between 3700 and 3900x where I currently am.

Regarding Mobo the Aorus elite looks great from reviews – the only issues I can see are:

Lack of Wifi – I can’t find a version with WIFI of this board.

Fan Connector spaces – I don’t know if this is going to be an issue or not. I’m hoping to go for the Lian LI O11D XL case, which has many spaces for fans. Wasn’t going to populate them all straight away but for future I wanted the option to add as required. From my understanding there are only 4 spots on the Elite including the CPU cooler spot.

I don’t have the full selection of mobo’s available to me due to being in the UAE.

I have options of the Aorus Master/Ultra, Asus Rog Strix X570-E, Crosshair Hero and, TUF gaming Plus (Wifi), Pro WS ACE, MSI Meg Unify and Gaming pro Carbon (wifi).

Can you suggest if it’s better to go for another board from the above or stick with elite and get a network adaptor? I won’t always be on Wifi, but definitely at the start till I get setup I will be using it.

Regarding the GPU I take your point about the 2080ti.

I will probably go for either 2080/2070S or the Ryzen. Even if I bought 2080S temporarily it won’t go to waste while waiting for the 3000 series later as my bro usually gets my 2nd hand parts for his PC.

Regarding the SSD I have found Adata SX8200 Pro 2TB for a reasonable price and will go for this instead of the gen 4 + sata.

The Power supplies you suggested I cant find, but I did find XFX XTI 850W 80 PLUS Titanium for a reasonable price. Can you suggest if this will be a good choice.

The Ram I will revise, once we set on the board, to make sure it is on the support list. I understand the latency timing isn’t a significant thing so will probably dial back to a more economical option. Is 3600 MHZ still the ones to go for ?

Also take your point on the CPU cooler and I’ve managed to find it.

Any Feedback on the case? And any suggestions for using fans. I don’t really care much for looks, so the whole RGB thing isn’t high on my list, rather I prefer quiet and cool. The Noctua AF12-25 seem good but quite expensive, and similarly so do the bequiet Silent Wings 3 as a cheaper option. I’ve no idea how many I will actually need yet, but I’ve been looking at configs for the case.

Aorus FI27Q looks like a good option for monitors. You were right, not many came up in the 32inch category I could find.

Also with the build do you think I will be able to get max or close to it FPS playing at 2k with high/ultra ish settings?

 

[EsaT]

3900X has certainly come down in price making it good if you want to run CPU heaviest games without closing background stuff.
When combined with 32GB of memory.
Zen3 (Ryzen 4000) will likely come out sometime between summer and end of the year.
With another 12-16 month cycle until Zen4 and DDR5 based AM5 (after that Zen3 should go to discount) assuming DDR5 finally manages to keep somekind schedule.
(was supposed to be ready like four years ago)


There's Wifi version of Aorus Elite, but not sure if its available only in east Asia/NA.
Anyway Wifi is easy to add as PCie card or as USB adapter, which can be moved over PC upgrades.
If signal from WLAN AP is less than good USB dongle could be even positioned for better signal reception.
(like how in bad reception even your head can be too much in between phone and cell tower)

Single fan header can take all the way from couple to 5+ fans.
For example off the charts good for the price Arctic P12 PWM/P14 PWM are very frugal and it would take like 10 P12s to approach 1A draw, which is typical max output of fan headers.
PWM PST variant even has built in splitter in cable.
Though for best control of fans Aqua computer's products just curb stomp motherboards in features.
And with 2.5A per channel can handle crazy number of fans.


That XFX is rebranded Seasonic Prime, which is top level PSU.
https://www.orionpsudb.com/news/xfx...gold-line-as-the-xfx-xti-xts2-and-xtr2-series


HP EX950 is nearly same drive to Adata with same SM2262EN controller.
Phison E12 controller based drives also give very good bang per buck.
Corsair MP510, PNY CS3030 and TeamGroup MP34 are some of the more common Phison E12 drives.
Addlink S70, Patriot VPN100, Sabrent Rocket, Silicon Power P34A80 are others. (Rocket Q use QLC Flash so should cost less than others)
With that vast number of various E12 based drives we can be pretty darn sure controller and firmware are reliable.
Seagate also uses Phison E12 with their own custom firmware in their 510 SSDs, but those tend to cost more.


There isn't graphics card which could play the heaviest games at 2560x1440 with everything maxed and some loosening of settings/cutting excess is needed for having high framerate.
But variable refresh rate/FreeSync allows fps to vary without causing tearing or stutter.
Metro: Exodus is likely one of the most GPU torturing games:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_rx_5700_and_5700_xt_review,15.html
And like you can see Nvidia just doesn't give much of performance for ridiculous brand overpricing...

 

[nuke997]

LIAN LI O11 DYNAMIC XL (ROG CERTIFIED) ALUMINIUM MIDI-TOWER – White

Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 Chipset ATX Motherboard

CPU AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12 Core (4.6GHz) Wraith

PowerColor Radeon RX 5700XT Red Devil, 8 GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3xDP

OR Sapphire NITRO + RX 5700XT 8 GB (256) and 2xH 2xD S

OR GIGABYTE AORUS Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G

G.SKILL Trident Z Neo (For AMD Ryzen) Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin RGB DDR4 SDRAM Desktop Memory | F4-3600C18D-32GTZN

XFX XTI 1000Watts 80 Plus Titanium Easy Rail Plus Power Supply | P1-1000-XTIX

The cost difference to the 850 was like 30pounds, so I’m thinking of future upgrading CPU/GPU.

Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4 Premium Grade 140mm Dual Tower CPU Cooler for AMD AM4 | NH-D15 SE-AM4

Corsair SSD Force MP510 1920GB, M.2 PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVME, 3480/2700 MB/s

Silverstone 1-to-8 PWM Fan Hub, PWM 4pin connector, SATA power cable 300mm | SST-CPF04

ARTIC P12 PWM Value Pack (Black/Black) – 5 P12 PWM PST Fans included

Corsair ML Pro RGB 120 Three Fan Kit High Static Pressure 4 pin + lighting Node

Razer DeathAdder V2 Gaming Mouse

Keyboard: I haven’t used a mechanical keyboard before, but I was reading Brown switches is a good balance (neutral one to start with). Fast response and also not too loud, my wife watches TV in the same room as me.

Soundcard: Can you recommend a good one, or is the inbuilt ok?

Wireless adaptor: Any suggestions? My Router is 250mb download and 150upload. It’s just outside the room I will be gaming in.

Speaker/headphone: I will be going down the headphone route so suggestions welcome.

LG27GL850-B

Was my first choice in monitors, but it’s not in stock/available currently where I am

Any alternate suggestions for High Refresh, 2k and response screens? I’m not sure about IPS / VA honestly, but mostly I am in darker rooms with less lighting. Having a look online, there are like a zillion options and too much marketing words, it’s hard to tell what’s good and what’s not. Also the whole thing about Gsync and AMD equivalent, as down the line with the new release of GFX cards, I will be looking at upgrading, don’t want to have to buy a new monitor if I’m going from AMD to NVidia.

Either 27 or 32 is good for me.

 

[EsaT]

No sense for that size PSU.
That PC, like any high consumption gaming PC, basically draws around 350W during gaming.
Some highest peak might be trying to approach 400W.
So already 850W is overkill and 750W would be more than perfect.

Component power consumptions aren't going anywhere.
PCIe specification sets limit for graphics card power draw.
And even if makers failed to care about that, cooling problems guarantee staying in current limits.


If there's someone in same room, then most mechanical switches are bad idea.
Only thing MX Brown has for itself is that it doesn't have extra sound effect to mimic "machine gunning" of old mechanical typewriter.
Beyond that's it's literally that standard (Cherry MX) run of the mill mechanical switch failing to give damn about noise.
And while you could add rubber rings to soften bottoming sound, that wouldn't do anything to upstroke noise.
Keyboard I had with that switch (Logitech G710+) actually had factory installed rubber rings.

Only those switches with internal damping for both down and upstroke can be considered somewhat quieter.
Logitech's Omron made Romer-G is one of those rare switches and has softer sound than MX Brown.
It has also that nonlinear force curve good for more familiar feel after usual membrane/rubber dome keyboards.
In fact I would say it's closer to them than MX Brown.

Logitech's new (literally crazily) low profile switch in G815 is still softer.
I compared its noise to Romer-G in shop visit fair month ago while visiting photography expo. (luckily before Coronavirus fully arrived into Finland)
There's three different switch variants and you have to make sure switch is tactile variant instead of linear, or extra special noisy "clicky".
Though where it definitely loses to Romer-G is control of back light, which doesn't cover all markings of number keys etc.

Then put come correct thickness mouse pad under the keyboard and you should start approaching quiet keyboard not bothering others.
That also makes noise of my currently in use Romer-G G810 lot better.


As you need external noise insolation that means closed design headphones are must.
Open design headphones basically let environment's sounds through unmuffled and you can cover those only by increasing volume.
(which is bad for avoiding premature retirement of hearing)
Leather/pleather pas would be best for external sound insulation, but they breath badly and increase sweating of ears in longer sessions.
Velour pads would breath better beign better for comfort.
Beyerdynamic DT770 is available with velour pads and is also really nice gaming headphone for closed design of its price.
Beyerdynamic also sells replacement ear pads at reasonable price.
Those get dirty and wear down in any headphone and need replacing occasionally.


For sound card external/USB connected SoundBlasterX G6 is tech wise very good and would be capable to driving most headphones you could buy.
Also as external card it has dedicated volume control, if you get keyboard without one.
Keyboard s really the best place for volume control, because of hands being always close to it.
Internal SBX AE-5 is basically same, but without direct physical controls relying entirely on software control panel.

Though Creative also has HRTF algorithm customizable for listener's head shape in Sound Blaster X3.
If your head shape is farther from average, that would help with directionality/sound positioning.
Hardware wise it's step below those two SBX models, but still enough for Beyers.