New PC Build - Comments & Suggestions

[Neph09]

Hi All,

I am planning an upgrade to my PC for the first time properly in about 8 years. Rocking a very old i7-7700k, RTX2070, and now finding I am being hampered more and more by my CPU it feels time for an upgrade and with the 9800X3D recently dropping kind of good timing. Primarily the system will be used for gaming.

Looking at upgrading to the below:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7 GHz 8-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 360 A-RGB 48.82 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Gigabyte X870E AORUS PRO ATX AM5 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
Case: Antec FLUX PRO ATX Full Tower Case

Total: £1750.56

Some things to note:

I am going to Stick with with my RTX2070, probably will look to pick up a 4070ti at some point as I have no interest purchasing the mess that is the 50 series and at least for now my RTX2070 can deal with things until I decide on the next option. (though if anyone has any thoughts on GPU happy to hear that too ; I run 3x screens at 1440p and have no plans to move to 4k any time soon)

I have an existing Corsair RM850x (5 years old) which I planned on keeping but if needs be can pick up a new PSU but I think this should handle my new configuration if anyone thinks it worth it.

Just was looking for advice or suggestions to what I have selected. And some recommendations on any extra case fans that I should also pick up, brand wise etc.
Also anything I may have missed on general Been a while since I last did a full build!

 

[hornetstinger]

Ditch Seagate for another drive, I wouldn't buy that brand. 2TB? What's the point of that, useless- unless you already have one? For mass storage music, films game backup etc look at a bigger HDD

Also only buy NVME as you need them do you need 6TB straight away? Get a 2TB, if you start running out of space either uninstall a completed game, move that to a 10TB 3.5", or another another NVME

 

[Tetras]

Just was looking for advice or suggestions to what I have selected. And some recommendations on any extra case fans that I should also pick up, brand wise etc.
Also anything I may have missed on general Been a while since I last did a full build!

The included fans should be more than enough, from what I can see on the Antec website.

Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive

How much are you paying for these?

Motherboard: Gigabyte X870E AORUS PRO ATX AM5 Motherboard

Expensive. What features do you need/want from the board?

CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 360 A-RGB 48.82 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler

Is this for looks? A decent air cooler like the peerless assassin/phantom spirit is sufficient.

 

[spooks]

Nice selections - as others have pointed out the Samsung drives can be dear as is the X870E board. That being said, I have the same CPU, Drives (model) and X870E chipset - I am very happy with the combo. I also went for Corsair Cooling and Fans throughout even though iCue can be a bit of a pig sometimes! Agree with the other comment about the mechanical drive - if you get one of these it should be massive and only for cold storage.

 

[Neph09]

The included fans should be more than enough, from what I can see on the Antec website.

Thanks for the info

How much are you paying for these?

The 4TB I picked up last year and got at £210 and the 2TB i planned to just pick up for what it is now so £140

Expensive. What features do you need/want from the board?

So boards wise I generally stick with Gigabyte (which I think can be more expensive) but thats just been a preference thing over the years of building.
Regarding the model it was down between when I looked at how the M2 slots were configured and I wanted to ensure it allowed me to get the performance from them, when I was looking at the comparison I think i found that some of the boards meant if you used certain slots it down graded the performance. That and the expansion slots. Effectively I was building a little to the future as I don't plan to change up again for a while.

Is this for looks? A decent air cooler like the peerless assassin/phantom spirit is sufficient.

Honestly I don't have a big opinion I've always gone air, its not looks it was a recommendation from a friend, the PC will be under my desk so its not on show really. Always used Noctua air cooling up till now kind of went with the AIO as I've found air a bit noisy but then again I haven't changed mine in 8 years so may be that, plus I did assume AIO would be cooler in general.

Ditch Seagate for another drive, I wouldn't buy that brand. 2TB? What's the point of that, useless- unless you already have one? For mass storage music, films game backup etc look at a bigger HDD

Also only buy NVME as you need them do you need 6TB straight away? Get a 2TB, if you start running out of space either uninstall a completed game, move that to a 10TB 3.5", or another another NVME

I already have 4x 500GB SSDs that are all 90% filled and I have had to remove a bunch of games as of late, additionally I had wanted to keep games and OS/Apps separated so planned for a 2 HDD setup but rather than going 2x 2TB I though just go with a 2TB and 4tb for the games side, should cover me space wise going forward.

Re- Seagate - Yes I forgot to take that off and mention its already in my current rig.

 

[Tetras]

The 4TB I picked up last year and got at £210 and the 2TB i planned to just pick up for what it is now so £140

£140 is alright, but you can get Crucial's T500 for £100 at the moment, which is also a high-end PCI-E 4.0 drive with DRAM.

Crucial T500 2 TB Review

Crucial's T500 SSD comes at competitive pricing and still includes a preinstalled heatsink and a dedicated DRAM cache chip. It sees strong competition from drives like the Lexar NM790 which are similarly priced, but offer slightly higher performance.

www.techpowerup.com

So boards wise I generally stick with Gigabyte (which I think can be more expensive) but thats just been a preference thing over the years of building.
Regarding the model it was down between when I looked at how the M2 slots were configured and I wanted to ensure it allowed me to get the performance from them, when I was looking at the comparison I think i found that some of the boards meant if you used certain slots it down graded the performance. That and the expansion slots. Effectively I was building a little to the future as I don't plan to change up again for a while.

Pretty much all X870 or X870E boards will take CPU lanes from the graphics card, if they have more than one PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot.

The X870E Aorus Pro is not an exception to this. From what I can see, you can use 1x PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot and 1x (chipset connected) M.2 slot, but the other two PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots will use graphics lanes (it knocks it down to 8).

If you want to avoid this problem, X670E is one option.

If you don't care about PCI-E 5.0 graphics and USB4, you can save a bundle and buy a board like Gigabyte's B650 Eagle, which is nearly £200 cheaper and still has 3x M.2 slots (including a PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot, though one M.2 slot is only 2 lane).

Nice video on the topic of X870/X870E lane sharing, with many boards covered:

You can find a detailed spreadsheet with 1st/2nd gen AM5 boards here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/xvvl9b/comment/ir6koh8/

Honestly I don't have a big opinion I've always gone air, its not looks it was a recommendation from a friend, the PC will be under my desk so its not on show really. Always used Noctua air cooling up till now kind of went with the AIO as I've found air a bit noisy but then again I haven't changed mine in 8 years so may be that, plus I did assume AIO would be cooler in general.

The peerless assassin/phantom spirit are widely reviewed and competitive with Noctua coolers at less than half the price. They're pretty much the go-to cooler on AM5 (since the CPUs are very low power), unless you want an AIO for looks.

Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 Review: Simply the Best

Raising the bar on performance, noise levels, and value.

www.tomshardware.com

The 9800X3D, for example, used 65 watts in games (on average) and 88 watts in apps (on average), with a max multithreaded draw around 155. That's easily doable with a decent air cooler.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review - The Best Gaming Processor

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D establishes AMD as the leader in gaming performance. This Zen 5-based X3D chip is not only fast, it also comes with full support for overclocking. Besides gaming, application performance is considerably improved over the 7800X3D, but that comes at a price.

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Neph09]

£140 is alright, but you can get Crucial's T500 for £100 at the moment, which is also a high-end PCI-E 4.0 drive with DRAM.

Crucial T500 2 TB Review

Crucial's T500 SSD comes at competitive pricing and still includes a preinstalled heatsink and a dedicated DRAM cache chip. It sees strong competition from drives like the Lexar NM790 which are similarly priced, but offer slightly higher performance.

www.techpowerup.com

Thanks

Pretty much all X870 or X870E boards will take CPU lanes from the graphics card, if they have more than one PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot.

The X870E Aorus Pro is not an exception to this. From what I can see, you can use 1x PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot and 1x (chipset connected) M.2 slot, but the other two PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots will use graphics lanes (it knocks it down to 8).

If you want to avoid this problem, X670E is one option.

If you don't care about PCI-E 5.0 graphics and USB4, you can save a bundle and buy a board like Gigabyte's B650 Eagle, which is nearly £200 cheaper and still has 3x M.2 slots (including a PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot, though one M.2 slot is only 2 lane).


Nice video on the topic of X870/X870E lane sharing, with many boards covered:

You can find a detailed spreadsheet with 1st/2nd gen AM5 boards here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/xvvl9b/comment/ir6koh8/

Thank you for the video that was a super informative video! And the spreadsheet was super useful for comparing. As you say the Eagle Line may get what I want wit a big cost reduction, I'll make a decision on the USB4 but even then the board is over£100 cheaper than what I had.

The peerless assassin/phantom spirit are widely reviewed and competitive with Noctua coolers at less than half the price. They're pretty much the go-to cooler on AM5 (since the CPUs are very low power), unless you want an AIO for looks.

Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 Review: Simply the Best

Raising the bar on performance, noise levels, and value.

www.tomshardware.com

The 9800X3D, for example, used 65 watts in games (on average) and 88 watts in apps (on average), with a max multithreaded draw around 155. That's easily doable with a decent air cooler.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review - The Best Gaming Processor

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D establishes AMD as the leader in gaming performance. This Zen 5-based X3D chip is not only fast, it also comes with full support for overclocking. Besides gaming, application performance is considerably improved over the 7800X3D, but that comes at a price.

www.techpowerup.com

Interesting I hadn't really looked at Air cooling and stupidly just assumed AIO so thank you for this.

Final question are heat sinks generally needed on SSDs just wondered if theres been a general consensus to have them as precaution.

Thanks for everything though, I will watch through the Air cooler vid as well

 

[Tetras]

Final question are heat sinks generally needed on SSDs just wondered if theres been a general consensus to have them as precaution.

PCI-E 4.0 drives: generally no, especially if you're just a gamer.

PCI-E 5.0 drives: from what I've seen: yes, because of their higher power usage.

That said, you'd normally buy a drive without a heatsink anyway, because most boards already have one for their primary slot and a large aftermarket heatsink on a secondary slot can hit the graphics card.