New PC - Video editing + some gaming (£2000?)

[andy85wsm]

Hey all,

Looking to have OCUK build a new PC for me, current one still working great but it's 5 years old so time for an upgrade. Current PC = AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and AMD 5700 XT.

I'm thinking this time I should go Intel/Nvidia, I find with a lot of video editing / OBS software that they tend to work a bit better with Nvidia.

Looking to get something that will last me a while and improve render times in particular, I don't play a huge amount of games but every now and then I might dip in. Any recommendations for specifics, was thinking something like:

- Latest i9
- 4700 or 4800
- 32GB or 64 GB RAM

What kind of motherboard would be best? Would like a small enough case but it doesn't have to be tiny.

Is there any way to get the PC silent, or more silent than normal?

Budget of £2000 sounds good, although willing to spend more as needed.

I will probably get OCUK to build it for me so will go to them with some ideas - the forum was a great help for my last build.

Thanks!

 

[Tetras]

Is there any way to get the PC silent, or more silent than normal?

Do you mean under load, or when idle? If you want it silent when idle, that is a complicated question because when you get beyond a light hum (which most builds with PWM fans will do, since the graphics card and PSU will turn off and other fans spin down), you can start hearing annoying noises from stuff you never expected to make noise (even many SSDs are not actually silent!).

My advice would be just to go for having overbuilt coolers/cooling, with a CPU that is fairly easy to tame (e.g. 14900K is not one of those). You can power limit and/or use eco mode to make things more manageable under heavy load and increase efficiency.

Budget of £2000 sounds good, although willing to spend more as needed.

Does this budget include a monitor and keyboard/mouse?

What kind of motherboard would be best? Would like a small enough case but it doesn't have to be tiny.

Do you need/care about:
USB4
5/10Gb LAN
PCIE 5.0 graphics and/or M.2 slots (how many M.2 slots and SATA ports?)
power on/off and clear cmos buttons
LED post code

 

[andy85wsm]

Do you mean under load, or when idle? If you want it silent when idle, that is a complicated question because when you get beyond a light hum (which most builds with PWM fans will do, since the graphics card and PSU will turn off and other fans spin down), you can start hearing annoying noises from stuff you never expected to make noise (even many SSDs are not actually silent!).

My advice would be just to go for having overbuilt coolers/cooling, with a CPU that is fairly easy to tame (e.g. 14900K is not one of those). You can power limit and/or use eco mode to make things more manageable under heavy load and increase efficiency.


Does this budget include a monitor and keyboard/mouse?


Do you need/care about:
USB4
5/10Gb LAN
PCIE 5.0 graphics and/or M.2 slots (how many M.2 slots and SATA ports?)
power on/off and clear cmos buttons
LED post code

Thanks for the reply!

I guess I'm not having any major issues with my current PC with the noise coming out on videos/streams so it's probably not hugely important that I worry about that - nothing I have in this one is over the top for cooling etc.

Budget is PC only, I will re-use mouse/keyboard/monitors that I currently have, might be in the market soon for a new monitor but that's separate either way.

As for the other bits:

• I'm not sure whether I should care about USB4 which probably tells me I likely don't need it right now?
• 5/10 GB LAN - at the moment 1gb download is the fastest I can get, not sure when that will increase to 2+
• The PCIE 5.0 graphics - again, not too sure if I need to worry about that
• M2 slots - this is for my SSD right? I think I'd quite like 2 x 2 TB~ SSDs, just for the speed
• SATA - not sure, is this for standard HDD? In which case maybe 1, but not sure I have a need for any more
• Power on/off and cmos buttons and LED post code etc - no idea what any of this means

Should say - I will get OCUK to build it, I don't want the hassle of building it myself these days, have been there before and it's not worth the stress.

Again though, budget is for the parts only, I will cover the OCUK build on top.

Thanks!

 

[Tetras]

I'm not sure whether I should care about USB4 which probably tells me I likely don't need it right now?

It would appear so Makes it easy since you have a lot more board choice.

5/10 GB LAN - at the moment 1gb download is the fastest I can get, not sure when that will increase to 2+

2.5 Gb is very widespread so that makes it easy to choose a board too.

The PCIE 5.0 graphics - again, not too sure if I need to worry about that

Based on PCI-E 4.0 graphics: 16 lane cards (high-end) in a PCI-E 3.0 board lose a few percent of performance. 8 lane cards (midrange) lose 5 percent or so, though some games lose more. 4 lane cards (entry-level) lose a lot, it can be anywhere from 10-25% (or more), especially if the VRAM is exceeded.

I'd suggest it won't matter if you only buy high-end cards, but your budget is big enough for a board with PCI-E 5.0 graphics.

M2 slots - this is for my SSD right? I think I'd quite like 2 x 2 TB~ SSDs, just for the speed
SATA - not sure, is this for standard HDD? In which case maybe 1, but not sure I have a need for any more

M.2 slots can support either SATA or PCI-Express drives, but most boards have dropped SATA support. M.2 drives are thin sticks that you screw down onto the board.

SATA SSDs in the 2.5" format need a power cable and a data cable and are attached to a drive bay in your case.

Power on/off and cmos buttons and LED post code etc - no idea what any of this means

The buttons just replicate what you can do with your case, but they can be more convenient if you run a test bench, or you can't access the battery easily.

The post code shows you more detail about why, if your PC can't boot up.

Since you suggested Intel originally, here is an Intel build based on the latest socket, which would avoid the 13th-14th gen issues:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-03111) = £379.99
• 1 x Intel Holiday Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows + Ubisoft Plus (SKU: DIG-INT-03637) = £0.00
• 1 x Asrock Z890 Pro-A (LGA 1851) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-03365) = £182.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Vulcan 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-51200C40 6400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (SKU: MEM-TMG-03146) = £179.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Solid 16GB Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-03194) = £698.99
• 1 x Crucial T500 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01090) = £133.99
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02682) = £99.95
• 1 x Phanteks Eclipse P400S Glass Midi Tower Case - Noise Dampened Gun Metal (SKU: CA-06A-PT) = £54.54
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming 850W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-060-AS) = £89.98
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB Black CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02724) = £29.99

Total: £1,862.40 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

From what I can see in this review, it performs pretty well with your type of usage, just a bit ahead of AMD's 9900X:

Intel Core Ultra 7 265K Review

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K offers eight strong Lion Cove cores, just like the 285K, and merely four E-Cores fewer, for an almost 50% price difference. Despite the "Ultra 7" branding it offers plenty of application performance that can beat even the Ryzen 9 9900X. Things don't look so good in...

www.techpowerup.com

Picking a cooler is tricky due to it being a new socket and checking compatibility, but I believe the peerless assassin fits and that's one of the cheapest options. You could switch the case to one that supports a 360mm AIO (e.g. Lian Li 216) if you prefer that for aesthetics, though you'd need to check the pump noise if you're going for a quiet build.

Air cooling the Intel CPUs (or any higher-end CPU really) will likely require some management of the power limits and the fan curves to achieve the comfort you're after.

 

[andy85wsm]

It would appear so Makes it easy since you have a lot more board choice.


2.5 Gb is very widespread so that makes it easy to choose a board too.


Based on PCI-E 4.0 graphics: 16 lane cards (high-end) in a PCI-E 3.0 board lose a few percent of performance. 8 lane cards (midrange) lose 5 percent or so, though some games lose more. 4 lane cards (entry-level) lose a lot, it can be anywhere from 10-25% (or more), especially if the VRAM is exceeded.

I'd suggest it won't matter if you only buy high-end cards, but your budget is big enough for a board with PCI-E 5.0 graphics.


M.2 slots can support either SATA or PCI-Express drives, but most boards have dropped SATA support. M.2 drives are thin sticks that you screw down onto the board.

SATA SSDs in the 2.5" format need a power cable and a data cable and are attached to a drive bay in your case.


The buttons just replicate what you can do with your case, but they can be more convenient if you run a test bench, or you can't access the battery easily.

The post code shows you more detail about why, if your PC can't boot up.

Since you suggested Intel originally, here is an Intel build based on the latest socket, which would avoid the 13th-14th gen issues:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-03111) = £379.99
• 1 x Intel Holiday Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows + Ubisoft Plus (SKU: DIG-INT-03637) = £0.00
• 1 x Asrock Z890 Pro-A (LGA 1851) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-03365) = £182.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Vulcan 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-51200C40 6400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (SKU: MEM-TMG-03146) = £179.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Solid 16GB Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-03194) = £698.99
• 1 x Crucial T500 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01090) = £133.99
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02682) = £99.95
• 1 x Phanteks Eclipse P400S Glass Midi Tower Case - Noise Dampened Gun Metal (SKU: CA-06A-PT) = £54.54
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming 850W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-060-AS) = £89.98
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB Black CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02724) = £29.99

Total: £1,862.40 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

From what I can see in this review, it performs pretty well with your type of usage, just a bit ahead of AMD's 9900X:

Intel Core Ultra 7 265K Review

The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K offers eight strong Lion Cove cores, just like the 285K, and merely four E-Cores fewer, for an almost 50% price difference. Despite the "Ultra 7" branding it offers plenty of application performance that can beat even the Ryzen 9 9900X. Things don't look so good in...

www.techpowerup.com

Picking a cooler is tricky due to it being a new socket and checking compatibility, but I believe the peerless assassin fits and that's one of the cheapest options. You could switch the case to one that supports a 360mm AIO (e.g. Lian Li 216) if you prefer that for aesthetics, though you'd need to check the pump noise if you're going for a quiet build.

Air cooling the Intel CPUs (or any higher-end CPU really) will likely require some management of the power limits and the fan curves to achieve the comfort you're after.

Good to know it's better than AMD equivalent.

I know when I bought last one the AMD stuff was highly recommended as a good price in comparison to Intel/Nvidia but I think generally software works better with I/N.

If I stretch the budget to £2,500, just how much better would the machine be?

I'm not into overclocking etc, but I do like these things to last, the fact my last one has been going 5 years with no issues is great, still plays a lot of games well.

 

[Tetras]

Good to know it's better than AMD equivalent.

A bit better for encoding, but it is slower than the 9900X in games, since the page I linked to in the review was only one type of usage.

If I stretch the budget to £2,500, just how much better would the machine be?

Honestly, I don't recommend it, because of two reasons:
1. The fully-multi-threaded power draw of the Intel CPU goes from 155 watts to 235 watts with the 285K, which is significantly harder to cool effectively and a chunk less efficient (with encoding on TPU's page, it is around 10% faster).
2. Buying better than a 4070 Ti Super for occasional gaming is of dubious value (it is already paying a lot!).

If I were to try and spend it:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-03110) = £569.99
• 1 x Intel Holiday Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows + Ubisoft Plus (SKU: DIG-INT-03637) = £0.00
• 1 x Asrock Z890 LiveMixer WIFI (LGA 1851) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-03361) = £232.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO/XMP 96GB (2X48GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-03746) = £299.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-01496) = £899.99
• 1 x NVIDIA - Indiana Jones and The Great Circle Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-NVI-03769) = £0.00
• 1 x Crucial T500 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01090) = £133.99
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02682) = £99.95
• 1 x Lian Li Lancool 216 Mid-tower PC case - Black (SKU: CA-7BG-LL) = £89.98
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming 850W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-060-AS) = £89.99

• 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer III High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 360mm (SKU: COO-ARC-01991) = £76.99

Total: £2,505.85 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

CPU: 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores (285K), versus 8 P-Cores and 12 E-Cores (265K)
Motherboard: more powerful VRM, more and higher spec USB ports, better audio codec.
RAM: 96GB instead of 64GB.
GPU: same amount of VRAM, but around 15-20% faster (depends on the game, the resolution, ray tracing, etc).

 

[andy85wsm]

A bit better for encoding, but it is slower than the 9900X in games, since the page I linked to in the review was only one type of usage.


Honestly, I don't recommend it, because of two reasons:
1. The fully-multi-threaded power draw of the Intel CPU goes from 155 watts to 235 watts with the 285K, which is significantly harder to cool effectively and a chunk less efficient (with encoding on TPU's page, it is around 10% faster).
2. Buying better than a 4070 Ti Super for occasional gaming is of dubious value (it is already paying a lot!).

If I were to try and spend it:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-03110) = £569.99
• 1 x Intel Holiday Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows + Ubisoft Plus (SKU: DIG-INT-03637) = £0.00
• 1 x Asrock Z890 LiveMixer WIFI (LGA 1851) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-03361) = £232.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO/XMP 96GB (2X48GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-03746) = £299.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-01496) = £899.99
• 1 x NVIDIA - Indiana Jones and The Great Circle Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-NVI-03769) = £0.00
• 1 x Crucial T500 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01090) = £133.99
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02682) = £99.95
• 1 x Lian Li Lancool 216 Mid-tower PC case - Black (SKU: CA-7BG-LL) = £89.98
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming 850W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-060-AS) = £89.99
• 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer III High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 360mm (SKU: COO-ARC-01991) = £76.99

Total: £2,505.85 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

CPU: 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores (285K), versus 8 P-Cores and 12 E-Cores (265K)
Motherboard: more powerful VRM, more and higher spec USB ports, better audio codec.
RAM: 96GB instead of 64GB.
GPU: same amount of VRAM, but around 15-20% faster (depends on the game, the resolution, ray tracing, etc).

Thanks - I like to keep this stuff simple so maybe the £2k budget PC is best for my needs.

Encoding more important for sure so I'll go with intel, and let's be real, for the minimal gaming I do, that CPU will be more than good enough.

The 5700xt has lasted me nearly 5 years so hopefully the 4070 will too.

I'll get in touch with OCUK next I think, and see what they can do.

Just 2 other questions:

How come you went with 2 different 2TB SSDs instead of the same one?

If I wanted a big HDD like a 4TB separate to the SSDs, is there a particular one that's best?

 

[mickyflinn]

Are you not tempted to just get a 4070ti (Nvidia GPU) to see if it improves rendering?

 

[Tetras]

How come you went with 2 different 2TB SSDs instead of the same one?

Usually in a PC one drive has the OS and the apps and gets hammered and the second one sits idle 80% of the time, so I include a high-end drive for the primary and a regular drive for the secondary. The other reason is that I prefer not to buy SSDs from the same batch because if you have bad flash or firmware they're both affected and that's bad for your downtime and your data.

If I wanted a big HDD like a 4TB separate to the SSDs, is there a particular one that's best?

I don't know much about modern HDDs I'm afraid, so I'd only suggest something based on price and availability.

a 4070ti (Nvidia GPU) to see if it improves rendering?

I think the OP was just using shorthand, the spec is a 4070 Ti Super.

 

[andy85wsm]

Are you not tempted to just get a 4070ti (Nvidia GPU) to see if it improves rendering?

Yup!

Mentioned that I wanted an Nvidia / Intel build instead of AMD/AMD this time around.

 

[andy85wsm]

Usually in a PC one drive has the OS and the apps and gets hammered and the second one sits idle 80% of the time, so I include a high-end drive for the primary and a regular drive for the secondary. The other reason is that I prefer not to buy SSDs from the same batch because if you have bad flash or firmware they're both affected and that's bad for your downtime and your data.


I don't know much about modern HDDs I'm afraid, so I'd only suggest something based on price and availability.


I think the OP was just using shorthand, the spec is a 4070 Ti Super.

Makes sense, thanks again.

 

[andy85wsm]

A bit better for encoding, but it is slower than the 9900X in games, since the page I linked to in the review was only one type of usage.


Honestly, I don't recommend it, because of two reasons:
1. The fully-multi-threaded power draw of the Intel CPU goes from 155 watts to 235 watts with the 285K, which is significantly harder to cool effectively and a chunk less efficient (with encoding on TPU's page, it is around 10% faster).
2. Buying better than a 4070 Ti Super for occasional gaming is of dubious value (it is already paying a lot!).

If I were to try and spend it:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-03110) = £569.99
• 1 x Intel Holiday Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows + Ubisoft Plus (SKU: DIG-INT-03637) = £0.00
• 1 x Asrock Z890 LiveMixer WIFI (LGA 1851) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-03361) = £232.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO/XMP 96GB (2X48GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-03746) = £299.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ZTC-01496) = £899.99
• 1 x NVIDIA - Indiana Jones and The Great Circle Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-NVI-03769) = £0.00
• 1 x Crucial T500 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01090) = £133.99
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02682) = £99.95
• 1 x Lian Li Lancool 216 Mid-tower PC case - Black (SKU: CA-7BG-LL) = £89.98
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming 850W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-060-AS) = £89.99
• 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer III High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 360mm (SKU: COO-ARC-01991) = £76.99

Total: £2,505.85 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

CPU: 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores (285K), versus 8 P-Cores and 12 E-Cores (265K)
Motherboard: more powerful VRM, more and higher spec USB ports, better audio codec.
RAM: 96GB instead of 64GB.
GPU: same amount of VRAM, but around 15-20% faster (depends on the game, the resolution, ray tracing, etc).

I know you said you wouldn't recommend going above the CPU and GPU that you originally mentioned, but are any of the other upgrades worth it - for example 96GB RAM, the slightly more expensive case?

Are the Asrock MOBOS and Zotac GPUs good by the way? Presumably yes as you recommended them, I just think I always had Gigabyte or Asus in the past.

I'm currently chatting to OCUK about getting a quote put together so hopefully will have a new PC soon.

 

[Tetras]

Are the Asrock MOBOS and Zotac GPUs good by the way?

The motherboards are fairly cheap for the spec and they have performed well thermally in the most recent roundup I saw, which was for AMD X870 here:

I can't comment on Z890, because there's no roundup for these CPUs and I suspect there might not be one, due to their gaming performance not getting any interest.

The Zotac I chose just for the price and the warranty length, but as far as I know they're fine (there's a few owners of Trinity cards on here).

I know you said you wouldn't recommend going above the CPU and GPU that you originally mentioned, but are any of the other upgrades worth it - for example 96GB RAM, the slightly more expensive case?

If you think you will use the RAM in the future, sure (especially since DDR5 doesn't much like running 4 sticks, particularly dual rank sticks which most 32GB and all 48GB are).

The case: Lian Li's 216 supports watercooling and air cooling, with the ability to move the I/O down to support a large radiator in the roof, whereas the P400S doesn't support roof mounted AIOs. It was a change I had to make due to the high power draw of the 285K, but it is not necessary if you are satisfied with the P400S. I think it is fair to say that the P400S is less of a modern design (e.g. more 3.5" HDD capacity, no USB Type-C) and has less capable stock cooling, but for the price I don't mind that.

 

[andy85wsm]

The motherboards are fairly cheap for the spec and they have performed well thermally in the most recent roundup I saw, which was for AMD X870 here:

I can't comment on Z890, because there's no roundup for these CPUs and I suspect there might not be one, due to their gaming performance not getting any interest.

The Zotac I chose just for the price and the warranty length, but as far as I know they're fine (there's a few owners of Trinity cards on here).


If you think you will use the RAM in the future, sure (especially since DDR5 doesn't much like running 4 sticks, particularly dual rank sticks which most 32GB and all 48GB are).

The case: Lian Li's 216 supports watercooling and air cooling, with the ability to move the I/O down to support a large radiator in the roof, whereas the P400S doesn't support roof mounted AIOs. It was a change I had to make due to the high power draw of the 285K, but it is not necessary if you are satisfied with the P400S. I think it is fair to say that the P400S is less of a modern design (e.g. more 3.5" HDD capacity, no USB Type-C) and has less capable stock cooling, but for the price I don't mind that.

Would there be better motherboards or GPUs for a little bit more money? I'm willing to spend a little more to get something better.

*edit* - just did a quick Google for "best 4070ti super" and the Zotac came up straight away, although it said "trinity" and I don't see that on the link above, maybe there's a different version.

For the case I don't have a huge need for USB C that I can think of but there might not be any harm in getting one with that I guess.

In terms of the radiator in roof/root mounted AIOs - I don't even know what that means to be honest, and OCUK will be building for me if that makes any difference.

I'm going to mostly stick to the spec from the first lot of stuff you came up with I think if that makes any difference to case choice. But like I say, willing to change motherboard and GPU to different brands if better.

I only have 32GB RAM right now so 64GB is already a big upgrade, can't imagine what I might need even more for really!

 

[Tetras]

Would there be better motherboards or GPUs for a little bit more money? I'm willing to spend a little more to get something better.

Without any nice roundups to refer to I'm flying blind on that one, but The LiveMixer looks like a good board to me and it has everything I might want, e.g.
- VRM powerful enough for any CPU, including sustained workloads.
- Plenty of rear USB ports.
- 4x M.2 slots.
- PCI-E 5.0 graphics & 1x PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot.
- 2.5 Gb LAN.
- 2x rear USB4.

You mentioned you don't really care about the premium features I asked about earlier, so the answer seems to be no?

Graphics: I'm not an expert on the differences between the cards, but you can check out some reviews/roundups if you'd like (there's a chart on the page I linked to):

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition Review - Savings of $200

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4080 Super introduces a noteworthy $200 price reduction compared to the non-Super 4080, placing significant pricing pressure on AMD's RX 7900 XTX. Despite this, the performance gains vs RTX 4080 non-Super are only marginal, we expected more.

www.techpowerup.com

In terms of the radiator in roof/root mounted AIOs - I don't even know what that means to be honest, and OCUK will be building for me if that makes any difference.

An AIO is like a mini-watercooling kit, but it is sealed and self-contained. They come with a pump, a radiator and some fans that are built into the radiator assembly. They're usually installed in the roof, but the front is also an option.

The sizes are: 240mm (2x120mm fans), 280mm (2x140mm fans), 360mm (3x120mm) and 420mm (3x140mm). I mention the fan sizes because they take the fan spots in the case, which is why the roof is often chosen to install them (it leaves the front intake fan mounts free to use).

Most midrange CPUs can be cooled fine with an air cooler, but when you fit a high-end CPU (especially a high-end Intel CPU) watercooling is much more common. Air cooling would need power limiting to tame an i9, for example.

I'm going to mostly stick to the spec from the first lot of stuff you came up with I think if that makes any difference to case choice.

Should be fine either way. If you can afford it I'd get the 216, since it is a more flexible design, unless you were planning to put a load of hard drives in your PC.