Old Gamer - New Rig

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Hey guys, I'm an old gamer from around 20 years ago, way out of touch now! I'm hoping those with more experience can offer some input on a new rig. I'm wanting something pretty small as I'd ideally like to be able to move it about a bit. The plan will be to have it run Half-life Alyx.

Here is what I'm thinking, there is not a lot of room in one of these cases. I'm aware an upgrade in the future may not be possible without changing the case, I don't think a RTX 3090 for example would fit. My plan is to get a NVIDIA RTX 3070 Founders Edition as I believe its 242 mm which should fit.

Not 100% sure about the PSU, I think the case takes a standard ATX power supply, having a modular ones makes things a little neater. I think 650w is what's recommended from NVIDIA.

I think the only compromise with such a tiny motherboard is the memory is 2666mhz but I'm not sure if its going to make that much difference vs 3200Mhz which is what I was looking at with a Micro ATX case.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £990.19 (includes shipping: £12.30)​
 
Soldato
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Have you considered one of the new ryzen 5000 CPUs? with a b550i board as these will run cooler and more efficiently and the boards come with full memory overclocking support and will support pcie Gen 4.0 for the samsung 980.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £610.43 (includes shipping: £10.50)
 
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That RAM is too slow for a modern PC, I say you can get 3000 MHz to 3600 MHz for decent prices. But if the board wont support it well, fair enough.

The NVME PCI E 4 drive for that motherboard is not needed, NVME Pci-Express 3 speeds will suffice for Intel at present. This one suits and is bigger with less cost. Speeds are very good for the drive and same brand. Samsung Evo 970 plus 500 gig.

▷ Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0… | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk)

"Not 100% sure about the PSU"

According to the description an ATX PSU will fit fine in the case chosen.
 
Soldato
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Agree with VonScar.... that psu has 4 rails, but can't see amps for each rail? For 3070/10700 i would consider a single rail 750W quality psu, just to be safe.
 
Soldato
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Have you considered one of the new ryzen 5000 CPUs? with a b550i board as these will run cooler and more efficiently and the boards come with full memory overclocking support and will support pcie Gen 4.0 for the samsung 980.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £610.43 (includes shipping: £10.50)
Possibly... but 6 core i5 10600K is £80 cheaper and OC's better?
 
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I think the only compromise with such a tiny motherboard is the memory is 2666mhz but I'm not sure if its going to make that much difference vs 3200Mhz which is what I was looking at with a Micro ATX case.
I'm confused, why are you limited to 2666? The motherboard will support 2933 with an i7.
 
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Have you considered one of the new ryzen 5000 CPUs? with a b550i board as these will run cooler and more efficiently and the boards come with full memory overclocking support and will support pcie Gen 4.0 for the samsung 980.

Nice one for the pointer, I had no idea how much AMD had advanced over the years.. ahem decades. The 5600X seems like the way to go. Will take a look at the board and memory suggested.

Ah... 2 rails are 25A, 2 are 30A... still think single 60A+ rail will be belt and braces.

Cheers, will take another look.
 
Man of Honour
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Nice one for the pointer, I had no idea how much AMD had advanced over the years.. ahem decades. The 5600X seems like the way to go. Will take a look at the board and memory suggested.

Cheers, will take another look.

If your getting a 5600x get a motherboard with bios flashback as the bios will need updating for the cpu to work.

The asrock motherboard above doesnt have this feature so you will either need a compatable cpu to update it or send it to be flashed
 
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Ta, I hear the 3070 is fine with 650w. If I end up with a 3080 then yep, looks like I really should follow advice and upgrade to 750. Ta again.

Might be a while before I can get hold of one, the prices on eBay are often too bloated.

I’ll also be using the rig for a complex lab environment running many virtual machines etc so want the best possible storage performance.
 
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That makes sense. I am not sure about running multiple VMs but someone with more knowledge on the topic could probably chip in, but may be preferable to have more physical cores available?
 
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Yeah more cores is definitely better, especially when you poke in lots of nested VM’s - I’ll make do with the 5600x. It should give be plenty of options, only thing I may need more of is RAM. Upping to 64Gb may be required - but that gets pretty pricey!

I’ve got access to some meaty Cisco UCS Blades at work for labs but I tend to also prefer local stuff for convenience.
 
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