Reduce my expensive build. Advice plz

PaulW

PaulW

PaulW

Associate
Joined
6 Jun 2005
Posts
713
Location
Plymouth / Cambridge
Hi All,

First Build in ten years so i am splashing out, but also trying to reduce the cost. The new AMD chips and the 40 series GPUs which have gut punched my budget coming out pretty much 40% more than i orginally planned. :(
I am looking for options that i could possibly consider. i have a few things that i really want and i am willing to pay the extra for.
i am very near having a list i am ok with , but may wait a month or so to see what the 7800X3D brings to the table and if prices in generaly across the board come down a bit.
so what to i need it for? i do a lot of 3d games work, UE5, mostly modeling and some odd bit of rendering, i play some games. generally i spend quite a bit of time on my PC, so want a good rig.
atm i have a 2k monitor but want a wide screen 4k one when i win the lottery.

Here is the list. I cant quite believe its this high, but hey, its the over inflated PC market these days.
things in Orange i kind of want / have settled on. things in green i am undecided on.

Case Lian Li O11 Air Mini - Black
CPU Ryzen 9 / 7950X3D
RAM 64gb Kingston FURY Beast RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C40 5600MHz
GCard Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080
PWR Supply Existing PSU Seasonic 850 focus ( no cost)
CPU water cooler NZXT Kraken Z63 AIO CPU Water Cooler with LCD Screen - 280mm
Motherboard Asus ROG Strix X670E-F Gaming WIFI
HDD M2 2tb Samsung 990 Pro 2TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 4.0 x4 NVMe 1.3c Solid State Drive
WINDOWS 11 Pro

Optional
Noctua fans 120 x5
Noctua fans 140 x2
Fan controller NZXT RGB & Fan Controller

Total so far 3.4k :eek:
Orginal budget was 3k

so things i have considered are
Getting a cheaper GPU, i have considered somthing less but the 4070Ti i think wont help with 4k gaming when i go that way, i'd rather get a 3090Ti for more Vram.
Getting a cheaper Processor, but as i need it mostly for 3d work and gaming its a bit tough to decide on which one now. the 7800X3D will be cheaper and better for games if i was only doing that. but it would not be as good for 3D rendering / video editing. i could go last gen CPU
Reduce the ram to 32gb but kind of want 64.
get a 1TB SSD
using my existing PSU for that saves me £250
i did consider a B650 Mobo but have settled upon the X670E for about £70 more.
kind of want the Kraken just for asthetic reasons and keeping and eye on temps.

I also want a quiet PC so will replace the fans with Noctua ones for the AIO and case
Anyway there it is, i am probably going a bit nuts but i only buiild a PC every 7 - 10 years
Thanks, any suggestions i could consider would be great or if you think somthing could be better let me know.

Thanks

Paul
 
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For your usage (3D, UE5 & rendering), then if time is money, it might honestly be justified to choose a monster CPU. They're super expensive, but this kind of work is one of the few cases where it makes sense. That said, the AMD CPUs can do some fantastic work when they're power limited, Gamers Nexus liked the 7900 non-X a lot (review) and it has the added bonus of reducing the cooling and VRM requirements, which could help you justify a cheaper board and cooler. In TPU's review of the 7700, the 7900 (X version) beat the 13700K in C++, UE5 and was about par in rendering, but (at least, at stock) had much higher energy efficiency.

The SN850X is on offer at the moment, £150 for 2TB, which would save you a fair chunk on the 990 for a pretty high-end drive.

For the kind of work you do, I would not buy a 4070 Ti, the VRAM is too low.

Personally, I don't think you need all those fans, or the controller, the motherboard could do it. You didn't give a model number, so I can't add them to my build.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900 Twelve Core 5.40GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail - £428.99
Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard - £349.99
Corsair Vengeance RGB EXPO 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C40 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMH64GX5M2B5600Z40K) - £299.99

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Gaming OC 16GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card - £1,299.95

2x WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T2X0E) - £149.99 (£299.98)

(unchanged) Lian Li PC-O11 Air Midi Tower - Black Window - £129.95
(unchanged) NZXT Kraken Z63 AIO CPU Water Cooler with LCD Screen - 280mm - £239.98

OS: not included in total.

Grand Total: £3,060.82 (includes delivery charge)

Changes I would personally consider:

AMD Ryzen 9 7900 Twelve Core 5.40GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail - £428.99
Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard - £349.99
Corsair Vengeance EXPO 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-41600C40 5200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK64GX5M2B5200Z40) - £259.99

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Gaming OC 16GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card - £1,299.95

2x WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T2X0E) - £149.99 (£299.98)

Lian Li LANCOOL 215 Mid-Tower aRGB Tempered Glass Black - £89.99
be quiet! Pure Loop 2 FX 280 ARGB High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 280mm - £129.94

OS: not included in total.

Grand Total: £2,870.82 (includes delivery charge)

Rationale for downgrades
Memory: if you upgrade to 128GB, memory seems to run really slow anyway, so there doesn't seem to be much point worrying about speed :o
Case: it has some big fans & a controller included and is cheaper.
Cooler: cheaper.
 
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Tetras said:
For your usage (3D, UE5 & rendering), then if time is money, it might honestly be justified to choose a monster CPU. They're super expensive, but this kind of work is one of the few cases where it makes sense. That said, the AMD CPUs can do some fantastic work when they're power limited, Gamers Nexus liked the 7900 non-X a lot (review) and it has the added bonus of reducing the cooling and VRM requirements, which could help you justify a cheaper board and cooler. In TPU's review of the 7700, the 7900 (X version) beat the 13700K in C++, UE5 and was about par in rendering, but (at least, at stock) had much higher energy efficiency.
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The funny thing about 3D and rendering these days is it's potentially better to invest in a higher tier of gpu because of gpu rendering etc being so much faster where it can be used. Nvidia is king due to cuda though so you're going to get shafted on pricing still. While it's not economical to drop down the cpu and increase the gpu, assuming it fits the OP's workflow in a 'time is money' scenario it might be better.

Personally I'd be swapping out the cpu cooler as well, you're paying £100 for the lcd display that in all honesty will just take up resources due to the software it will need to run, so grab a cheaper option imo.
As much as I like noctua (I've got 10 chromax in my o11 evo), maybe look at cheaper fans from bequiet or even arctic, not sure if they're in the total cost or not but you've got about £270 in noctua fans.... if they're not included in that total you'll never get it below 3K lol
 
This is just my point of view on ways to save some money so feel free to disagree.

CPU - Get the standard 7950x and save £150. Still works really well in games.
RAM - Shop around and get 6000mhz ram that you want, preferably cl30 but it will cost extra
GPU - It is a good choice but obviously expensive
Mobo - I personally would not trust anything Asus makes to last 10 years. If I was spending as much as you are I would get the MSi Carbon buts thats a personal choice with longevity in mind.
SSD - WD 850x are better choice.

Case + AIO - This is where you can save money but everytime you look at it you will be annoyed you did not get the one you wanted. My point here is get an aio where you do not need to change the fans because you like how they look and then match the extra fans you will need to that AIO , will stop you wasting money on stuff you do not need.
 
Yeah it would be a CUDA system that i need to invest in so my choices is only Nvidia. i chose the 4080 as i read that it is pretty efficent power wise. i could go for the founders edition over the Gigabyte one which would save £100 but the giga runs cooler and is a bit less noisey.
if i splashed out on a 4090 i think i'd need a new PSU which would be + £250
i have thought about getting an arctic freezer cooler 2. which seems to be the best one for price and performance. out of intrest how much performance overhead would the cam software be to run?
in terms of fans they are not 100% essential right now. the case and the cooler comes with fans so i could use them for now and replace them on black friday if they were cheeper. the fans all come to about £190. noctua fans have never failed me i have ones still going strong after 10 years while all teh others have died.
so i guess if i could save £300 if i reduce those things and get rid of the bling.
 
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PaulW said:
Yeah it would be a CUDA system that i need to invest in so my choices is only Nvidia. i chose teh 4080 as i read that it is pretty efficent power wise. i could go for teh founder edition over the gigabyte one which would save £100 but the giga runs cooler and is a bit less noisey.
if i splashed out on a 4090 i think i'd need a new PSU which would be + £250
i have thought about getting an arctic freezer cooler 2. which seems to be the best one for price and performance. out of intrest how much performance overhead would the cam software be to run?
in terms of fans they are not 100% essential right now. the case and the cooler comes with fans so i could use them for now and replace them on black friday if they were cheeper. the fans all come to about £190. noctua fans have never failed me i have ones still going strong after 10 years while all teh others have died.
so i guess if i could save £300 if i reduce those things and get rid of the bling.
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Missed you'd picked the gigabyte gpu... if you intend to keep the lian li o11 air mini make sure it fits, it doesn't fit in my evo without using after market cables according to lian li.

AM5 and intel 13th gen run hot, don't cheap out on the cooler.

I've used bequiet fans and noctua and imo I'd argue the bequiet are easily their equal if not actually being better on the noise front.

I really need to read posts better late at night... I'm not 100% sure how well 7950x3D is going to work with cad programs, every test/review I've seen has focused on games so you might be better just sacrificing a few fps in games and getting the 7950x which is better for multithreading etc. Just a note even though you've said windows 11, if you got 7950x3d it will also force you into using windows 11 due to needing the newer scheduler for the split chip design, the 7950x can still work with windows 10 if you prefer that os (I do :)).
 
lsg1r said:
Missed you'd picked the gigabyte gpu... if you intend to keep the lian li o11 air mini make sure it fits, it doesn't fit in my evo without using after market cables according to lian li.

AM5 and intel 13th gen run hot, don't cheap out on the cooler.

I've used bequiet fans and noctua and imo I'd argue the bequiet are easily their equal if not actually being better on the noise front.

I really need to read posts better late at night... I'm not 100% sure how well 7950x3D is going to work with cad programs, every test/review I've seen has focused on games so you might be better just sacrificing a few fps in games and getting the 7950x which is better for multithreading etc. Just a note even though you've said windows 11, if you got 7950x3d it will also force you into using windows 11 due to needing the newer scheduler for the split chip design, the 7950x can still work with windows 10 if you prefer that os (I do :)).
Click to expand...

i'll be going Windows 11, i am not that bothered by the OS. i will check the giagbyte sizes with the case to be sure.
i'll have alook at the 7950x might be just as good for what i need and i can always upgrade at a later date and use the 7950x in another smaller build that i plan for home TV / Travel a SFF pc.
 
The artic freezer II is an excellent AIO, you may need to mount it on the side vertical position in the Air mini with a full sized ATX mobo.

It is a valid point by lsg1r about the gpu actually fitting, the 4000 series cards are rediculously wide and in a standard mounting position the 12vpwr cable will often hit the side window in a lot of cases. You have not specified which particular Gigabyte 4080 you are going for but iirc the Master is the largest card of them all so be careful and check it will fit.

RGB software can be a real pain and some people have said certain types use upto 5% of a cpus cycles and stop the cpu from ever going into low power modes. YMMV and I am not sure how bad the CAM software is. If you went for the AF II then you jsut plug it into the ARGB pin and it will run off the Gigabyte software which is atrocious but does not use up too many cpu cycles.
 
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Haz123 said:
RGB software can be a real pain and some people have said certain types use upto 5% of a cpus cycles and stop the cpu from ever going into low power modes.
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I originally went with lian li rgb fans and the software would use 5-10% of my 5950x, even when doing nothing, and would also prevent the cpu from going into a 'low power' state... don't think it's been fixed yet either. Swapped them out for my current noctua's in the end....

Oh and my bad, for some reason I thought the arctic cooler was an air cooler.... 360mm AIO will be fine.
 
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PaulW said:
Yeah it would be a CUDA system that i need to invest in so my choices is only Nvidia. i chose the 4080 as i read that it is pretty efficent power wise. i could go for the founders edition over the Gigabyte one which would save £100 but the giga runs cooler and is a bit less noisey.
if i splashed out on a 4090 i think i'd need a new PSU which would be + £250
i have thought about getting an arctic freezer cooler 2. which seems to be the best one for price and performance. out of intrest how much performance overhead would the cam software be to run?
in terms of fans they are not 100% essential right now. the case and the cooler comes with fans so i could use them for now and replace them on black friday if they were cheeper. the fans all come to about £190. noctua fans have never failed me i have ones still going strong after 10 years while all teh others have died.
so i guess if i could save £300 if i reduce those things and get rid of the bling.
Click to expand...
+ £250? what PSUs are you looking at? theres plenty of good 850W and 1000W units below £200 that would be more than enough for a 4090
 
PaulW said:
whats the real difference besides the steep price for going with 6000Mhz over 5600?
Click to expand...
AMD claims it's the sweet spot and it's basically to do with 1:1 infinity fabric ratio, it's like 3600mhz (or a little higher) for ryzen 5000 series. Essentially it makes the communication between the cpu and other parts a little faster which in turn makes the overall performance a little faster.
It's not 100% necessary as it will run fine on 5600, the infinity fabric will just run a little slower, not to mention 6000mhz or higher seems to be a consistent factor when memory issues crop up from what I've seen.

I wouldn't say don't do it but I'd do some research into the pros and cons.
 
lsg1r said:
AMD claims it's the sweet spot and it's basically to do with 1:1 infinity fabric ratio, it's like 3600mhz (or a little higher) for ryzen 5000 series. Essentially it makes the communication between the cpu and other parts a little faster which in turn makes the overall performance a little faster.
It's not 100% necessary as it will run fine on 5600, the infinity fabric will just run a little slower, not to mention 6000mhz or higher seems to be a consistent factor when memory issues crop up from what I've seen.

I wouldn't say don't do it but I'd do some research into the pros and cons.
Click to expand...
well i am upgrading from some corsair 1333MHz ram for which my Mobo can only set at 400Mhz. its that old. so 5600Mhz should be lightning in comparison. i could always upgrade at a later date and recycle the 5600 for another ITX build
 
Haz123 said:
I personally would not trust anything Asus makes to last 10 years. If I was spending as much as you are I would get the MSi Carbon buts thats a personal choice with longevity in mind.
Click to expand...
What is wrong with ASUS these days? to me they seemed the best value for money with way more specs than the other manufactures.
 
PaulW said:
well i am upgrading from some corsair 1333MHz ram for which my Mobo can only set at 400Mhz. its that old. so 5600Mhz should be lightning in comparison. i could always upgrade at a later date and recycle the 5600 for another ITX build
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TBH I forgot about reading that supposedly 6000mhz is only supported if you use 2 ram sticks, if you use 4 it will run it slower anyway (can't find where I read that now though..).... in all honesty there are quite a few things to consider with memory with 7000 series whatever way you look at it lol.

PaulW said:
What is wrong with ASUS these days? to me they seemed the best value for money with way more specs than the other manufactures.
Click to expand...
Basically their quality doesn't necessarily match the premium they seem to charge in the views of a lot of people. I'm running msi currently and previous rigs were asrock, both pretty solid imo.

My personal view on asus is they're not near the top of the list purely because of the way they dropped support with an os change for an old motherboard even though it was still pretty new and I had to buy a new motherboard for no reason.
 
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