New Build Advice

Reccy

1. What is your budget? €3000

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming and Software Development.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Yes, I have an unopened spare Cooler Master - V Platinum 1000 W and a Blu-Ray drive.

5. Do you need a monitor? No

5a. If yes, what size do you need. N/A

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? Currently 1920x1080p. I want to eventually get an Ultrawide or 4k monitor though.

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [Keyboard/Mouse/Wireless Card/Card Reader/Speakers/etc.] No

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay? Debit Card

9. When are you purchasing? In around a month

Hi all!
I'm looking into building a new PC with the following parts:

• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Duke (€1288)
• Intel Core i7-9700k (€449)
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (€189)
• Seagate Barracude Pro - 6 TB (€244.99)
• Samsung 860 EVO - 1 TB (€164.99)
• Fractal Design Define R6 (€145)
• Gigabyte Z390 AUROS PRO WIFI (€239)
• Noctua NH-L9i (€39.95)
• Cooler Master V1000 (€0 - Already have a spare! )

Total: €2,786.95 (Before Shipping)

I'm hoping I can get advice regarding the parts list to see if there are better alternatives to certain parts or if the parts I'm getting makes sense?
For example, I'm getting a Core i7-9700k but is it worth getting it if I'm not going to be overclocking? It still has a higher clock speed than the the i7-9700.

Also, I built a PC a few years ago and I used Komplett and Dabs.ie, I've only looked at Komplett for this build but does anyone know other places to look at that ship to Ireland?

Cheers!

No point getting a K chip if you're not going to overclock.

K.O.Kiki

No point going Intel in 24 hours.

TerrorFirmer

I think the 9900K for example is still the gaming king but unless you have a 144hz monitor it doesn't make a blind bit of difference, and you'd be way better off getting a 3600X or 3700X and putting the rest into the best GPU you can afford, especially if you're thinking about 4K.

At 4K 60hz, a 9700K doesn't make any sense really.

Re: K chip, a) it boosts higher and b) many bios now have a simple one-click overclocking ability, though again the 9700K doesn't really make sense in this scenario. Arguably, the 8700K even is a better choice as it's a 16 threaded CPU, the 9700K is only 8 threads so down the line, it won't hold up as well.

All in all, in this scenario any half decent B450M board, Ryzen 3700X + 2080Ti is the best you can get. You'll see 0 benefit from any better CPU than that at 4K or on a normal 60hz monitor. The cores and threads of the 3700X (versus say, a 3600X) might come in handy for non-gaming work stuff.

At 4K, the only job the CPU has is to keep pace with the GPU, which even a £140 Ryzen 2600X will do effortlessly as its the GPU takes the punishment.

Reccy

The new AMD CPUs looks great, I had no idea they were releasing today but I'm totally sold!

I updated the parts list, this is what I got:

• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti X TRIO (€1,176.70)
• AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (€529)
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 (€133.90)
• Seagate Barracude Pro - 6 TB (€224.98)
• Samsung 860 EVO - 1 TB (€119.45)
• Fractal Design Define R6 (€120.14)
• Gigabyte B450 AUROS ELITE ATX AM4 Motherboard (€91.94)
• Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 (€57.17)

Total: €2456.08 (Before Shipping)

The main thing that concerns me is the compatibility between the B450 mobo and the Ryzen 3900X.
I made a list in PC Part Picker and I got a warning that I might need to update the BIOS on a B450 mobo (using an older CPU?) to support Zen 2 processors.
If a buy a mobo at the end of the month will it ship with the latest BIOS or am I out of luck?

Also I looked at mindfactory.de for parts instead of Komplett, the prices were a lot cheaper!
Has anyone had experience ordering from here before and are they reliable?

Finally, is there any point in getting a more expensive motherboard or graphics card model? I still want the 2080ti but is there any noticeable cooling / performance difference between the one I'm getting and one that's like €200 more expensive?

Thanks a lot for the replies!

K.O.Kiki

LMAO you're cheaping out on the motherboard?!

If you're spending that much on a system then it deserves a very good mobo too.

Reccy

Well that answers one of my questions lol
Is there a performance improvement on getting a more expensive motherboard or is it just that it's more reliable?

Extra features such as more fan headers, better overclocking if you decide on that. More room for expansion further down the line.

Reccy

Yeah, that's a fair point!
I actually had to replace the mobo on my current rig after it died on me. It was out of warranty so I got the cheapest one I could find.
Turns out it had less fan headers so now only the CPU and back fans are running...

I'll look for a better motherboard, thanks a lot!

You wouldn't have to get anything too expensive but maybe around the 160euro mark.

Reccy

Cheers!
I was looking at this mobo from Gigabyte: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X470-AORUS-GAMING-5-WIFI-rev-10
It's about €185 from mindfactory.de: https://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/Gigabyte-X470-Aorus-Gaming-5-WIFI-AMD-X470-So-AM4-Dual-Channel-DDR-ATX-_1249198.html

Has all the fan headers I'll ever need, supports SLI (although I've no plans to get a SLI setup), WiFi, etc.
I guess this should be okay then?

You'll need the BIOS updated on that board for the new Ryzen CPU's to work on it which means you'll have to have a 1st or 2nd Ryzen chip in order to do that afaik.

Reccy

Yep, that's fair enough.
It looks like I can ask to have the BIOS updated when I buy the board, so that should solve that issue.
Otherwise, I'll have to get an X570 board instead for native support without a BIOS update?

BloodBath

Whole rig seems massively overkill for gaming and a 1080p monitor.

You have the budget to include a good high end 2560x1440/144hz monitor.

Do you need 12 cores on the Ryzen? They won't make a bit of difference for gaming atm. You could easily dial back to 8 cores.

6TB HDD? Is that needed? I'd try and keep any HDD's at single platter as well. No idea what the biggest single platter drives are these days though.

Sata SSD? You want NVME. I'd be going more SSD space and less or no HDD space unless you really need it for something.

Reccy

Yeah, I'm definitely going to get a better monitor in the next few months!
I'm thinking Ultrawide or 4k with G-Sync, I wouldn't get these specs if I was sticking with 1080p

For the Ryzen, I get that no games would use that many cores yet, but I'll take the extra performance for work.

I still want to have a HDD though for longer term storage and I'll use the SSD for applications I'll use more frequently, the more storage the better!
I didn't realise that the number of platters in the HDD matters though, I'll look into that.

I haven't really considered NVMe though. The motherboard I'm getting supports NVMe M.2 so I'll take a look into that aswell.

Cheers!

K.O.Kiki

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor (£479.99 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-U14S 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler (£56.99 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: MSI - MPG X570 GAMING PRO CARBON WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard (£259.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£142.25 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Corsair - MP510 960 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£131.82 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda Computer 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£51.97 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce RTX 2080 8 GB WINDFORCE Video Card (£599.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master - MasterCase MC500 ATX Mid Tower Case (£92.58 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: Cooler Master - V Platinum 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For £0.00)
Optical Drive: LG - WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For £0.00)
Total: £1815.58
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-07-08 22:03 BST+0100

RTX 2080 Ti is overkill.
Wait until tomorrow for release of RTX 2080 Super, or get a cheap RTX 2080 or even 2070 Super.

2080 Super isn't out until the 23rd.

TerrorFirmer

I'm a litte confused. Surely if you're gaming at 4K, the CPU is totally irrelevant? Have to agree with Bloodbath here. You're throwing money at the build for the sake of it.

At 4K, a 2600X or Intel 9400F is more than enough. A 3600X if you really want to splurge. But anything beyond that is an utter waste. If the goal is 4k60, you need to focus exclusively on the GPU.

At 4k60hz, a 2080Ti is not a waste. At 4k60hz, anything beyond Ryzen 3600 is an absolute waste of cash.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Personally I would forget about 4K gaming, the refresh rate is much nicer to look at, I have both monitors and they are for different jobs. 4K is IPS and for photo editing and movies, 144hz is for gaming.

I would dial back on the 6tb too. There's no need for it at this time. I would suggest getting a 500gb M2 for the OS and some games, a 1Tb SSD for other games/programs and a 2tb HDD for storage. Add another 1tb HDD for redundancy but I think it's overkill. I have about 4.5 gigs between the 3 formats and it's really difficult to fill. I have a ton of games installed that I never play.

A 4K monitor is a real pain in the a$$ when it comes to UI. Everything is tiny.

Reccy

Hey, thanks for the replies!

I completely agree that 2080ti and Ryzen 9 3900 are overkill, but I want to get the highest performing computer I can get for around €3000.
I'm not planning on getting a new monitor straight away, so I'm going to get that another time with another budget.
I'd also be more interested in Ultrawide than 4k to be honest, but at least I won't need to upgrade again for a good few years

That's a good shout Iamxavier on the storage, I suppose I can get another hard drive in the future if I need to expand.

Here's an updated parts list, and I can flash the motherboard BIOS without a CPU so I should be sorted there.

AMD - Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor (€534)
Noctua - NH-U12S SE-AM4 CPU Cooler (€59)
MSI - B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC ATX AM4 Motherboard (€127)
Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 RAM (€150)
Seagate - BarraCude Pro 2 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM HDD (€123)
Samsung - 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 SSD (€109)
Samsung - 860 Evo 1TB 2.5" SSD (€140)
MSI - GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB GAMING X TRIO Graphics Card (€1,207)
Fractal Design - Define R6 USB-C ATX Mid Tower Case (€129)
Cooler Master - V Platinum 1000W 80+ Platinum PSU (Already Owned)

Price: €2,578 before shipping

Also I'm using amazon.de and amazon.co.uk to order these parts.
I was originally looking and mindfactory.de but I didn't realise they don't ship to Ireland.

I'm pretty happy with this build unless there are any compatibility issues that I'm not aware of?