Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/m2N3Ps

What would you change and why while trying to keep the budget hovering near the 17-1800 range. It's been over a decade since I last built a rig and I'm feeling very lost in unfamiliar waters

If your primary reason for the PC is gaming I have one major initial leaning:

Drop the Ryzen 7 1700 for a Ryzen 5 1600, because the 1600 overclocks just as or more consistently, gains more from XFR if you don't OC due to less overall heat output, and thus generally performs equally or better in games than the 1700 will in a lot of situations. This will cut ~$100 off your CPU price.

Put that $100 toward either
A) Getting a 1080 Ti instead of a regular 1080, because moar power

or

B) Upgrade your storage. That 250gb hard drive won't hardly hold anything these days. Last I checked I think the Doom folder was like 85GB, and games aren't getting any smaller.

Yeah, I'm starting to feel squeezed now on my 240-gigger. (an older Intel job.) It's still okay, but I'm having to manage space on it, rather than being able to just carelessly install whatever I'm currently interested in.

edit, after looking at his list:

First, that hard drive is just weird. You've got a 500-gig Samsung SSD (which is fine), plus a 250-gig spinning drive. Don't you want a big data drive instead? I have no idea why you'd add a slow spinning drive that's *smaller* than your SSD.

I'd probably try for DDR4-3200 if possible. At least in the prior generations, there was a noticeable wall-clock latency improvement at 800Mhz clock increments. This latency is so short that it doesn't matter in terms of *human* latency, but it improves bandwidth and overall computation speed.

Sorry I should have noted that the intended purpose is gaming and streaming. Thank you! I appreciate the help

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/4kBwWX

Updated the list to reflect those changes and added in a water cooler to offset the heat with the inevitable overclock.

*edit note* that 250gig hd was a booboo on my part trying to work while tired on my phone last night, updated that as well. Good catch and thank you!

The R7 1700 might have some marginal advantages in streaming while playing a game due to the couple extra cores/threads but going back to it with your other upgrades would blow your budget for only occasional and middling gains.

A 1700 with a Corsair H100i v2 would cost about the same as the 1600 with the Kraken X62 cooler.

The former pairing is what I'm running. I'm not sure what the draw with the Kraken is to spend $50 more on it. If it's cooling performance, the 1700 is going to hit a voltage wall well before either water cooler even breaks a sweat.

*Legion* wrote:

I'm not sure what the draw with the Kraken is to spend $50 more on it. If it's cooling performance, the 1700 is going to hit a voltage wall well before either water cooler even breaks a sweat.

this is exactly the info im looking for. the last time i built a rig water cooling was a "neat idea" so im uber lost looking at all these different components.

my goal with this build is to have something that will hold up for a decent amount of time before i have to start looking at major upgrades. the 17-1800 budget is self imposed mostly to keep the mrs. from having a stroke and so i can get her own build started (way less intensive pc gamer she is so i get to focus the efforts on my build)
thank you all again for your help with this, ill be sure to report back once i have it all together

Water cooling with an AIO is super easy IMO. The only thing is to be sure your case has a spot that fits your radiator. That won't be a big issue for the case you've picked out, as it supports up to 240mm rads on the top mount, and up to 360mm rads on the front. (The H100i is a 240mm rad, the Kraken a 280mm one). So if you get the H100i you'll have the choice of front or top, if you get the Kraken it'll have to be front.

You all seriously rock, thank you again!

Putting together a Ryzen based system for a co-worker who wants to do mostly video editing. Current parts list is below. I'd appreciate someone giving it a look and making sure I'm not doing anything glaringly wrong. He's already got a case, GTX 1070, and mechanical storage from his current machine, so I didn't include those.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Radica...

I might suggest spending $30 more on the RAM and getting this kit.

When it comes to Ryzen and memory, if you want to ensure that you can run at 3000+, you want a kit that uses Samsung B-die. This memory is marked by AMD as certified for 3200.

If the RAM is just going to end up running at 2133, then you can ignore this and get whatever. But if you intend for the RAM to run at the clock speed on the box, that's one thing that you still have to watch out for with Ryzen. My ram is not B-die, and it's 3200 on the box, but I can only reliably run it at 2800. Hoping for a BIOS update in the future that improves that compatibility, but not sure one is forthcoming.

Thanks for the tip. I've revised the list. Also beefed the cooler up to a Noctua NH-D15.

Finally putting my pieces together tonight.... lets hope it was the mobo that was the issue... lol

Radical Ans wrote:

Thanks for the tip. I've revised the list. Also beefed the cooler up to a Noctua NH-D15.

If price isn't an issue and he is serious about video editing would more ram be better? 16 gigs seems small for a video editing machine. Would 32 gigs give him better performance when working with larger files? A friend of mine is also getting a ryzen build built for him and if I am not mistaken he went with 32 gigs.

He also went with specific video cards, they were 1080's but they were a specific version of that card which apparently work really well with video editing.

Would 32 gigs give him better performance when working with larger files? A friend of mine is also getting a ryzen build built for him and if I am not mistaken he went with 32 gigs.

For video editing, the more RAM the better.

Ugh, pieced everything together, booted, screen says optimize ram by using different slots.

Shut down, moved ram, reconnected... nothing... restart... nothing... move ram back... slow start... Finish clean install of windows I had the computer die in the middle of last time (from months back). Damn...

Ok, everything up... login screen. YES!

Login... oh sh*t I forgot I need all the drivers for mobo and etc to connect to the internet. No biggie, usb stick and a chromebook to the rescue (DVD drive has been dead awhile). Nope... although keyboard and mouse do just find through USB, USB sticks will not connect... Damnit.

Amazon-> DVD Drive -> Wait...

So ends my PC adventures for the weekend... maybe I'll be able to get it fully running Tuesday.

Oh, man, so you can use the Internet on the Chromebook, but can't get any data off? Argh.

I hate it when the OS doesn't have a network driver.

Do you have a Raspberry Pi sitting around somewhere? Or an old laptop? The Pi will definitely have working USBs, and a laptop probably does.

Will the Chomebook connect directly to the PC?

Dumb question time: I want to get an m.2 ssd. Should I move the windows installation to that drive even if I already have an Samsung 960 ssd?

manta173 wrote:

Ugh, pieced everything together, booted, screen says optimize ram by using different slots.

Shut down, moved ram, reconnected... nothing... restart... nothing... move ram back... slow start... Finish clean install of windows I had the computer die in the middle of last time (from months back). Damn...

Ok, everything up... login screen. YES!

Login... oh sh*t I forgot I need all the drivers for mobo and etc to connect to the internet. No biggie, usb stick and a chromebook to the rescue (DVD drive has been dead awhile). Nope... although keyboard and mouse do just find through USB, USB sticks will not connect... Damnit.

Amazon-> DVD Drive -> Wait...

So ends my PC adventures for the weekend... maybe I'll be able to get it fully running Tuesday.

I'm glad the issue at least isn't the desktop system itself. I would feel really bad if you went through the trouble of the rebuild and still wasn't getting a working system.

I believe the problem he is having is the USB sticks are not recognized by the system he is trying to build. So he can't get the drivers off them onto the computer he is trying to get up and running.

JohnKillo wrote:

Dumb question time: I want to get an m.2 ssd. Should I move the windows installation to that drive even if I already have an Samsung 960 ssd?

Not dumb, I am actually curious about this. Is there any advantage at all to an M.2 drive besides form factor if it's still interfacing with SATA3? I don't really have the budget for a PCIe M.2 SSD for my current build, but I can get a M.2 SATA 3 the same price as a traditional 2.5" SATA SSD.

Generally I think the M2s are faster, but in day to day use I think the general consensus is you won't notice much difference between that and a regular SSD. If my OS were already installed on an SSD and I added an M2, I would just leave it as the second drive and not deal with the hassle of moving.

If the m.2 format drive is just SATA and isn't actually PCIe NVME then there's generally no meaningful speed advantage.

For the rest, ditto what Leaping and others have said. If you weren't already due for or planning to reformat and do a fresh install for whatever reason then just leave your OS where it is and use the m.2 drive as added storage.

Thin_J wrote:

If the m.2 format drive is just SATA and isn't actually PCIe NVME then there's generally no meaningful speed advantage.

For the rest, ditto what Leaping and others have said. If you weren't already due for or planning to reformat and do a fresh install for whatever reason then just leave your OS where it is and use the m.2 drive as added storage.

This is correct. If the drive and the port both support NVME then you are talking the possibility of it being something like 8x faster than a SATA3 SSD. If it is just SATA3 then it might be slightly faster but not dramatically so. NVME M.2 drives are awesome. SATA3 M.2 drives are just a more expensive drive in a nicer form factor.

Plain ol' SATA SSDs are so fast, I can't remember the last time I thought, "this is the part of my system that I wish was faster".

Maybe if I tried an NVMe drive in my main system, I might think differently. But mostly the pain point with SSDs that I want solved isn't "faster", it's "more storage for cheaper".

Rykin wrote:

SATA3 M.2 drives are just a more expensive drive in a nicer form factor.

I'm not 100% sure due to the wording, but to be clear I've seen several drives that are the exact same price for both the regular and m.2 version of the drive when both are SATA 3.

Every time I've looked at crucial's MX300 drives for budget builds the m.2 format drives have been the same price as their standard 2.5" size siblings. Which is a great bonus because hey... no cables to route

Ok, so bit of an idiot here... restarted and everything started to work. Just didn't have time to mess with it after that. Internet is working, but didn't get a chance to check the USB slots.

I seem to remember programs that looked at your hardware and tracked down the appropriate drivers. I know I probably need to update the Bios, but I don't know what else from the mobo. I probably need a new intel driver for the new processor, and I am 3-4 months behind on graphics card drivers (although I will most likely use Nvidia's program for that).

Thin_J wrote:
Rykin wrote:

SATA3 M.2 drives are just a more expensive drive in a nicer form factor.

I'm not 100% sure due to the wording, but to be clear I've seen several drives that are the exact same price for both the regular and m.2 version of the drive when both are SATA 3.

Every time I've looked at crucial's MX300 drives for budget builds the m.2 format drives have been the same price as their standard 2.5" size siblings. Which is a great bonus because hey... no cables to route :)

This is exactly the 500gb drive I'm looking at for just under $150. Exactly the same price as the Samsung 2.5 drive I was looking at, so I figured why not. Doubt it will be worth it to me to invest in an NVME since I'd have to step down in size to afford it.

Can anyone recommend a decent ATX mid tower case for me? With or without a window, I'm just looking for something that's easy to build in and has good cooling.

Forgot to mention, I'm trying to find something under $75 bucks. Here are some examples of the sort of things I'm looking at. I'm guessing it's mostly aesthetic but being that this is my first build in like a decade-and-a-half I'd like the case to make things as easy as possible for me.

Zalman Z9 - https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...
NZXT Phantom 410 - https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...
Corsair Carbide 200R - https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...