Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

Thanks to a friend of mine having too much money and buying a 2080ti, I am the proud owner of a 1080. Woo!

Help me friends: upgrade, buy, or build.

My PC is... old at this point. It's got an i5-2500K overclocked at 4.3 GHz that's been running fine for many moons now. It's the classic P8P67 build that was all the rage in cough2011cough. But I'm on all platter drives and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM. Startup, loading, even disk write speeds feel like they're slow.

My current vidya card is a 2 GB non-ti geforce 660. I was looking at putting in a 1660 ti, but then I thought... is it time?

My main purpose is audio / video editing, music recording and editing, and of course games. All I want in life is to run The Witcher 3 at more than 25 fps on low-medium settings. (That's where I am now.)

I'm running a 2560x1080 main monitor and a 1920x1080 vertical second monitor.

If I budget $800-$1K is there a badass prebuilt that everyone loves now? Should I just throw in a 1660 and keep riding this thing? It's functional, but it's not great. Otherwise I'm looking at a new build sans the case and hard drives. Though I would need at least one SSD and a new Windows license. I used to look forward to a new build, now... not so much. I don't want to overclock anything, some of my income is from the work I do on my tower and just need something that works.

The system you have would be a little difficult to upgrade, and tossing in A/V editing I'm surprised you're still running on that thing. I tend to build from scratch (because I genuinely enjoy building rigs), but if you'd rather go for a prebuilt then something like this would be an absolutely massive improvement over your system. Others here likely have a better idea for prebuilts, but either way I'd certainly invest in a new system.

Remember - Regular 1660 for 1080P, 1660 TI for 1440P. I would not shell out the extra for the TI if I were still on 1080P. (Others opinions may vary.)

The issue is that a good 1440P monitor will run a few hundred, or twice that if you go G-Sync.

Just a thought.

I'd do a Ryzen 2600, a B450 motherboard, 16GB DDR4 3200, a 1660 ti, and an SSD sized based on needs/budget, but all of that should fit within $1K.

I agree with Legion.

Okay, thanks. Is there an ELI5 for going Ryzen over Intel?

Intel's price/performance ratio is basically sh*t right now.

If you're going to play games put as much budget as you can into the videocard and go from there.

Got it. You guys rock!

Veloxi wrote:
Rainsmercy wrote:

So got my pc built over the weekend, I'll have to post pics later when I get home. Its super fast with the NVe SSD to the point where blink and you'll miss the power up to desktop.(16 seconds this morning) It is also amazingly quiet. And since I got Anthem and Division 2 free with video card/cpu, fired both up and both are pretty graphics wise on my 28" 4k monitors I bought. Also, first time I have ever had a case with a clear side, its weird getting used to it.

Congrats! I too have a clear case and it is really weird.

I hide my case behind my monitor because I don't want to see the insides of my computer. I kind of hate that clear cases are a thing, it offends me for some reason I cannot articulate. Did LED everything come first or clear cases or did the two trends feed off each other? Because I hate LED everything too for the same inarticulate reasons I hate clear cases.

tboon wrote:
Veloxi wrote:
Rainsmercy wrote:

So got my pc built over the weekend, I'll have to post pics later when I get home. Its super fast with the NVe SSD to the point where blink and you'll miss the power up to desktop.(16 seconds this morning) It is also amazingly quiet. And since I got Anthem and Division 2 free with video card/cpu, fired both up and both are pretty graphics wise on my 28" 4k monitors I bought. Also, first time I have ever had a case with a clear side, its weird getting used to it.

Congrats! I too have a clear case and it is really weird.

I hide my case behind my monitor because I don't want to see the insides of my computer. I kind of hate that clear cases are a thing, it offends me for some reason I cannot articulate. Did LED everything come first or clear cases or did the two trends feed off each other? Because I hate LED everything too for the same inarticulate reasons I hate clear cases.

RGB and Tempered Glass and Side Panel Windows are three things I hate so much in current PC designs. I have been looking at small form factor stealth PC options and even considering putting everything inside the cabinet my desk has. I used to run a small server off of a cannibalized iMac (that I got for basically free because the screen went out) back in the early 2000s that was stored in such a place. I didn't even do any venting so that is something I would probably do differently but I have a huge mostly unused space in my desk for it.

From what I remember the clear sides came first and then the bling like LEDs and colored components. I don't care for it but it doesn't really bother me since my PC is always under my desk anyway.

Now using glass instead of plastic is just dumb because it is more fragile.

*Legion* wrote:

I'd do a Ryzen 2600, a B450 motherboard, 16GB DDR4 3200, a 1660 ti, and an SSD sized based on needs/budget, but all of that should fit within $1K.

I had actually put together basically that exact build in PCpartpicker and edited it out because he mentioned prebuilds.

Rykin wrote:
tboon wrote:
Veloxi wrote:
Rainsmercy wrote:

So got my pc built over the weekend, I'll have to post pics later when I get home. Its super fast with the NVe SSD to the point where blink and you'll miss the power up to desktop.(16 seconds this morning) It is also amazingly quiet. And since I got Anthem and Division 2 free with video card/cpu, fired both up and both are pretty graphics wise on my 28" 4k monitors I bought. Also, first time I have ever had a case with a clear side, its weird getting used to it.

Congrats! I too have a clear case and it is really weird.

I hide my case behind my monitor because I don't want to see the insides of my computer. I kind of hate that clear cases are a thing, it offends me for some reason I cannot articulate. Did LED everything come first or clear cases or did the two trends feed off each other? Because I hate LED everything too for the same inarticulate reasons I hate clear cases.

RGB and Tempered Glass and Side Panel Windows are three things I hate so much in current PC designs. I have been looking at small form factor stealth PC options and even considering putting everything inside the cabinet my desk has. I used to run a small server off of a cannibalized iMac (that I got for basically free because the screen went out) back in the early 2000s that was stored in such a place. I didn't even do any venting so that is something I would probably do differently but I have a huge mostly unused space in my desk for it.

I like the glass.. you can easily see the LED codes or status codes without have to take off the side panel and potentially move the PC.. which can then also require cables to unplug.

I've built stealth mini-PCs, ultra-quiet workstations, and my current workstation/gaming rig is a windowed LED "showpiece." I like them all! :shrug:

This is my current rig, by the way. About a year old now, and I'm getting the itch to upgrade things even though I don't have the need or budget for it yet....

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/2g9lHFS.jpg)

IMAGE(https://imgur.com/kWgrN05.jpg)

Although now I'm running no HDD (it died), I moved the SSD to the side mount and installed an NVMe drive behind the GPU. Also I run all the lights in a lighter, ice blue/white too. I like the bling but I don't go so far as pulsing rainbows and such.

*Legion* wrote:

I'd do a Ryzen 2600, a B450 motherboard, 16GB DDR4 3200, a 1660 ti, and an SSD sized based on needs/budget, but all of that should fit within $1K.

I did nearly precisely this with a 2600X and an RX 580 8GB and it’s fantastic. Put it in a Corsair 200R with no windows and it’s all nice.

No RGB leds in mine. Also, I got the Corsair Carbide Air 540 so while it was amazing for cable management and the airflow is terrific, its a giant box, so no hiding it behind my 28" monitors.

Newegg is having a blast deal on a 1 TB Samsung EVO Sata 3 SSD for $69
That is a crazy steal. If I hadn't recently bought a 2 TB I would buy 2 or 3 of them

I wouldn't mind the LED nonsense if I could figure out how to turn the f*cking things off.

Alas, the piece of software that's supposed to control them doesn't work.

fangblackbone wrote:

Newegg is having a blast deal on a 1 TB Samsung EVO Sata 3 SSD for $69
That is a crazy steal. If I hadn't recently bought a 2 TB I would buy 2 or 3 of them :)

Have a link? I can't seem to find the deal....

WipEout wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

Newegg is having a blast deal on a 1 TB Samsung EVO Sata 3 SSD for $69
That is a crazy steal. If I hadn't recently bought a 2 TB I would buy 2 or 3 of them :)

Have a link? I can't seem to find the deal.... :(

Only seeing the one at $97.99 here. (With email promo code EMCXTWVD2.) Still a great price, but I was about to buy one if it was $69.

Help me Goodjers!

My Gameguru-built i5 rig is going on about 7 years old, and I am starting to look at pricing out a new PC for music production (and games!). The big bottlenecks in my current machine are RAM and CPU - for sample-based music production, RAM is arguably more important than processing power, and I am regularly coming close to maxing out my existing 32GB of RAM.

So I'm interested in the best bang for the buck for CPU, and also the most stable way to cram at least 64GB of RAM into a PC. I haven't researched computer hardware for the better part of a decade, so any advice y'all can give me would be deeply appreciated.

Would have bought one for $70 as well!!!

Podunk wrote:

So I'm interested in the best bang for the buck for CPU, and also the most stable way to cram at least 64GB of RAM into a PC.

Ballpark budget?

Best bang for buck CPU will be an AMD Ryzen.

Only seeing the one at $97.99 here. (With email promo code EMCXTWVD2.) Still a great price, but I was about to buy one if it was $69.

This... blah!

WizKid wrote:

Best bang for buck CPU will be an AMD Ryzen.

Agreed-- you're going to get more cores/speed for your money with a Ryzen than Intel right now. And most motherboards allow 64GB RAM these days (though I rarely see AMD boards supporting more than that), just make sure the sticks you choose are on the recommended/tested list that's usually provided by the motherboard's maker.

*Legion* wrote:

Ballpark budget?

Well...I'm kind of in the budgeting phase here. It'll be for business use, and I don't want to upgrade for a long time, so I'm prepared to dump a fair amount into it.

I am hoping to keep the 1070 ti and sample SSDs from my existing system, so I can focus resources on CPU/mobo/RAM.

People have brought up Ryzen, but I think we're looking at Threadripper territory here.

Chipsets for the normal consumer Ryzen CPU lines max out at 64GB, so you can get there, but it's going to be a more uncommon setup for the platform. But 64GB and beyond will be a very standard configuration for a pro workstation platform like Threadripper.

I don't have any hands-on experience with Threadripper. But if I was exploring doing a build for this purpose, my ballpark starting point would be a 2900-series Threadripper chip, an X399 motherboard, and DDR4-3600 RAM in a quad-channel configuration (4x16GB) because TR benefits from fast memory every bit as much as standard Ryzen, perhaps more so.

Reusing your 1070ti and existing SSDs would not be a problem.

*Legion* wrote:

People have brought up Ryzen, but I think we're looking at Threadripper territory here.

Ah yeah, this definitely sounds like a path worth exploring. I know a bunch of pro composers are using Xeon and Threadripper-based machines now, for exactly the reasons you're describing.