Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

apaksl wrote:

1440p 144hz will also need a really strong GPU, like probably at least a $400 GPU. I'm guessing with your GTX970 you're playing games at 1080p on your 4k monitor?

Some games are higher rez but 1080P is okay with me.

The motherboad may be an issue. I have 0 AMD processors at home and did a little searching for pricing on the x570 boards and they are $250+ which is significantly more than I wish to spend on a motherboard. It's actually cheaper to buy an X470 and a Ryzen 1200. Maybe I can find someone local who has one.

Edit: It looks like Asus has a way to flash the bios without a cpu. Assuming this does what I think it does I may be able to update the bios without the cpu.

fangblackbone wrote:

The problem is that high end 12 core ryzen 3 part for $500 that smokes the 8 core high end intel $1200 CPU...
I'm even tempted to drop $500 on a CPU and I haven't spent more than $170, ever. (well I did buy a dual pentium pro 150 for about $700 including the motherboard)

12% is a mere pittance.

The highest end Intel part that arguably makes sense for a gaming PC is the i9 9900K which is around $500. The extra $500 for the X variant would be better spent on a better GPU or better cooling or more RAM or just about anything else. It looks like performance wise the Ryzen 7 3800X is going to be a good match for that chip at around $100 less and the 3900X is probably going to destroy it for about the same price.

Again though, if you're going to have to wait for Ryzen 3000 to come out why not wait for B550 chipset motherboards and at least see if the pricing makes sense.

I've heard 1080p looks bad on a 1440p monitor, but I've never tried it.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

I'm thinking about doing a PC upgrade. (...) Anyway, been speccing out a Ryzen 3x00 (likely 3600 as the 200mhz of the x doesn't seem worthwhile) system and wanted to see about a few things.

One, will going to 32gb of ram be worthwhile?

No.

Second, would it be worthwhile to wait until the X570 boards come out? Currently, I'm looking at an Asrock B450.

apaksl mentions the BIOS issue, which is true. With the 2nd gen Ryzens, AMD offered loaner CPUs for people to request and use to update their motherboards. They call it a "boot kit". I expect they will continue to offer it for 3rd gen Ryzens. A good emergency fallback option in the event that you get a board with a BIOS that is too old.

All that said, there will without a doubt be B550 boards to buy soon enough.

B550 is said to be lacking PCIe 4.0, but PCIe 4.0 doesn't matter. GPUs aren't maxing out PCIe 3.0. In fact current GPUs don't even show a performance loss using PCIe 3.0 x8 instead of PCIe 3.0 x16. PCIe 4.0 is purely for future performance.

Is it worthwhile to "upgrade" my monitor to a 144 hz monitor?

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: f**k yes. At least in my opinion.

You mention playing Overwatch, and if memory serves, you played a ton of Team Fortress 2. For the kind of games you play, I think you would very much enjoy how high refresh rate gameplay feels.

And would I need to upgrade the video card if I did (note I don't need to game at anything above 1080P).

Hmm. You certainly can take advantage of an over-60hz monitor at 1080p with a GTX 970, assuming you're willing to tweak your settings to get the performance you need. My secondary system has a 1080p 144hz monitor with an RX 480. Not everything runs at 144hz, but you don't have to hit 144hz to take advantage of the monitor. The jump from 60hz to 100hz is huge, the jump from 100hz to 144hz is comparatively much smaller.

I was going to say something about playing at 1080p on a monitor that has a higher than 1080p native resolution, thus meaning you have to live with the quality loss that scaling brings. But you're already doing that, apparently, playing on that 4K monitor. (Even though 1080p *should* perfectly pixel-double to scale up on a 4K screen, in practice screens almost never actually do this, and still interpolate instead). So if that's something you can live with, playing 1080p on a 1440p screen might not be a problem.

(Also, many games now offer render scaling, so you can set the game to output 1440p but set the render resolution to 75%, thus rendering the game at 1080p but having the UI elements, etc, appear at native res)

There are two main reasons I can see to go to 32 gigs: if you do actual work with the computer, the extra RAM can be really handy at times. For instance, for virtualization, having 32 gigs makes it easy to host, say, a 4GB guest OS without even noticing its impact on your overall system.

The other is that, at least to my understanding, many of the AMD chips will only reach high memory speeds on two RAM sticks. If you go to 4, you have to dial back the clock speed. And because of the way the chips are architected, memory speed matters a lot for overall system throughput. Apparently inter-chip communication is clocked at the memory interface speed, so you can see disproportionate performance gains in multi-threaded apps with faster RAM. (and many games are going widely multithreaded.)

In turn, this means that you may never want to populate more than 2 sticks, so buying big sticks now means you won't have to throw away 16 gigs of RAM in the future, and you won't have to worry about it anymore. CPU lifetimes are long enough that anything you buy now will probably still be useful when 16 gigs isn't enough, so just shrugging and putting 32 in there might potentially save you money and hassle in the long run, now that RAM is getting reasonable again. By the time 32 gigs isn't enough, it'll likely be time for a CPU/motherboard upgrade anyway.

That said: going to a 120/144Hz monitor is much more important. If money's tight and you have to choose one or the other, choose the monitor.

*Legion* wrote:

All that said, there will without a doubt be B550 boards to buy soon enough

All current estimates have B550 and whatever the A series chipset ends up being not being close to ready and not expected until 2020. Maybe don't count on that release if you want to build or upgrade something soon.

Yeah, it's not confirmed official news, but it's come out of every reliable hardware news outlet at this point, and is always sourced to motherboard manufacturers.

Also: for the love of all that is nice and good about PC gaming, get a high refresh rate monitor. 60hz panels should all be taken out behind the shed old yeller style.

Thin_J wrote:

All current estimates have B550 and whatever the A series chipset ends up being not being close to ready and not expected until 2020. Maybe don't count on that release if you want to build or upgrade something soon.

Yeah, I just heard that reported on gamers nexus. bummer.

Thin_J wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

All that said, there will without a doubt be B550 boards to buy soon enough

All current estimates have B550 and whatever the A series chipset ends up being not being close to ready and not expected until 2020. Maybe don't count on that release if you want to build or upgrade something soon.

Yeah, it's not confirmed official news, but it's come out of every reliable hardware news outlet at this point, and is always sourced to motherboard manufacturers.

Also: for the love of all that is nice and good about PC gaming, get a high refresh rate monitor. 60hz panels should all be taken out behind the shed old yeller style.

I had not heard that about the B550 boards, that's disappointing.

But sure enough, like apaksl said, it's in the latest post on GN.

Seems an odd way to fumble the ball when you're on the precipice of a great CPU launch.

This is AMD. If they got things right, they'd be Intel.

Thanks all. I think I'm going to investigate the loaner cps and the usb bios flashback as well. I've got most of what I need in my cart on newegg but need to decide on a board and a monitor. I'll likely skip the ram at this point. I don't have a need for virtualization for home use (I do at work but have a 2018 MBP for that).

Legion I basically went from ignoring other games to play TF2 to ignoring other games to play Overwatch. Almost all of my gaming is FPS even if I'm not playing Overwatch. I really don't care about turning things down but it looks like a 970 should be fine at 1080P 144. If not I'll upgrade. Overall it sounds like I'd get more out of a 144hz monitor than a new video card (same with 32gb of ram).

I'm going to be recycling my 500gb SSD and a 256 gb m.2 ssd.

Is there an issue with having a 144hz monitor paired with a 60hz one? Currently I have two 60hz monitors.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

Legion I basically went from ignoring other games to play TF2 to ignoring other games to play Overwatch. Almost all of my gaming is FPS even if I'm not playing Overwatch. I really don't care about turning things down but it looks like a 970 should be fine at 1080P 144. If not I'll upgrade.

Overwatch isn't the most demanding game out there, so you may be right.

FPS games benefit the most from high refresh rate displays. Rainbow Six: Siege is what got me on the 144hz+ train.

Is there an issue with having a 144hz monitor paired with a 60hz one? Currently I have two 60hz monitors.

Nope. My gaming PC has a 165hz main monitor and a 60hz secondary monitor.

a 970 should be fine at 1080P 144

That might be okay. My 970 will often handle 1600p at 60Hz as long as I turn antialiasing off (which doesn't matter very much at high resolution anyway). 1080p is about half that many pixels, so you should be able to drive 120Hz okay if the game isn't too advanced. Bandwidth is probably going to be your big issue, so the first thing to turn off or turn down would be full-screen effects. (antialiasing being one of them.)

edit: and I've played a little Overwatch at 1600p, and it seemed to run very nicely. You should be okay, I think.

People say you can’t see 144hz. But when my system freaks out and locks things at 60, Overwatch is almost unplayable.

Once I had used 120hz and then 144hz for a little while 60hz displays started to feel terrible to use even just mousing around in windows.

As a point of further reference on the 970's performance: I just picked up Assassin's Creed Odyssey in the sale, and I'm getting mid-50 frame rates at 1920x1200, High settings, but with antialiasing dropped back to Low. It has a couple of real slow frames in the benchmark, but is highly playable.

The game defaulted to 2560x1600 at Very High, and it was averaging 29fps, with drops to like 15. Definitely not going to handle that.

The AC series has never been all that zippy, performance-wise, so this may not be representative of the overall gaming scene. With this title, though, if you want to drive a 1080p monitor at 120Hz or higher, and you want High or Very High graphic settings, you're gonna need a lot more horsepower than what a 970 can give you. I'm having a fine time, and with my 60Hz monitor I'm still good, but if you're a high-framerater, this game needs pretty beefy video hardware.

Odyssey is absolutely killer at the higher settings. Especially Volumetric Clouds. Even my 2080 struggles to get up past 65 or 70 fps at Ultra/Lowered Volumetric Clouds.

It does look great, mind you, but I'm certainly not trying to push it up to 165HZ that the my monitor can theoretically push... mine you not many games do get up to those FPS. But I wouldn't use Odyssey as a benchmark for comparing to other games, it appears to be particularly brutal to push up to the higher reaches.

Some game engines aren't really made to scale up beyond 60fps. Particularly console-first games, which the Assassin's Creed series is.

Even in titles that aren't framerate-capped, you'll still find games which clearly reach an equilibrium around 60fps, and scaling beyond that takes a disproportionate amount of additional power.

I ordered a new monitor last night. Should be in Sunday. Acer 32" 144hz 2k. They had it on sale yesterday for $350.

I've been looking at the benchmarks for Overwatch and the 970 should hit 120+ at 1080P high and around 90 at 2k (about 120 at 2k medium). The 1060 3gb is a little better so I'll likely use that card and give the 970 to my son. It looks like if I want high quality and 2k I'll need at least a 1660/vega 56 and turn a few things off in HQ to hit 120. Probably stick with what I have until things shake out with AMDs new cards.

I did see a few systems on craigslist with Ryzen 1600s. Prices seem pretty good overall and both motherboards have announced support for the 3600. One has an RX590 but a 350 motherboard (though it does have bios support for 3600).

EvilHomer3k wrote:

I did see a few systems on craigslist with Ryzen 1600s. Prices seem pretty good overall and both motherboards have announced support for the 3600. One has an RX590 but a 350 motherboard (though it does have bios support for 3600).

That's not a bad way to go.

The main thing you lose by running a newer Ryzen on a B350 board is Precison Boost Overdrive (PBO), which is kind of a semi-automatic boost clock overclocking feature, not something which is enabled by default. If you're not particularly interested in messing with boost clocks (and it doesn't sound like it was in your plans), this absence won't affect you. You will still get the boost clocks that are listed on the CPU's box.

Beyond that, the B450 has a better VRM (mostly affecting overclockers), and better support for higher-clocked RAM (which also is technically overclocking). If you find a good deal that includes a B350 board, I wouldn't let those small differences scare you off.

Medmey wrote:

Any thoughts on this budget monitor?
Dell 24 Inch Gaming Monitor, 1ms response time, 144Hz AMD FreeSync

$170

As I've recently been looking at 144hz panels here's what I can say. The amazon reviews are mostly positive. It's 'only' a 1080P monitor (that's not good or bad it just is). 144hz and 1ms response time should be great for gaming. It has HDMI 1.4 and not all monitors with hdmi 1.4 support 144hz (some only support 60, some 120, some 144. Depends on the monitor). Some people have reported that it works with 144hz but they are suspect (saying that 1.4 supports 144hz at 1080P which is true but not all montors support it. The short of it is that I wouldn't trust it to support 144hz and would recommend using a display port cable.

Overall, it should be a solid panel for playing Overwatch but I'd recommend using display port.

*Legion* wrote:
EvilHomer3k wrote:

I did see a few systems on craigslist with Ryzen 1600s. Prices seem pretty good overall and both motherboards have announced support for the 3600. One has an RX590 but a 350 motherboard (though it does have bios support for 3600).

That's not a bad way to go.

The main thing you lose by running a newer Ryzen on a B350 board is Precison Boost Overdrive (PBO), which is kind of a semi-automatic boost clock overclocking feature, not something which is enabled by default. If you're not particularly interested in messing with boost clocks (and it doesn't sound like it was in your plans), this absence won't affect you. You will still get the boost clocks that are listed on the CPU's box.

Beyond that, the B450 has a better VRM (mostly affecting overclockers), and better support for higher-clocked RAM (which also is technically overclocking). If you find a good deal that includes a B350 board, I wouldn't let those small differences scare you off.

Thanks, Legion. I was wondering what I'd lose with the B350. I think the linked system is a good deal overall but there's a lot of things included I don't need. I'm not great at selling things once I no longer have use for them (which is the bigger deal for me). I think I'll email the guy and check on the drives in the system. He doesn't mention what they are. If I were to actually sell the things I don't need that come with it, it would be a cheap way to get into Ryzen.

Medmey wrote:

Any thoughts on this budget monitor?
Dell 24 Inch Gaming Monitor, 1ms response time, 144Hz AMD FreeSync

$170

This panel seems to have some significant issues with ghosting. I would recommend looking at alternatives like the ViewSonic XG2401

Any concerns with refurbished GPUs on Newegg? or refurbished in general? Seems like a nice price drop if the product works fine.

I'm a little bummed AMD is sticking with the embargo on reviews until release day.

They keep doing it and it just doesn't make any sense when you know the demand is already high and your product is exactly what people want at the time.

Annoying.

I'm always wary of companies that do this. It strongly implies that word-of-mouth will be substantially negative once people actually have the product in-hand.

Malor wrote:

I'm always wary of companies that do this. It strongly implies that word-of-mouth will be substantially negative once people actually have the product in-hand.

This hasn't been the case for either Ryzen release and both were release day embargo'd.

If I had to guess its probably more around the GPU's than the CPU's.. for the most part people know what they are getting with the latest Ryzen.. its the GPU that early reviews could significantly damage.. as well given Nvidia Marketing reach the last thing you want is a flood of early negative and reviews complaining that the latest GPU's don't match up with 2080's and 2080Ti's. Creates negative feelings that AMD can't afford.

Companies embargo stories all the time. It's not just about controlling information, it's about being respectful to the media planning to cover your announcement. Now if a company doesn't make a product available for review at all ahead of its launch, then yeah they know they're launching a piece of sh*t.

Lets face it...it’s still nothing compared to what Nvidia did with the 2000 series launch.