Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

TheGameguru wrote:

The existence of a next generation Ryzen and Mobo socket won’t make your existing Ryzen 5xxx and AM4 slower than it is today. You will still get 5-7 years out of it.

No, but it'll make me feel more inferior.

merphle wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

The existence of a next generation Ryzen and Mobo socket won’t make your existing Ryzen 5xxx and AM4 slower than it is today. You will still get 5-7 years out of it.

No, but it'll make me feel more inferior. :)

Well, if you want that experience I'm sure we can make it happen in other ways. *goes to check merphle's Steam game list*

merphle wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

The existence of a next generation Ryzen and Mobo socket won’t make your existing Ryzen 5xxx and AM4 slower than it is today. You will still get 5-7 years out of it.

No, but it'll make me feel more inferior. :)

Avoid consumer tech then lol.

Who am I kidding? If I find a 5900x in stock, I'll snap it up in a heartbeat.

Yeah and don't forget how much longer it will take for AM5 to have availability too. It might get better by that point but it is also very likely there will be another price bump and limited availability for 2 years post launch.

So you are looking at up to 3 years to get your hands on AM5.

You also have to ask yourself is 8K gaming going to be a thing? Which do you think is more sustainable and popular, DLSS or GPUs beefier than a 3090? High end cards are already priced out of the average consumer's budget without scalping markups.

I don't see the trends for more powerful yet cheaper GPUs in the next 5 years because I don't see AMD or Nvidia bucking the trend. With that in mind, it is much more likely for DLSS and its competitors to boost gaming on 2060s or even 580s at 4K with all/most of the bells and whistles. And AMD and Nvidia will be happily sitting on their piles of cash made off all the mining corporations gobbling up their overpriced GPUs.

Ok after lots of reviews and reading and trying to sort through things the last few days since my CPU suddenly shipped a month early, I think I have a PC build.

Obviously the CPU is already bought, and I'm using the old video card to start the build, with intent to upgrade when things get cheaper. Or when one of you buys a new card and sells me your old in the trading thread again. I think the motherboard, case, and RAM (3600, C16) are set. I left the filter on the RAM so something cheaper could pop up I guess, but Crucial seems good right now.

The MSI boards have the front connector for the Phanteks 500A USB. The $20 more version of the current board (pro-A) chosen by the filter has some lighting or something? A little more gets faster network, which I don't have, and would have to buy a new router if I ever did get... just excessive spending. Trying to stay cheapish here but still be a good upgrade.

The thing I'm not sure about... I think that hard drive is the Samsung Gen3 instead of Gen4 SSD? It seems impossible to tell the difference on PC part picker, but looking at Amazon specs I think I actually want the Samsung 980 instead of 970? $30 more, but since the board has one Gen4 slot I should use it right? Then I'm wondering if I should cut back to 500GB instead of 1TB to save money? But storage is something you always end up wanting more of right? As I mentioned the other day, my old SSD was a small 120GB one and basically I've ended up rarely playing any games from that drive because there wasn't enough space. Hoping to correct that this time around. So gen3 would be a step up for me... but gen4 is right there...

And the other thing is power supply... I left the parametric filter on 650-750W modular. There's tons of options. I'm not particularly loyal to any brand there. I see there's a Phanteks for $20 more or so that would probably fit the case very well? But really, I'm lost on PSU. Plugged in a couple of the nice recent video cards and they don't get anywhere close to that wattage, so maybe that's too much? I don't know. Any advice?

Thanks all.

Quick thoughts on this Intel cpu/mb/ram setup:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/2YCWTJ

Pretty simple overall. (Will be getting a different cooler, just left the auto cooler PCP inserted.)

Already have case, gpu, psu, etc. Right now I'm planning on keeping my current ssd. Will upgrade there at some point, probably when I get a new gpu in a couple years.

garion333 wrote:
merphle wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

The existence of a next generation Ryzen and Mobo socket won’t make your existing Ryzen 5xxx and AM4 slower than it is today. You will still get 5-7 years out of it.

No, but it'll make me feel more inferior. :)

Well, if you want that experience I'm sure we can make it happen in other ways. *goes to check merphle's Steam game list*

I play Dark Souls. I feel inferior enough as it is.

Update on my cooling saga. While replacing the thermal paste and giving the AIO radiator a quick scrub helped with CPU heats at load, it still didn't stop the fans on the AIO from winding up to their loud max speed on occasion.

Turns out that when my GPU started cranking out the heat, it outputs all that heat into the case and thus my AIO becomes less efficient.

So I thought outside the box. Literally.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/vtzVPnI.jpg)

A $20 USB tabletop fan.

Open case design, a classic.

All sides should be metal mesh with slots for dust filters. Why even have an enclosed case anyway?

Any way to get most of those cables on the back side of that mobo? Looks pretty congested on that pic.

Stele and Garion both: MSI is a seriously sh*tty company, and I'd point you toward almost anyone else. If you need support or a board replacement, to all accounts they're actively hostile. They've screwed a couple of GWJers.

I typically use ASUS. Their support supposedly works, but it's slow. I've had little trouble with their boards, so I've never had to test it. I have one cheapo ASRock board which is still running just fine. And Gigabyte is supposedly decent. But I wouldn't buy MSI anything.

Stele: I'm tending to think bigger power supplies are a better idea, now. The claimed TDPs are the same, but the actual power use has gone way up in more current chips. High-tier Intel chips can draw 300 watts for close to a minute before dropping back to 125W; combine that with a 300-watt card like a 3080, and you'd really be putting the whammy on a 650. Because of that, I'm inclined toward 850-watters now if you can get a good one for a reasonable price. The current brand I trust most is Seasonic. Their supplies are expensive, but excellent quality.

On SSDs: The 970 Evo is fine. The 970 Pro, further upscale, is among the best PCIe3 drives. The 980 is not actually better; it's supposed to be a cost-reduced version. It should be cheaper, not more expensive. The 970 Pro is a much better drive, and the Evo you picked is somewhat better. Only buy a 980 if it's substantially cheaper than a 970.

Garion: Again, MSI sucks. The ASUS PRIME Z590M-PLUS looks comparable, and is about $15 cheaper. It's out of stock at Newegg ATM, though.

You could also save some cash by dropping back to an H570 board. Looks like ASRock has a couple for about $110, but all out of stock right now at Newegg. ASUS has a super-premium version, but it's actually more expensive than their cheapest Z590 board, which seems pretty weird.

As far as I can tell, the tradeoff is slots and I/O. At least on this ASRock H570 board, you only get one x16 PCIe4 slot. The second is PCIe3 x4, and you get a single PCIe3 x1. (The Z590M from ASUS has one PCIe4 x16, one PCIe3 x16, and three PCIe3 x1s.) You get only four SATA ports, versus 5 on that specific ASUS 590 (I think others might have six). And you get two M.2 slot on the 570, versus three on the 590.

Basically, everything is a little cut-down, but the reduced slot and port counts might be worth it to save $80.

I also gotta say, Intel really sucks for hyper-segmenting their chipset lines. Good god, it took me an hour to sort through that pile 'o crap. The marketers have way way too much power at that company.

Malor wrote:

Stele and Garion both: MSI is a seriously sh*tty company, and I'd point you toward almost anyone else. If you need support or a board replacement, to all accounts they're actively hostile. They've screwed a couple of GWJers.

I'm not discounting the experiences of other GWJers, but MSI has been totally fine for me. My last two (or three?) motherboards were MSI, and I think a couple GPUs as well. One of the motherboards was DOA, but the RMA process was smooth, painless, and reasonably quick - two week turnaround from initial RMA request to receiving a fresh new board.

Not trying to start a fight; just offering one (tiny and anecdotal) counter-point.

I’ve also had good experiences with MSI motherboards and GPU’s over the years. Never bought anything else from them though so I can’t speak for their other products. I did just buy a new 3080 Laptop from them that arrives next week so I will report on that. This is after a few years of buying Gigabyte Aeros.

Yeah, I've also had good experiences with their boards, which are really available atm which is the real reason I'm getting one. Lol

Asus is simply sold out right now, except for the highest end.

Heretk wrote:

Any way to get most of those cables on the back side of that mobo? Looks pretty congested on that pic.

Probably.

MSI is scummy and I prefer to avoid them now whenever possible, but I had to set that aside as MSI's 3080 is the one I managed to get Best Buy to sell me.

Avoid them when you can, but in a supply constrained market, do what you gotta do.

garion333 wrote:

Yeah, I've also had good experiences with their boards, which are really available atm which is the real reason I'm getting one. Lol

Asus is simply sold out right now, except for the highest end.

Geeze, you aren't kidding. I didn't realize stock was so bad on the low end. I guess the rest of the market agrees that cheapo Intel chips and boards are an acceptable solution.

So, yeah, component shortage outweighs brand loyalty. Sigh.

edit: in digging around some more, it looks like you can get Intel chips, but not cheap boards. On the AMD side, you can get B550 boards (which are quite good) at about $150, but the chips are scarce. Argh.

Moggy wrote:

Update on my cooling saga. While replacing the thermal paste and giving the AIO radiator a quick scrub helped with CPU heats at load, it still didn't stop the fans on the AIO from winding up to their loud max speed on occasion.

Turns out that when my GPU started cranking out the heat, it outputs all that heat into the case and thus my AIO becomes less efficient.

So I thought outside the box. Literally.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/vtzVPnI.jpg)

A $20 USB tabletop fan.

wait your aio should be pulling in fresh air from outside the case, not pushing air inside the case out.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

wait your aio should be pulling in fresh air from outside the case, not pushing air inside the case out.

Not necessarily. A top mounted AIO pushing case air through the rad and out of the case is common.

Especially if you have strong intake from the front of the case, making the top mount AIO intake as well is just going to result in excessive positive air pressure, and will constrain airflow.

Granted, if you're running the case with the side panel off, then there isn't going to be any pressure buildup as the air can move freely.

*Legion* wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

wait your aio should be pulling in fresh air from outside the case, not pushing air inside the case out.

Not necessarily. A top mounted AIO pushing case air through the rad and out of the case is common.

Especially if you have strong intake from the front of the case, making the top mount AIO intake as well is just going to result in excessive positive air pressure, and will constrain airflow.

Granted, if you're running the case with the side panel off, then there isn't going to be any pressure buildup as the air can move freely.

in that case I would switch the front fans to exhaust. That's what I did when I was using an AIO and it was like a 20c drop compared with using the AIO fan for exhaust. My case is tiny though so my results may be more dramatic than in a larger case.

Malor wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Yeah, I've also had good experiences with their boards, which are really available atm which is the real reason I'm getting one. Lol

Asus is simply sold out right now, except for the highest end.

Geeze, you aren't kidding. I didn't realize stock was so bad on the low end. I guess the rest of the market agrees that cheapo Intel chips and boards are an acceptable solution.

So, yeah, component shortage outweighs brand loyalty. Sigh.

edit: in digging around some more, it looks like you can get Intel chips, but not cheap boards. On the AMD side, you can get B550 boards (which are quite good) at about $150, but the chips are scarce. Argh.

Yup, one of the reason I was looking at the $300 AMD chips is because they were available and with decent boards, but I went the other way because of the 590 board supporter faster RAM out of the box and 2.5 GB ethernet (though the Intel controller apparently had issues in the past, hmm).

Do appreciate the warning in MSI but...not many choices out there.

Yeah if I want to use the front USB-C on that Phanteks 500A, the only B550 boards that do it are MSI or $250+ Asus. I like Asus, have one in my current system that has lasted 6 years. But I can save $100. Or I can find another case, but that one seems universally loved.

If there's an x570 board that has the connector and is sub-$200 let me know but I didn't see any. Trying to make the best of budget and case and stock situations.

Malor, thanks for PSU thoughts. More watts can't hurt. Never know what video card I will finally upgrade to and when. Better be prepared.

I recently started working for a company that also deals in PC components, B2B only but employees can place orders too. But my hopes on a 3070 were quashed quickly. Even this company, who has a reputation for being able to deliver when others have zero stock, has a prognosis on any recent videocard of ... December 2021.

Yikes...

Chairman_Mao wrote:
*Legion* wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

wait your aio should be pulling in fresh air from outside the case, not pushing air inside the case out.

Not necessarily. A top mounted AIO pushing case air through the rad and out of the case is common.

Especially if you have strong intake from the front of the case, making the top mount AIO intake as well is just going to result in excessive positive air pressure, and will constrain airflow.

Granted, if you're running the case with the side panel off, then there isn't going to be any pressure buildup as the air can move freely.

in that case I would switch the front fans to exhaust. That's what I did when I was using an AIO and it was like a 20c drop compared with using the AIO fan for exhaust. My case is tiny though so my results may be more dramatic than in a larger case.

Hmm. Good points both ways. Might be worth trying. My case has this stupid louvre thing on the top that really restricts air flow. Seemed like a good idea back then. Not so much now. Switching the front fans would mean pulling the drive bays, so a lot more work. There's plenty of air flow below the gfx card, but the card is basically creating a wall half way up the case.

garion333 wrote:
Malor wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Yeah, I've also had good experiences with their boards, which are really available atm which is the real reason I'm getting one. Lol

Asus is simply sold out right now, except for the highest end.

Geeze, you aren't kidding. I didn't realize stock was so bad on the low end. I guess the rest of the market agrees that cheapo Intel chips and boards are an acceptable solution.

So, yeah, component shortage outweighs brand loyalty. Sigh.

edit: in digging around some more, it looks like you can get Intel chips, but not cheap boards. On the AMD side, you can get B550 boards (which are quite good) at about $150, but the chips are scarce. Argh.

Yup, one of the reason I was looking at the $300 AMD chips is because they were available and with decent boards, but I went the other way because of the 590 board supporter faster RAM out of the box and 2.5 GB ethernet (though the Intel controller apparently had issues in the past, hmm).

Do appreciate the warning in MSI but...not many choices out there.

I'm unclear on whether RAM speed is even a thing on current Intel chips. The 11400, at least, seems to be limited to DDR4-3200. Does anyone know if those can be overclocked? And if so, does it matter? Older generations of Intel weren't that sensitive to RAM speed, but I'm not sure what the present situation is.

On the AMD side, it's my understanding that getting over DDR4-3600 is usually a bad idea. It typically means you have to break the 1:2 ratio of FCLK to DRAM. FCLK on Ryzen 3 seems to reach 1800MHz universally, on every chip, but I gather that going faster is questionable. In turn, if you clock the RAM faster than 3600, this breaks the 1:2 ideal ratio, which means that faster RAM will be slower, at least until you reach a substantially higher clock speed. I'm not sure when it catches up. They may not even make RAM that fast yet.

But on the Intel side, I'm really unclear on whether it matters. ASUS stresses how incredibly fast the RAM can be on their recent Intel chipset boards, but that might all be marketing. I'll have to go scour YouTube, I guess, to find out.

dejanzie wrote:

Even this company, who has a reputation for being able to deliver when others have zero stock, has a prognosis on any recent videocard of ... December 2021.

Yikes...

I worry even this is not pessimistic enough.

Malor wrote:
garion333 wrote:
Malor wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Yeah, I've also had good experiences with their boards, which are really available atm which is the real reason I'm getting one. Lol

Asus is simply sold out right now, except for the highest end.

Geeze, you aren't kidding. I didn't realize stock was so bad on the low end. I guess the rest of the market agrees that cheapo Intel chips and boards are an acceptable solution.

So, yeah, component shortage outweighs brand loyalty. Sigh.

edit: in digging around some more, it looks like you can get Intel chips, but not cheap boards. On the AMD side, you can get B550 boards (which are quite good) at about $150, but the chips are scarce. Argh.

Yup, one of the reason I was looking at the $300 AMD chips is because they were available and with decent boards, but I went the other way because of the 590 board supporter faster RAM out of the box and 2.5 GB ethernet (though the Intel controller apparently had issues in the past, hmm).

Do appreciate the warning in MSI but...not many choices out there.

I'm unclear on whether RAM speed is even a thing on current Intel chips. The 11400, at least, seems to be limited to DDR4-3200. Does anyone know if those can be overclocked? And if so, does it matter? Older generations of Intel weren't that sensitive to RAM speed, but I'm not sure what the present situation is.

On the AMD side, it's my understanding that getting over DDR4-3600 is usually a bad idea. It typically means you have to break the 1:2 ratio of FCLK to DRAM. FCLK on Ryzen 3 seems to reach 1800MHz universally, on every chip, but I gather that going faster is questionable. In turn, if you clock the RAM faster than 3600, this breaks the 1:2 ideal ratio, which means that faster RAM will be slower, at least until you reach a substantially higher clock speed. I'm not sure when it catches up. They may not even make RAM that fast yet.

But on the Intel side, I'm really unclear on whether it matters. ASUS stresses how incredibly fast the RAM can be on their recent Intel chipset boards, but that might all be marketing. I'll have to go scour YouTube, I guess, to find out.

I mentioned it because the 590 allows 3200 out of the box while the 490s that were available were only up to 3000, I think. Something like that. So went with the fastest ram that wouldn't require voiding some sort of warranty.

I'm not looking to overclock anything at this point, mostly because I don't want to have to massively invest in cooling. Or in expensive and quiet cooling.

Yeah and some of those AMD B550 boards support 4000 or 4400... but from what I can read the 3600 C16 is the best safe speed, so that's what I'm going for now.

There was some 3600 CL14 RAM available when I was buying this board, but it was ferociously expensive.