Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

I'll defer to GN for board recommendations:

I have the ASUS TUF Gaming X570 and have been happy with it. But if Im doing a budget build, I'd probably look at a B550 board. My living room build is a 3600X on a BIOS-updated B350 board.

*Legion* wrote:

I'll defer to GN for board recommendations:

I have the ASUS TUF Gaming X570 and have been happy with it. But if Im doing a budget build, I'd probably look at a B550 board. My living room build is a 3600X on a BIOS-updated B350 board.

Very happy with my 5600x and b550 mobo as a home PC and gaming rig. CPUs seem to have a much longer lifespan than GPUs.

Hello everyone! Welp, it’s that time of the year again, the time where I’m thinking of changing my rig. That and I tried to stream Control this weekend and it was chugging big time. For the record, here’s what I’ve got currently:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (Purchased For €0.00)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 CPU Cooler (Purchased For €0.00)
Motherboard: MSI X370 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard (Purchased For €0.00)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL14 Memory (Purchased For €0.00)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Storage: Samsung 870 QVO 4 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Storage: Western Digital Red Pro 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Storage: Western Digital Red Pro 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB GAMING TRIO Video Card (Purchased For €0.00)
Case: be quiet! Pure Base 600 ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For €0.00)
Power Supply: Corsair CXM V2 (2017) 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For €0.00)

Here’s what I’m considering:
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K 3.2 GHz 8-Core Processor (€729.98 @ Alternate)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Silent Loop 2 240 73.33 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (€127.16 @ Amazon France)
Motherboard: Asus ProArt Z690-CREATOR WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard (€576.99 @ Amazon France)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5200 CL38 Memory (€407.90 @ LDLC)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Storage: Samsung 870 QVO 4 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Storage: Corsair MP600 Core 4 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (€590.98 @ Alternate)
Storage: Western Digital Red Pro 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Storage: Western Digital Red Pro 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For €0.00)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB GAMING TRIO Video Card (Purchased For €0.00)
Case: be quiet! Pure Base 600 ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For €0.00)
Power Supply: Corsair CXM V2 (2017) 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For €0.00)

I’d added in the previous parts I have and plan to keep if only to asses power requirements. Does anything look glaringly off? Thoughts, suggestions? I’ll take anything, and thank you so much. (And yes, it’s a lot of storage, but I have a lot of BluRays I store on there and no NAS, no external HDs ^^)

Maybe a new and beefier PSU? Intel still seems to be pushing high tdps to maximize performance, and then if you ever upgrade the GPU you'll definitely need it. Otherwise looks like a beast of a machine.

Do you specifically want to go to Intel instead of AMD?

If you're throwing that much money at the build I too would upgrade your PSU while in there. Or not if you're super happy with your cable management.

That motherboard is a beast!

The 12900K is basically a ball of fire that does some computation:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/oloNOOz.png)

Given that, if I were buying it, I would put in the absolute biggest AIO that my case can hold. 240mm wouldn't cut it for me. Looks like that Be Quiet case supports 360mm.

Also, given that you seem to favor Be Quiet gear, I'm guessing you like things to not be loud. This CPU will be working pretty strongly against that, because you're gonna have to move some serious air to keep it cool.

Good point. Unfortunately it's the fastest chip out there, but it is power hungry and hot. The heat can be handled, but the wattage might be a problem going from amd to Intel.

The good news is that Intel brought in those smaller e-cores so that normal everyday functions like surfing GWJ or chatting in Discord won't run up your energy bill. Streaming a game though? Gonna be drawing tons of power compared to Ryzen.

I'd be concerned about the power draw, though that's something you can take care of down the road as your pc will boot just fine on your current psu, but you may run into issues when pushing the rig.

Gamers Nexus has recently promised to do streamer-style benchmarking with simultaneous gameplay, encoding, and uploading during testing. This is perhaps just my penchant for delaying purchases while I dither, but I'd be inclined to wait for their results. The 12900K is marginally faster than a 5950X when only playing games, but I wouldn't be surprised if the 16 "performance" cores of the 5950X outperform the 8P/8E of the 12900K when a lot of background tasks are thrown at them.

edit:
Oh, to respond to the actual question. The 12900K can pull 250K when under full load. Add to that another 275W peak from the 2080 and I'd also recommend stepping up to a ~1kW Gold unit. As far as liquid coolers, the Arctic Freezer II series tend to come out on top in all the reviews I've seen.

Yeah I would put in a beefier PSU. Not sure how good that AIO is but you need something really good!

I saw a video recently where it looks like you can use a voltage offset in the bios of some motherboards that may let you reduce the voltage on the cpu slightly. It can help reduce temps. Mileage may vary trying this however. You don't want your system to become unstable.

You would probably get a ton of mileage just upgrading your mobo to a 550 or 570 and your cpu to a 5800x or 5900x. Your first gen ryzen is the thing that is holding you back. You could even go more budget and get a 3800x and then upgrade in a few years to a 5900x or 5950x. Or even go ryzen 6000 at that point.

The point is you have lots of options with your current bones.

Also, what Gaald said about PSU. If you are going latest gen intel, you will need a beefier PSU. Right now intel is "winning" in performance but AMD can nearly match it with older tech and at a much less power draw (over 100w less). Right now AMD has higher idle power draw but dramatically lower draw under load. While intel has 40-50w less at idle but over 100W more under load. Of note is that AMD doesn't have a high draw at idle. Its just that intel's is lower.

IIRC streaming is CPU intensive so that extra power draw is worth considering. Plenty of people streamed on ryzen 3000 so ryzen 5000 or intel 12000 is probably over kill.

garion333 wrote:

Good point. Unfortunately it's the fastest chip out there, but it is power hungry and hot. The heat can be handled, but the wattage might be a problem going from amd to Intel.

TechPowerUp said they achieved "much better temperatures" with Arctic's 360mm AIO, hence that's my main recommendation. I imagine most functional cooling setups for this chip are going to resemble jet engines, but having the biggest radiator you can manage seems the best way to mitigate that somewhat.

Oh, and I would unquestionably be front-mounting the radiator. Radiator position is always a trade-off of whether you want to emphasize CPU or GPU temps, but there's no debate in this setup. You want the CPU getting the benefit of the cooler air.

5900x vs 1800x vs 12900k (only a handful of 12900k samples so far). The 12900k beats the 5900x on a single-core workload, but the 5900x wins overall. Regardless, either of these would be great picks for upgrades over your 1800x, with the AMD at about half the price (both CPU & motherboard) and more efficient runtime energy usage.

Oh Intel

Basically turning off the turbo button in BIOS to run games. Good grief

I wouldn’t buy an Intel over AMD for any reason…the small performance advantage in non GPU bound scenarios isn’t worth all the disadvantages. Plus they suck.

Stele wrote:

Oh Intel

Basically turning off the turbo button in BIOS to run games. Good grief

In this case I'd blame the draconic DRM measures before Intel. Due to... being draconic DRM measures. Heck, Intel should put "anti-Denuvo" as a feature on their box.

Thank you all for your feedback! Apologies for not checking back earlier, but with the forums blocked at work, well...

LeapingGnome wrote:

Do you specifically want to go to Intel instead of AMD?

Not particularly, since I already have a Ryzen right now. That being said, I checked the latest tests in our French digital press, and that Intel CPU seemed to be slightly ahead of the AMDs.

Okay, so the consensus seems to be that I probably should spring for a new PSU, which I'm fine with, so I'll look into it. Maybe this one?
Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2021) 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

Bigger AIO too, I guess. But good grief, I'm scared of watercooling, it feels unnatural. This?
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Silent Loop 2 360 73.33 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (€173.94 @ TopAchat)

*Legion* wrote:

Also, given that you seem to favor Be Quiet gear, I'm guessing you like things to not be loud. This CPU will be working pretty strongly against that, because you're gonna have to move some serious air to keep it cool.

I'm not particularly fussed about the noise, I've had a computer purring beside me before years, and that was a happy accident. I kinda just picked up what was available in a hurry when I was looking for a case with a window and most importantly, bays on the front for my BluRay tray. Because yes, after years and years for getting rid of my floppy and then my CD/DVD tray and having pretty cases with nothing on the front panel, I went back to having a disc tray. Yup.

And yeah, maybe the 12900K is overkill but I guess I'm kinda future proofing and splurging since my birthday is coming up and I've got two dozen vacation days I'll never take and that I'm gonna get paid for. I'll look into the whole AMD versus Intel debate. I've been going back and forth over the past decades, first Intel for the longest time and then AMD in 2006, Intel again in 2008, and in 2013, before switching back to AMD in 2018. So I'm definitely not married to either.

Honestly, I don't think the 12900K is future proofing for the extra few hundred dollars you'd spend on it.
The next gen AMD is rumored to be here in early 2022. But that in a sense hurts your options for AMD. AMD has been on the same socket AM4 for 4 generations so you have largely been able to keep your motherboard and swap out the CPU for a nice boost.

That changes with next gen which will use a new socket AM5. So that's bad news in that you'll have to buy a new motherboard with your CPU. The good news is AMD next gen is going to be a huge boost over current gen. Yes its rumored, but AMD has been pretty much like clockwork with their expectations and deliveries. (CPU + GPU too)

So if you look at the intel side of things, you'd be paying a premium for a bit better than last gen performance.

If you look at AMD if you don't want to wait you have:
5900x + new mobo ($550+$150) for $200 cheaper than intel's 12900K + mobo (with negligible performance difference for what you want to do)
3900x for $450 that you can plop into your current setup (3900x is weaker than a 5900x especially in single core but the 3900x is a huge upgrade over your 1800x)
3800x for $350 which gets the same big boost in single core over the 1800x with the same amount of cores

I forgot to mention why I wanted to change mobos, for two reasons: to switch over to DDR5 and for the two extra SATA slots, if that makes a difference? Honestly, I don't know that I'll wait until early 2022 because I've been getting that itch to switch for months now...

Yeah, don't wait on rumors. Worst case scenario you're unhappy and unload the Intel stuff for 75% what you paid and Switch back to AMD when the new stuff is out in 2022.

If you want to make the move to a DDR5 platform now, then yeah, Intel is the only option until AMD's new platform comes out.

If the cost doesn't bother you, then I think you're fine as long as you add in those scaled-up power supply and cooler options. Enjoy your new PC slash mini space heater!

Water cooling is fantastic. I’ve had 2 closed loop cooling and the oldest one - 5 years old? - has not failed. Nice and quiet, too. The only pain was in physically installing the radiator and fan. The ones that had stacked, and since I was attaching the stack to the top vent, I had to sort of balance the first two screws to get the initial attachment going. Kind of a pain without an experienced helper who won’t (say) drop a screw down into the innards of the system.

But I don’t think I will go back to air-cooling monstronsities any time soon.

*Legion* wrote:

If you want to make the move to a DDR5 platform now, then yeah, Intel is the only option until AMD's new platform comes out.
If the cost doesn't bother you, then I think you're fine as long as you add in those scaled-up power supply and cooler options. Enjoy your new PC slash mini space heater!

That almost feels like a dig. Should be perfect for those upcoming cold winter nights!!

Robear wrote:

Water cooling is fantastic. I’ve had 2 closed loop cooling and the oldest one - 5 years old? - has not failed. Nice and quiet, too. The only pain was in physically installing the radiator and fan. The ones that had stacked, and since I was attaching the stack to the top vent, I had to sort of balance the first two screws to get the initial attachment going. Kind of a pain without an experienced helper who won’t (say) drop a screw down into the innards of the system.
But I don’t think I will go back to air-cooling monstrosities any time soon.

Thank you for the feedback. I've been scared to take the jump and did try to do so back in 2018 until I balked at the installation and went back to the comfort of what I knew.

Will give it some more thinking and report back. Might pull the trigger. Might wait for the AM5 early next year, I'm not entirely sure yet. Thank you all for your feedback and opinions, I really, truly appreciate it.

Just off hand, do we know that DDR5 is all that and a bag of chips?
Usually RAM upgrades are very incremental. And I'm guessing it too will come with a power draw increase?

I think the main point in wanting to buy DDR5 now is to avoid buying DDR4 at the very tail end of its generation. DDR5 chips will be reusable in your next build, whereas DDR4 won't.

In terms of real-world performance, you're right that it is very incremental. DDR5's vast increase in memory bandwidth is offset by the increase in latencies. TechPowerUp tested the 12900K with both DDR4 and DDR5 and found the performance gain over DDR4 to be on the order of 2-4% with DDR5-6000, which is on the high end of DDR5 clock speeds. You can expect even less differentiation from lower-clocked DDR5s like 4800 and 5200. In terms of cost efficiency, there's currently no comparison - DDR4 runs away with it.

fangblackbone wrote:

And I'm guessing it too will come with a power draw increase?

DDR5 is supposed to actually be more power-efficient. I have not seen real-world measurements on this yet.

Thanks, good to know. I just remember DDR3 being around long after DDR4 launched. There probably isn't an insignificant percentage of PCs running it even now.

If someone is going to upgrade again in another 2 years, it doesn't sound like such a bad thing not making the jump to DDR5. I think that may just be me talking though. RAM has never been a critical component for me other than in a "do I have enough of it or not?" capacity.

Hence my earlier comments about it not being necessary to get the fastest, latest RAM.

So I had the chance for a 3060TI for $609 from a microcenter that my brother was at. I hesitated too much and it was gone when he wandered back by.

I was thinking that a card like that should be closer to 500 and I also realized I wasn't sure if I could just plug one in my old build or if I would need a bigger badder set up. I am currently still rocking this set up:

CPU -Intel Core i5-7600K 3.8 GHz Quad-Core Processor
CPU Cooler -Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
Motherboard -MSI Z270 SLI PLUS ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Memory -G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 CL15 Memory
Storage -Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Video Card -EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB Video Card
Case -Fractal Design Define R4 ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply -SeaSonic M12II 620 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

Maybe a smidge more PSU? I felt like 650 was the recommended for 3060s... but I could be wrong.

I think you'll be fine. That Seasonic has 48 amps and can pull almost 600 watts on it.