Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

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The Purpose of this thread is to catch all questions about potential PC builds and/or issues you have with existing PC’s that need upgrades. I will keep as current as I can two separate “suggested” PC builds that hit two major price points (under $1200 and under $2000). Within those builds should be fairly easy and obvious ways to reduce the price $X hundred dollars down and or up which I will suggest underneath each link to the build. NOTE! Right now GPU pricing at the mid-range is still in quite a state of flux with Bitcoin Miners driving up pricing way above retail so YMMV on exact pricing. As well I've dropped the sub $1000 build for a more realistic sub $1200 build that is really more focused for 1080P+ and VR Gaming.

"Console Killer Build" 8/1/2017

This is an approx. $550 PC that will perform at 1080P comparably to current gen console platforms. This is certainly not a exhaustive attempt to optimize to the last % of performance but a general guide to a PC that will play modern titles at Med-Ultra details at 1080P at ~40-60fps.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/thegam...

Sub $1200 Build. 08/01/2017

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/thegam...

This is a quality Gaming PC at a sub $1200 Price point. Target gaming resolution is 1440P/2160P @~50-60fps with High to Ultra details in all modern Games (variance is dependent on specific games) as well as a quality VR gaming experience. Specifics are 8GB of VRAM in the GPU to allow for new Cross Platform titles to select the highest quality textures. I chose to go with a small (275GB SSD) for OS and some game storage with a cheap 1TB drive for the rest of the games. The budget is blown open by getting the most GPU and CPU for the money possible as this is a gaming PC first and foremost.

Options I can suggest are

1. Swap to a 4TB Hard Drive and get more total storage for less "speed" on the OS SSD option
2. Drop down to a Nvidia 1060 or AMD 580 8GB for less GPU power but save $200 for perhaps a larger SSD and maybe a larger secondary Hard Drive. OR you just want a more powerful CPU with still solid gaming. Note with GPU Pricing right now its not really recommended to do this until pricing settles down. Those GPU's should save you $200 but right now they are not. As well Vega 56 might end up a better option than the 1070 when its released.

Sub $2000 Build 8/1/2017

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/thegam...

This is a “high end” Gaming PC that focuses on gaming at > 1440P resolutions. 1440P/1600P/2160P @ 50-70+FPS at High to Ultra details is the target for this build. Again you will find 11GB of VRAM to allow for the highest texture levels in newer Cross Platform Titles. Additionally a large SSD and HD will be featured for no compromise disk performance.

Options I can suggest are

1. Go with an AMD Ryzen 1600X and a x370 Motherboard for a more "workstation" (more cores) like PC than the Intel and bump the memory to 32GB of ram for a similar cost. This PC can run VM's as well as more workstation demanding software better than the i7-7700K.
2. Go with the Corsair Air 540 if you need 5.25" Drive Bays for Optical Drives as well as more internal HD Storage.

What to do if your brand new PC won’t boot after you put it all together.

0. Check Motherboard to see if it has a bios code LED area that might clue you into what it might be. Usually a two digit code that you can reference either in the manual or on the internet.

1. Remove everything but the CPU/Cooler, VideoCard, 1 stick of Memory. Power supply

2. See if it boots. If it does start adding parts one at a time starting with second memory (3rd, 4th etc), then hard drives and finally optical drive and other parts

3. No dice? Check all your power cables to make sure they are seated properly.

4. Now things get tricky. Start by updating BIOS of the motherboard. Sometimes that can help with memory compatibility. Newer systems can update BIOS even without post via USB typically in one usb Port. Check the manual.

5. Sometimes you can miss something. So take everything apart and put it back together again a bit slower than last time. Inspect the CPU and socket make sure no pins are bent.

6. Make sure you have a working Power Supply. If your motherboard has lights that usually means it’s good but google the paper clip trick.

7. Missing Hard Drive or non-bootable hard drive. Check your SATA ports and manual to see if some get disabled depending on M.2 card usage and GPU or PCIe card usage.

8. Ask on the boards here to see if someone else has had a similar problems.

Yay, new thread!

Looking at the $500 build.... that would work nicely. A couple extra thoughts, for alternate uses: for cheap computers, the Intel Pentium line is really quite good, with fast dual-core chips at about $70, combined with motherboards at about the same price level. (so $140ish for both.)

The Ryzen will be substantially better enough of the time, these days, to make that a better bet, but if you're really emulation-heavy, Intel can actually run faster, even with half as many cores. Or, if you're buying it to be an HTPC box, you can go Intel and drop the video card entirely; this will run quieter and cooler, and free up money for storage space.

For most gamers, the Ryzen will be better, but for those two specific things (emulation and HTPC use), an Intel Pentium might be just the thing.

Note also that the Hyper 212 series, in general, uses lousy bearings on their fans, meaning they'll wear out relatively quickly, frequently within about three years. This isn't hard or expensive to fix, usually less than $10, but it's something to be aware of. (you're getting a big hunk of metal for your $25, so expecting a good fan as well is probably unreasonable.) 120mm fans are omnipresent and can be instantly sourced from any computer store, so this really isn't a big deal.

If, however, you're giving the machine to a super non-technical person, or if it's going someplace where it will be hard to work on, putting a ball- or fluid-bearing fan in during system build can improve time-to-service by five years or more.

Oh, and one more thought: if you can free up an extra $25, going to a Caviar Black instead of the Caviar Blue can improve the feel of the system a fair bit. Blues aren't real fast drives, and I seem to recall that they're not overwhelmingly reliable. The Blacks are supposed to be substantially better in both areas.

For the $1200 build, maybe a Ryzen option might be nice? Those 7XXX-chips are badly sandbagged by lousy thermal goop inside; as a result, they run real hot, and can't be really fixed without delidding, which is not a reasonable option. (wrecking the processor warranty and directly exposing the super-fragile die to the air.)

Even so, they're probably better at this year's games than a Ryzen, but having an alternate build option might be handy.... next year's games may start taking advantage of more cores.

edit: and, as Legion points out below, some of this year's games are using more than 4 cores.

Malor wrote:

Even so, they're probably better at this year's games than a Ryzen, but having an alternate build option might be nice.... next year's games may start taking advantage of more cores.

A recent patch to PUBG added optimization for 6+ cores. I've only tried it once on the testing server so far, but I saw a noticeable performance improvement with my 8-core Ryzen 1700. Not sure where that performance ranks now in comparison to a 7700k, but I expect we'll see more of that going forward.

Malor wrote:

Yay, new thread!

Was there a link to this new thread in the old one?

Might be helpful to point folks the right direction

Malor wrote:

For the $1200 build, maybe a Ryzen option might be nice? Those 7XXX-chips are badly sandbagged by lousy thermal goop inside; as a result, they run real hot, and can't be really fixed without delidding, which is not a reasonable option. (wrecking the processor warranty and directly exposing the super-fragile die to the air.)

Even so, they're probably better at this year's games than a Ryzen, but having an alternate build option might be nice.... next year's games may start taking advantage of more cores.

Comparable gaming performance Ryzen at the $1200 build are roughly the same price if not a bit more so while its certainly an option to swap one for the other and roughly keep the same price point you would lose a smidge in raw overall gaming performance.

On a side note my ThreadRipper 1950X arrived and I have my cooler and ram waiting but no motherboard yet.. guess Newegg sent that from a different warehouse.

AMD has apparently moved up the Vega 56 embargo, and sent a note along to reviewers, asking for then to "prioritize" coverage of Vega 56 over Vega 64.

Sounds like what I've suspected may turn out true: Vega 56 offering better than 1070 performance at the price, but Vega 64 offering nothing that the 1080 doesn't do at nearly half the power draw.

Just sounds like Vega wasn't able to ramp up efficiently, but is good at 1070 scale.

New thread!
Hope new (good) GPUs arrive soon. My PC build from January doesn't feel complete yet.

TheGameguru wrote:
Malor wrote:

For the $1200 build, maybe a Ryzen option might be nice? Those 7XXX-chips are badly sandbagged by lousy thermal goop inside; as a result, they run real hot, and can't be really fixed without delidding, which is not a reasonable option. (wrecking the processor warranty and directly exposing the super-fragile die to the air.)

Even so, they're probably better at this year's games than a Ryzen, but having an alternate build option might be nice.... next year's games may start taking advantage of more cores.

Comparable gaming performance Ryzen at the $1200 build are roughly the same price if not a bit more so while its certainly an option to swap one for the other and roughly keep the same price point you would lose a smidge in raw overall gaming performance.

On a side note my ThreadRipper 1950X arrived and I have my cooler and ram waiting but no motherboard yet.. guess Newegg sent that from a different warehouse.

Please post a picture with a banana next to it.

TheGameguru wrote:

Comparable gaming performance Ryzen at the $1200 build are roughly the same price if not a bit more so while its certainly an option to swap one for the other and roughly keep the same price point you would lose a smidge in raw overall gaming performance.

All true. That said, I would take the 1600X here every time. The difference in gaming performance with the 7600K just isn't big enough to be worth 2 fewer CPU cores, IMO.

DigitalFoundry has a great comparison video of the 1600/1600X and 7600K, including one test where the 7600K does have a significant win (Far Cry: Primal):

*Legion* wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Comparable gaming performance Ryzen at the $1200 build are roughly the same price if not a bit more so while its certainly an option to swap one for the other and roughly keep the same price point you would lose a smidge in raw overall gaming performance.

All true. That said, I would take the 1600X here every time. The difference in gaming performance with the 7600K just isn't big enough to be worth 2 fewer CPU cores, IMO.

DigitalFoundry has a great comparison video of the 1600/1600X and 7600K, including one test where the 7600K does have a significant win (Far Cry: Primal):

Because I love you I updated the $1200 Build. AMD all the way baby!! I look forward to my Vega 56 for testing and it might even supplant the 1070 in this build.

TheGameguru wrote:

Because I love you I updated the $1200 Build. AMD all the way baby!!

I look forward to my Vega 56 for testing and it might even supplant the 1070 in this build.

I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on that.

On the $1200 build, it's important with the AMD chips to do DDR4-3200. (That's probably not doable on the $500 box, just no room.)

Per the video Legion links, AMD chips really like memory modules with Samsung chips on them, but which specific ones those are, I have no idea.

Dropping back to a 1600, which includes a reasonable cooler, and overclocking it, would probably let you stay in budget, while actually running faster overall because of the faster RAM. The guy in the video says he had no trouble getting 3.8GHz on the stock cooler.

I don't think the builds should assume overclocking. A lot of people won't do it and those that will probably know enough that they can deviate from the recommendation on their own.

Shadout wrote:

New thread!
Hope new (good) GPUs arrive soon. My PC build from January doesn't feel complete yet.

I'm waiting for a new generation of CPUs for a complete overhaul. Oh and money.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't think the builds should assume overclocking. A lot of people won't do it and those that will probably know enough that they can deviate from the recommendation on their own.

This is my thought as well. I tend to go with the assumption that I'm focused on less technical builders. Granted overclocking is pretty easy these days. But Malor makes a good point that Ryzen runs better with faster speed memory so I adjusted the memory selection.

I'm not sure if I should be cheering or weeping that my new PC hits the $2,000 mark.

Curious though, if not overclocking why pay the premium for liquid cooling for the $2K? Air cooling, esp. in the full tower you selected should be enough no?

Also Malor, is that info. on the Hyper 212 for more recent production runs? I've been using a hyper 212 in my overclocked 2500k for nearly 5 years now with no issues or additional noise.

Carlbear95 wrote:

I'm not sure if I should be cheering or weeping that my new PC hits the $2,000 mark.

Curious though, if not overclocking why pay the premium for liquid cooling for the $2K? Air cooling, esp. in the full tower you selected should be enough no?

Also Malor, is that info. on the Hyper 212 for more recent production runs? I've been using a hyper 212 in my overclocked 2500k for nearly 5 years now with no issues or additional noise.

I would do AIO liquid coolers at all price points if I could figure how. I find them vastly easier to install and work with inside a case.

Also Malor, is that info. on the Hyper 212 for more recent production runs? I've been using a hyper 212 in my overclocked 2500k for nearly 5 years now with no issues or additional noise.

Nope, it's been true of those fans for as long as I can remember. Three years is a rough average lifespan for sleeve bearing fans, at least in a 24x7x365 setup. I'm not sure how long "rifle bearings" last. (which seem to be in the AM4 version of the 212.) Obviously, any individual example can last a lot longer. Ball bearings last long enough that I'm not sure what their lifespan actually is, and fluid bearings have almost no wear at all. My first FDBs have to be ten years old now, and other than a little dust, it's hard to tell they're not new.

Note that I've also been suggesting fan replacements the entire time, so if you listened to me 5 years ago, you might have already substituted in a good one, and just forgot. Or, Cooler Master's sleeve bearing fans may be better than average.

edit: I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it sounds like part of the problem with sleeve bearings is orientation:

Wikipedia wrote:

Sleeve bearings use two surfaces lubricated with oil or grease as a friction contact. They often use porous sintered sleeves to be self-lubricating, requiring only infrequent maintenance or replacement. Sleeve bearings are less durable at higher temperatures as the contact surfaces wear and the lubricant dries up, eventually leading to failure; however, lifetime is similar to that of ball-bearing types (generally a little less) at relatively low ambient temperatures.[22] Sleeve bearings may be more likely to fail at higher temperatures, and may perform poorly when mounted in any orientation other than vertical. The typical lifespan of a sleeve-bearing fan may be around 30,000 hours at 50 °C. Fans that use sleeve bearings are generally cheaper than fans that use ball bearings, and are quieter at lower speeds early in their life, but can become noisy as they age.[22]

I've frequently mounted fans at all orientations, and learned early on that sleeve bearings were bad, without apparently realizing that they're really bad only about half the time. But CPUs are also very hot, which impacts their lifespan.... 30K hours at 50C may be much less at, say, 75C, which is fairly common with modern CPU coolers.

That same entry says that rifle bearings are similar to sleeve bearings, but last about as long as ball bearings, and work in any orientation.

Between the Ryzen 1700 and 1700x. What is the difference? I see that the 1700x is 95w compared to the 65w for 1700. The 1700x only better for overlocking purposes?

LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't think the builds should assume overclocking. A lot of people won't do it and those that will probably know enough that they can deviate from the recommendation on their own.

Agreed. Overclocking may merit mentioning in the alternatives, but not as the main build.

I bought the 1700 instead of the 1700X for the same reason one would buy a 1600 over the X if they are comfortable with overclocking. At the same time, I bought a 1500X instead of a 1500 for my living room Steam box because I was not going to OC that build.

OC'ing Ryzen means losing single-core boosting that helps with single-threaded performance. Essentially you need to be able to clock all the CPU's cores up to the boost speed in order to not lose single-threaded performance, which obviously is more demanding on cooling, etc. That's easy enough for a big case with an AIO or high quality tower cooler, but for my Steam box with airflow limitations, it was better to stick with stock boosting, so the X was the better call.

TheGameguru wrote:

I would do AIO liquid coolers at all price points if I could figure how. I find them vastly easier to install and work with inside a case.

1000% this. I did an AIO for the first time with my main build and I will never ever ever go back.

Looks like both Acer and Asus delayed their FAD (Full Array dimming) HDR 144hz 27" Monitors

http://www.pcgamer.com/asus-and-acer...

Rumors are the panels themselves they source from AUO are delayed..

Depending on Price this could be the monitor to get if you have an Nvidia card. I suspect they will be way north of $1000 which frankly sucks.

Oh they absolutely will be well north of $1000. They're still hitting people up for $650 for a 27 inch TN panel at 1440p and 144hz.

144hz, 4k, FALD? I'll be shocked if they aren't at least $1500 if not $2000.

Sounds interesting. From time to time considering to take the jump to 4K or 144hz.
But both? How will you even run any games on it.

For M.2 SSD drive. Would you pick a Samsung 960 Evo or save some money and get the Crucial MX300?

Balthezor wrote:

For M.2 SSD drive. Would you pick a Samsung 960 Evo or save some money and get the Crucial MX300?

The 960 is faster and an actual PCIe NVME drive. My understanding is the MX300 will just run at SATA speeds even if you get the m.2 version.

I could be mixing it up with another drive, open to correction there, but I think that's the case.

But even if I'm right the difference won't be generally noticeable unless you do some pretty specific workloads with it.

Balthezor wrote:

For M.2 SSD drive. Would you pick a Samsung 960 Evo or save some money and get the Crucial MX300?

As Thin J pointed out the 960 EVO are NVME vs SATA on the MX300. If you want the fastest possible bus tech go with NVME as it will perform better with specific workloads. Gaming won't really show that much improvement but you might see a % difference on certain types of scenarios in gaming.

Depends in the end on budget.. if you have money to spend go with NVME. If the $150 difference ends up getting you a better GPU I would put the $ in a GPU.

Ok great. How many M.2 slots are usually in a typical gaming motherboard? 2-3?

2 seems quite standard.

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