SoloDolo

I would drop down from the 1800x. I bought mine a bit prematurely. The 1700 comes with a stock color that is RGB and the 1700 can OC very well. VM's will be just fine on a 1700. The 1700 can OC to 1800 levels. This will save you $100 on the CPU and you wont need a color so drop another $60. You save $160 that can be added to the GPU. I would upgrade to a GTX 1080 though. The ASUS 1080 is on sale for $500 after rebates. The 1080 Ti is really highly priced right now and just not worth it for 1080p gaming. Also, Nvidia aint in any hurry to launch the 1100 series GPUs and they will be hard to buy initially.

The 1080 just makes more sense and can OC higher. The 1070 Ti is strangely positioned.

Evga support is solid. RMA is simple with them. If you have to RMA a 2nd time they send you the graphics card first and send you a box to return it in. Its really solid. Though the quality of the refurbished part they send you back is not always great.

Tried this last night and everything worked. I tossed in an old GTX 660 my friend let me borrow. OC'd my CPU to 3.8ghz and Ocd my ram to around 2966mhz and it ran all night through Unreal Valley. Tossed in the problem 1080 and bam instantly shut down after 5 minutes running unreal valley. PC stayed on though.

I removed my CPU OC and RAM OC. Same issue. Its only one the 1080s. Im gaming just fine with one of them. I did test my PSU and it looks good. I plugged my other 1080 into a separate PC and same issue occurs.

So, I this is now my 3rd time RMA'ing one of my 1080s. The first one would cause my entire system to power off. The second RMA was working for a bit but just randomly shuts down but the rest of my PC is running. This type of stuff drives me crazy. Anyone else had issues with having to RMA a GPU multiple times?

You can get great deals on Console games also. PS store has sales, best buy and gamestop have sales for holiday. In the long run PC is not even close to "always cheaper". It can be cheaper if you dont upgrade often. Consoles can be cheap if you shop around for deals and wait for prices to drop on Amazon. Its really not rocket science.

Wow, I really love that case!

Can you find a used 970 instead? Im seeing them go for around $180 USD on Ebay.

What are your settings? What are your currently gaming at? There are a ton of variables to be honest. If you are building a new high end PC, then a GTX 1080 with a Ryzen 5 1600 or I5 8400 are the way to go.

Good Points. I guess we will have to see what they can push out of Zen+. Piledriver was a pretty bad architecture. The only thing it was decent for was a budget gaming/workstation. Ryzen has alot more potential. I got my 1800x is a bit of an impulse buy. I saw it performed like an I5 in gaming but offered 6950k levels of performance in multi threaded workloads for a really solid price. I think for him the Ryzen 1600 will be solid for the next 3-5 years. Though I would personally go with an I5-8400 if all I did was game.

That is true. It can be difficult to get Ryzen working sometimes with memory. I had to flash my bios a few times and still cant hit 3200mhz. The only problem here is that cannon lake will likely need a new mobo in the future. AMD has committed to AM4 until 2020. Which means you can just upgrade the CPU and get better performance.

Very nice! I think he will agree to this. Also, 165hz monitor with Gysnc? Thats an amazing price.

I can agree. I game on a 3440x1440 Acer Predator and to me its incredible. It looks and plays incredible. I think going with the Ryzen 1600 will be fine for him. Hes an AMD Fanboy and think this will make him feel better. Though I personally view brand loyalty is stupid as hell.

I like the rig you posted and Im thinking it would be quite better. While I love Ultrawide, I think a Gysnc monitor would be better.