Kalm_Traveler

There you go...
 
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($189.99 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: MSI B450-A PRO MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($99.99 @ B&H) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory  ($81.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Silicon Power A80 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($124.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB GAMING X Video Card  ($409.99 @ B&H) 
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox NR600 (w/o ODD) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($69.98 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  ($83.98 @ Newegg) 
Monitor: MSI Optix MAG27CQ 27.0" 2560x1440 144 Hz Monitor  ($299.99 @ Best Buy) 
Total: $1360.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-17 09:23 EST-0500

PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor $189.99 @ Amazon CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition 57.3 CFM CPU Cooler $29.99 @ Newegg Motherboard MSI B450-A PRO MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard $99.99 @ B&H Memory G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory $81.99 @ Newegg Video Card EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB BLACK GAMING Video Card $489.99 @ Newegg Monitor VIOTEK GN34CW 34.0" 3440x1440 100 Hz Monitor $349.99 @ Amazon   Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts     Total (before mail-in rebates) $1271.94   Mail-in rebates -$30.00   Total $1241.94   Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-17 09:53 EST-0500    

If you're really set on using all of the $1200 on his computer I'd probably go with a Ryzen 5 3600 and a decent air cooler (or even staying with the stock AMD cooler, they're really enough for those chips and even look surprisingly good for a stock cooler) and put the money you save on that into something like a 27" 2560x1440 monitor. Even if you get him into gaming I don't see him using the potential of a 3800X any time soon.

If I'm not mistaken the H150i Pro is a 360mm (3x 120mm) AIO?
 
The best overall 120mm fans are the Noctua NF-A12x25 but they're about $30 USD each: https://www.amazon.com/Noctua-NF-A12x25-PWM-Premium-Quality-Quiet/dp/B07C5VG64V
 
If you wanted to waste spend a bunch to max out that AIO (and if your case has the space to do this), you could get 6 of those Noctuas for a push-pull config on the AIO radiator.
Noctua also makes really good higher RPM industrial versions of their Axx and Fxx fans, so you could also go for some 2000rpm or 3000rpm NF-F12 iPPC fans, which thankfully are black instead of the traditional Noctua poop-brown colors.
 
However, I will say from experience that those 3000rpm fans sound like jet engines at full speed... I had two 480mm thick radiators in my x99 rig, with 8 of the 3k RPM industrial NF-F12's and when it booted up it sounded like it was about to take off until the PWM kicked in and brought them down to bearable levels. If I were to go that route on your AIO, I wouldn't recommend faster than the 2000rpm versions (which I am using on my two main desktops currently).

So he's basically using it for the "cool factor" of having 2 screens on his desk. ?
The setup VEXICUS proposed would be a good starting point, only thing I'd think about twice would be the MB, if he ever decides to put a higher end Ryzen chip in it I'm not sure how much the VRM on that ASRock board can take (but maybe I'm overthinking it and trying to plan ahead too much), it's not a huge investment, he can definitely do some gaming on it and if he ever actually decides on going into some triple A titles there's plenty of upgrade options that won't break the bank.
 
Oh my, I just checked that Viewsonic monitor you keep talking about and felt like I went back in time to the mid 2000s.  For some reason I kept assuming it's not too old. The spec says it's 28" but 27.5" viewable.
Here's some options, I tried to find some not too expensive Freesync monitors.
AOC 27V2H - 27" 1920x1080 75Hz TN
Dell SE2717H - 27" 1920x1080 75Hz IPS-type
LG 29UM69G-B - 29" 2560x1080 75Hz IPS - looks like a decent budget ultrawide option if you want to go there, yes I know it's not the 34" you wanted to put on his desk, but it's still ultrawide ?
There's 144Hz options for some $30-40 more or you could try looking at some cheap 2560x1440, but I don't really think he needs either of those options, I'm not sure he'll even use the 75Hz Freesync, but I tried to take into account you want to get him to do a little gaming.
 
I think the main problem here is finding a balance between what he needs and your hearts desire to build something slightly higher end. ?

Generally 3200mhz CL14 is the sweet spot for Skylake-architecture-based CPUs in my experience.
 
I went for 4000mhz CL17 on my new 9900ks rig mostly just for fun. Was running 3200mhz CL14 on a previous 9900k rig and honestly I can't tell any performance difference. I tested that 9900k rig with 2666mhz CL15 and could tell it was a bit slower than the 3200mhz CL14 though.

I'll recommend something like this instead...
 
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($85.00) Ryzen 5 1600 AF is available on amazon.com for $85. It is basically a Ryzen 5 2600 with first gen IMC. It is based on 12nm.
Motherboard: ASRock B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($78.98 @ Newegg) Best entry level Mobo.
Memory: OLOy 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($57.99 @ Newegg) 16gb 3200mhz cl16 ddr4 ram. Because Ryzen loves fast dual channel memory.
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 570 8 GB Video Card  ($70.00) The rx570 is available on AliExpress/eBay for around $70 that too with free international shipping. It'll be a massive upgrade over 550ti. You can even get a rx580 for around $100.
Total: $291.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-14 01:00 EST-0500
 
This would be a massive upgrade over what he has already got.
 

That setup would be a really nice all-round build, whether it lasts 10 years or not, really depends on how his interests evolve over that time. If he keeps using it as the old one, then he'll probably never fully utilise the power and get even more than 10 years from it, but if you get him into gaming it might need an upgrade or two as the years go by, depending on what he plays.
 
How does he use those 2 monitors right now? As much as I love the idea of an ultrawide and wouldn't think twice about buying one for myself if I only had the desk space, it's also not always the perfect replacement of a double monitor setup in some use cases.

hey I've been thinking more about this after the case/PSU swap and I think it'd be sweet to go a little higher in and get him something really good that will actually last him another 10 years. 

What do you think about going with a decent B450 board and a 3700x or so, 16gb DDR4, and maybe a 2060 Super in case I can get him to start playing some games? 

As far as I know, he's running 2 monitors right now, my old Viewsonic 1920 x 1200 60hz 28" (IIRC it's the VX2835wm) over HDMI and a 1600 x 1200 Samsung 21 or 22" 60hz over VGA.
 
Kind of want to replace both of those with a 34" ultrawide.

first one is a 12v 4 pin non-addressable RGB plug, second is for your front panel USB type C connector.
 
I don't see the type C internal header on the edge of your MB so you probably don't have one. There are little adapters to let you connect that type C plug into the older USB 3.0 header that I see unoccupied though - of course that will only run connected devices at 3.0 speeds but at least you'll be able to use it.
 
Just to make sure we're not missing anything, what motherboard model do you have?

If you meant the Maximus XI Hero, it does have BIOS Flashback so you can indeed use that.
 
You have to make sure the BIOS file you want to use is on the root of the usb flash drive, with the correct file name and the drive has to be FAT32, not NTFS, exFAT or anything other than FAT32.

The cards with 3 8-pin PCI-E power input connectors have much higher max TDP than cards with only 2, plus the companies who make them are binning the GPUs they receive from Nvidia and only putting the very best ones onto those graphics cards. 

Card cooling being equal, the Kingpin (or I'm sure Galax HOF as well) will maintain higher clocks overall than any of the 2 PCI-E power connector cards simply because it won't hit power limit as quickly. Nvidia limits how much power can be drawn per connector, so all the normal cards will end up running into the same power wall. EVGA and Galax get around this by adding a 3rd connector.

That Gigabyte card you linked is a normal 2-pin card.

For gaming, one of the high end 2080 Ti's will actually beat out even a power modded Titan RTX as far as max FPS. How do I know? because I have two power modded Titan RTXs in my HEDT rig, and a Kingpin 2080 Ti in the gaming rig. For games that don't work with SLI (aka most games), I get maybe 5% higher FPS on the single Kingpin card than on one of the power modded Titans (max TDP increased to ~ 434 watts, vs the Kingpins OC BIOS 520w tdp - remember 2080 Ti and Titan RTX are both the TU102 GPU, with ever so slightly more cores enabled on the Titan).
 
Thankfully for my ego, some newer games are still getting SLI support so I play Jedi Fallen Order on the HEDT rig.
 
*EDIT*
Also, the Titan RTX 'not being intended for gaming' is irrelevant to someone's personal value though I agree that for gaming nobody should buy it now that I've learned my lesson with the Kingpin 2080 Ti. 

You're a little confused on your SLI though - most games forever ('most' here meaning more than not, so over 50%) have not worked with SLI. This has never been different. In general, if a game will run with SLI enabled, scaling is generally pretty good and 'recent games barely benefit from it anymore' is false. Jedi Fallen Order is giving me almost perfect scaling across two cards. Also, games don't "drop support" for SLI. They generally don't work with it enabled, and sometimes end up being updated later to allow it to work - and SLI working out of the box is done via Nvidia creating SLI profiles specifically for each game - the game developers do not create the SLI profiles.

anywho OP - to answer your question...
 
Since the majority of games do not work with SLI, I would suggest buying an EVGA Kingpin 2080 Ti or the Galax HOF 2080 Ti (the one with 3 8-pin PCI-E power connectors) as they will outperform a Titan RTX for max gaming FPS.
 
If you really want to max it out, full custom water cooling with at least a 360mm radiator for each CPU and graphics card (so 2x 360mm or larger radiators) and to incorporate the Kingpin card you'll need to put a full cover water block on it (it comes as a hybrid card with a VRM fan and a 240mm AIO attached for the GPU/memory) which right now can only be had with a Bykski block since EVGA only made a handful of their Hydro Copper blocks for the KP card and they all sold out last summer.
 
You could, of course, wait for the 30-series cards later this summer if you want even more FPS.

Quite a bit done this weekend - remounted the pump/res so it wasn't pressing up against the graphics card PCI-E cables, and redid the drain to run from a T on the outlet rather than as one of the inlets.
 
Next, installed the Heatkiller back plate for the CPU block, delidded the 9900ks, and have it direct die mounted now.
 
Finally, managed to get a second 420mm radiator installed - swapping the top 280 but surprisingly I had to mount with the ports up front. This meant unfortunately that they are too close to the front radiator, so I had to get creative and ended up making a funny little circular loop for the run from the top radiator to the front one. 
 
While I was at it, also decided to remove the top metal plate over the top air filter panel because its cutouts are not very good for airflow, especially on the front-most fan area, and if you remove the metal plate there is just a fine mesh filter on top of an actually-good-for-airflow plastic honeycomb pattern on the panel. Probably going to either glue the mesh to the plastic, or maybe just some velcro or similar adhesive.
 
Remaining steps off the top of my head:
get additional cooling bracket (fan/radiator bracket) for the bottom fans - waiting for Cooler Master's online store to be up. It's been down for at least a month reinstall bottom PSU/fan shroud buy and install Bykski Kingpin 2080 Ti water block measure for and order Cablemod custom power cables - this is pretty important since the stock PCI-E cables are way too long, and the MB/CPU cables are really stiff near the ends once that's all done.... overclock this bad boy  
Strange to me though, light use CPU temp is exactly the same as pre-delidding and direct die. in 22 C ambient, CPU (on the Asus MB OLED display) reports 34-35 C. Under Cinebench back to back runs it is much cooler though, boosting to 5ghz all core and settling in at 55 C.

I just checked that board, let's just say SATA 2 isn't the only old interface on it.  PCIe 2.0 ftw!
I never had the pleasure of benchmarking a 550Ti against a 2200g, but just looking around online it does seem like the integrated graphics on that Ryzen chip do pull a little ahead of that card, so it would give him a bit of a boost. Aside of that, what you did already + CPU,MB, RAM would indeed be pretty sweet compared to what he's been running.
 
Here's an idea, if the cooler on that 550Ti looks somewhat presentable, maybe you could make a sentimental piece out of it and just mount it somewhere in the case, obviously without plugging it in, just for show, as a little reminder of the old system that served him for such a long time. Unless he's not one to appreciate mementos like that.

As far as I get the "base components are good enough" approach, that MB and CPU are so old at this point, that they most likely stopped at SATA 1 or 2, so whatever SSD you put in there won't even be able to run at it's full speed, because it gets hamstrung by the older version of the interface. If he really doesn't use the PC for any gaming and just does the most basic stuff on it, he'd benefit a lot more from putting money into updating the base platform rather than replacing the graphic card with a 1050Ti.
 
If I were you I'd get him a basic Ryzen system (maybe stretch a bit on the MB for a decent B450 model, if you want to leave him a better CPU upgrade path), a basic 8GB 3200MHz kit of memory to go with it (since you said he's ok right now with just 8GB for what he does then he'll be fine with it after an upgrade aswell), clean and repaste that 750Ti and put it in a basic decent case, something like a Fractal Focus G or similar. That'll at least give him a reasonably modern platform to upgrade on in the future if he ever wants/needs, rather than keeping him on that old mobo with a Xeon that he can't really upgrade to anything later.

I had the HAF X until a few weeks ago. 
 
It has screw holes for a 240mm radiator but you can (and I did) mount a 360mm AIO up there, but the front most 120mm won't have support so technically it will sag slightly. 
 
You can keep the 200mm fans above it but supposedly that actually hurts the cooling performance compared to just leaving them out entirely. 

I bought a Das Keyboard 4 Professional for work, and unfortunately these days use a MacBook Pro. It works fine on a Mac, and they sell a version with Mac bottom row keycaps if that's your jam.
 
I like it for an office environment because it doesn't look worth stealing - just all black with no lights. Sounds like you would want the Cherry MX brown switch version, and to go the extra mile in making it quiet I'd throw some o-rings on the bottom of the keycaps for a little bit of sound dampening.
 
Another nice quirk I use from time to time is that it has a built-in 2 port USB 3.0 hub on the top right.
 
Looks like they're about $160 on Amazon at the moment (assuming you're in the USA).

IMO, if u get a high end monitor you should spend that little extra to buy a Colorimeter, like a X-rite i1 or SyderX Pro.
Factory calibration 'can' be ok, but more often than not its bad, color can be out of spec, gamma curve can be wrong, and even color temperature can be way of the 6500 mark.
 
Using the DisplayCAL opensource software ..or the included software with the chosen hardware, you can calibrate a PC monitor in minutes (~30) with the faster calibration devices like the X-rtie i1 Display Pro., so its not much hassle.

Ah ok well my ambient is about 5-6c warmer and 9900k would be at about 55C at 25% load though it's clocked at 5.1ghz. So would make sense it's quite a bit warmer compared to your setup. Don't recall what it was at idle before I tore my system apart for the case mod. Bright side though with the tear apart I know my thermal paste application was good.

Update #27 December 29, 2019
Well my drive came in and wow it looks real slick. Was it worth the price I paid? Probably not.


Remounted the CPU block with the Phobya flow through temp sensor fitting on the exit side.

While I was at it I threw in that smexy NVMe drive. There’s also no doubt that I’m going to have to do some sheet metal work for the interior of the case. I just used some very thin galvanized ducting for ease of use.


With the 2 NVMe ssds now in the system I no longer need 4 hard drives so I will be retaining my two WD Red drives and moving my WD Black and Green to other PCs. As you can see this is how I’m planning on displaying those drives. I used mobo stand offs I had to space them from the case.

Here’s a better look at how things will sit inside the case. If you noticed I cut out a large portion of the 5.25″ bay mounting area. I may or may not regret this at some point in the far future but we’ll see. I was also planning on making a cut out for the cpu back plate but after thinking for a little bit I honestly don’t think I would ever change my cpu block or cooler enough to justify cutting one. I also I only made necessary cut outs for the 24 pin, sata data, and front panel connectors.

After I got everything mocked up I walked by my box of random pc junk and this 2.5″ to 3.5″ drive adapter that I got with some ssds long ago caught my eye. It looks just tall enough for something…

Perfect, looks like I can add another drive haha.

Well this is everything I will need to paint. Mobo tray cover, 2.5″ drive bracket, new case floor, vertical gpu bracket and the case itself. I’ll be using a matte black automotive wheel paint once I get all the surfaces prepped tonight.

So got a bit of an update. After work I stopped by my local Canada Computers and picked up a new 24-pin extension. As some of you may know the Cosmos S has a touch sensitive power button which mine surprisingly(knock on wood) still works perfectly. However as you can see in my previous pics that the 24-pin extension looks horrid. Well here's what I picked up:

Full res: http://i.imgur.com/aDxq8Jw.jpg
 
So I'll be splicing in the case power connector into this extension tomorrow.
 
Also since I work with cars for my job I have easy access to Plasti Dip which is amazing. So I pulled my D-Link PCI wireless card to test out painting the back of it because I don't really care if I kill it since I rarely use it. Plasti Dip says to let it dry for 4 hours before use so I'm gonna let it dry overnight.
 

Full res: http://i.imgur.com/R1bPOyB.jpg

Full res: http://i.imgur.com/klSDegS.jpg

Full res: http://i.imgur.com/7aDAHar.jpg
 
So I'll be painting this card tonight and if the Plasti Dip doesn't kill it somehow which it shouldn't I'll be doing the same to my other green backed cards.

yeah I was sad to find that out about the Hydro Copper block for this Kingpin card
 
flipping a 420mm around for fittings on the back side... if I moved the rear exhaust fan down as far as it can go... I think the problem was that the tank sticks out too far so the bracket can't fit into the case. That was the same reason I had to flip it around on the front - if you attach it with the ports on the bottom, that side sticks down too far so the bracket can't be installed because the tank hits part of the frame.
 
Now that you've got me thinking about it I may double check and just see. There is room behind the motherboard tray to run soft tubing and I would really like to have the additional 140mm of both cooling and top fan for aesthetics!

I'll take a look tomorrow morning and if it seems doable I'll let you know as well as order another 420mm HWLabs radiator for up top. Already have the Corsair fan since my original plan had been to do 3 of the fans up top, with a 240mm radiator as bottom intake.

I actually have a monitor on my NAS displaying all active clients, just in case.  You never know.
 
This is actually one of the issues I have with IPv6, if I never know which PC has which IP address and a mechanism to monitor their bandwidth usage, how am I supposed to know if something awry is happening on my network?