Software engineer looking for work-game balanced rig

[gtludwig]

Budget (including currency): 

From €1,000 to €2,000

Country: 

Ireland 

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

During working hours, Java-based development software (IntelliJ IDEA, database engines, Web browsers, etc.), some light photo and image editing.

After hours, I like some casual gaming, but I'm not into FPSs or online gaming, really. I love real time strategy games and story driven games. I want to play the new Baldur's Gate 3, I really like the XCOM series, Deus Ex, I've high hopes for Cyberpunk 2077, and I think I might go into flight simulators in the near future. 

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc):

I have two AOC 27" 1440p screens I really like working on, but I feel I might be changing to one single wide screen soon. Even the ough, as far as I know, I don't need it, it would be nice if the new ultra wide screen would be 144Hz and 1440p. But this is not a priority for this build and would be part of a totally different budget! 

I also have a set of 4 years old wireless keyboard and mouse I'd be happy to trade up for wired gear. 

I'm looking to buy the gear before Christmas, possibly on or around Black Friday. 

I plan to run only Linux on it and use and abuse of Proton - so I would go AMD for the GPU and since I heard the Ryzen series are so nice, why not go for a Ryzen 7 or 9, as I would like this builds to serve me as a work horse for a few years. I still don't know what GPU I'd like to have, but since I want to run Linux, it needs to be supported, plus I like the open source approach AMD has to its drivers. My initial thoughts would be something like an Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GiB.

I'm thinking of going 2x M.2 NVME of around 250 GiB for the OS and at least 2x 1 TiB SSD storage. I forgot the correct RAID definition, maybe 1+1?

As for the motherboard, despite being able to use 2 M.2 NVME and the SSD in raid, I would like it to have the X570 chipset. Now, total newbie question, does it really matters that much the price tag of the motherboard? 

For PSU, I would like some high end modular 80 plus, at least gold and the quieter the better. 

For CPU cooler, I don't intend to overclock the CPU so I don't know whether AIO is a must. 

This whole build is supposed to be, at first, a work tool so I don't care (much) about aesthetics as it will likely be in a shelf near the desk with the screens or under said desk, so I don't care or like RGB LEDs that don't serve any practical use. 

What would you recommend? 

Thanks in advance! 

[gloop]

Dia duit! Conas a tá tú?

 

This should handle your needs nicely, but I wasn't exactly sure what your storage was. I went for 2x 256gb nvme and 2x 1tb 2.5". Hope this help!

 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	€367.02 @ Custompc
Motherboard	Asus PRIME X570-P ATX AM4 Motherboard	€228.95 @ Komplett
Memory	G.Skill Aegis 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	€150.93 @ Custompc
Storage	ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	€69.80 @ Custompc
Storage	ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	€69.80 @ Custompc
Storage	Crucial MX500 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	€154.94 @ Komplett
Storage	Crucial MX500 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	€154.94 @ Komplett
Video Card	Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB GAMING OC Video Card	€553.29 @ Custompc
Case	Phanteks Eclipse P300 ATX Mid Tower Case	€105.00 @ Custompc
Power Supply	Corsair RMx 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	€135.98 @ Currys PC World
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€1990.65
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-06-25 21:48 IST+0100

 

[redteam4ever]

 

47 minutes ago, gtludwig said:

I'm thinking of going 2x M.2 NVME of around 250 GiB for the OS and at least 2x 1 TiB SSD storage. I forgot the correct RAID definition, maybe 1+1?

As for the motherboard, despite being able to use 2 M.2 NVME and the SSD in raid

Why do you want RAID and X570?

 

Considering your development needs, the IDEs can be huge - don't know about IntelliJ specifically but Qt is pretty big (like 60GB in default state). You also need to keep room for swap on the NVMe SSD, it will perform better if needed. I would go for a single bigger NVMe drive (at least 500GB) as a boot drive. And single big SATA SSD for storage. There was a video recently on the channel about real world performance difference between SATA and NVMe SSDs and people couldn't generally see the difference.

 

[gtludwig]

11 hours ago, redteam4ever said:

Why do you want RAID and X570?

Well, I honestly think that a RAID mirrored system would perform better loading times. And I know even the the most reliable systems fail, so if you have a mirrored storage solution, you're not dead in the water should one of the mirrors fail.

 

As for X570, I suppose I don't really need it. I only put it in there so whatever rig I end up with does not suffer any bottlenecks from processor, memory, drives and gpu.

[redteam4ever]

4 hours ago, gtludwig said:

Well, I honestly think that a RAID mirrored system would perform better loading times. And I know even the the most reliable systems fail, so if you have a mirrored storage solution, you're not dead in the water should one of the mirrors fail.

 

As for X570, I suppose I don't really need it. I only put it in there so whatever rig I end up with does not suffer any bottlenecks from processor, memory, drives and gpu.

As far as I know, mirroring (a.k.a. RAID 1) won't improve speed or latency. Yes, it will protect against hardware failure but is also not very effective. Modern hardware doesn't really fail on its own. You are better off with a decent backup strategy which protects you against power related failures (e.g. your PSU fails and sends AC through the whole system), ransomware (mirror would be encrypted too), accidental deletion (it's a mirror...) and so on. It's an ineffective solution to a small set of problems in my opinion. Feel free to prove me wrong, but I really can't see why it is better.

 

Well, that's where I wanted to tie into your original post about price differences between boards. The board cannot be a bottleneck these days. B550 boards have all the features you would need if you can't justify X570. X570 is also actively cooled with small whiny fan because it has a higher TDP. The price differences are there because of board features - obviously there is the component quality (like capacitors - reputable brands, better ratings...), design quality (amount of shielding, power delivery design...), additional features (RGB sync, fan headers...). And I'm not saying that high-end motherboards are unnecessary, just that not everyone with a Ryzen 7 needs them. You need to look at the features and evaluate what you need, if you are not picking the cheapest motherboard, it's fine.

 

Let's look at the feature sets of X570 and B550:

Chipset PCIe lanes: PCIe 4.0x16 vs. PCIe 3.0x6 - this is in addition to PCIe 4.0x20 from the Ryzen 3rd gen CPU - 16x for the GPU and 4x for the SSD - that's plenty and the GPU can't even utilize that much bandwidth

Multiple GPUs: Crossfire&SLI vs. Crossfire only - this is not even supported in modern games

USB (3.x 10Gbps + 3.x 5Gbps + 2.0): 8 + 0 + 4 vs. 2 + 2 + 6 - do you really need more than 2 10Gb and 2 5Gb devices connected at once?

SATA: 12 vs. 4 - I have yet to see a system with more than 2 SATA drives that's not a server

Overclocking: Yes vs. Yes - both chipsets support OC if you would like to try

 

There is not much of a case for X570 if you don't need the special features. You can put the savings against a better CPU. And that will turn instantly into better performance which you'll feel.

[redteam4ever]

So I had a go at the list that was posted here before and made some alterations in light of my last reply. The first thing I noticed was that the prices and availability of 5700XT were weird, but this might be just PCPP not watching that many sellers in Ireland. The other thing was that there was no B550 board with a price on PCPP (so I looked up the MSRP which will probably convert to € 1:1). Since you are going to buy the parts later I wouldn't worry too much about the prices now - there is still plenty of time for them to go down - Ryzen 4000's launch is imminent and you also mentioned Black Friday.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor	€502.95 @ Komplett
Motherboard	MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard	$189.00 - MSRP
Memory	G.Skill Aegis 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	€150.93 @ Custompc
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	€124.94 @ Komplett
Storage	Crucial MX500 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	€275.39 @ Custompc
Video Card	MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB GAMING X Video Card	€578.47 @ Custompc
Case	Phanteks Eclipse P300 ATX Mid Tower Case	€105.00 @ Custompc
Power Supply	Corsair RMx 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	€135.98 @ Currys PC World
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€1873.66
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-06-26 15:16 IST+0100

[gtludwig]

Thanks for the input, @redteam4ever!

 

I was thinking about getting a slightly better motherboard that would accept the new 4th gen Ryzen processors and get a used Ryzen 5 off of eBay until the price of the R9 3950x is a bit more acceptable.

 

So I might go for 2 x 8 GiB of RAM instead of 2 x 16 GiB and would later on get another 8 GiB - so the motherboard needs to have 4 DIMM slots.

 

I would also probably likely go to only one M.2 NVMe of about 1 TiB at this point. 

 

 

[redteam4ever]

3 hours ago, gtludwig said:

Thanks for the input, @redteam4ever!

 

I was thinking about getting a slightly better motherboard that would accept the new 4th gen Ryzen processors and get a used Ryzen 5 off of eBay until the price of the R9 3950x is a bit more acceptable.

 

So I might go for 2 x 8 GiB of RAM instead of 2 x 16 GiB and would later on get another 8 GiB - so the motherboard needs to have 4 DIMM slots.

 

I would also probably likely go to only one M.2 NVMe of about 1 TiB at this point. 

 

 

I specifically looked for 4 DIMM slots, the Tomahawk has them and it will support 4th gen Ryzen because it's B550. Buying used CPU at first is a great idea, although I would then wait for next gen replacement of 3950X or 3900X - 3900X is better value, but 3950X is still a substantial upgrade so it can be justified. If it's still applicable that you will be building around Black Friday, you can maybe get a 3700X since the 4th gen will have launched by then - prices should drop. And after 6 months you can upgrade to the 4th gen replacement of 3950X.

 

Waiting on memory is also a good idea - memory prices are low for DDR4, but there is coronavirus and all the BLM stuff happening which can affect prices. There is always a cycle with memory generations when while it's new and yields aren't that great, it's very expensive. As the manufacturing matures, the prices go down - usually after a couple years from older gen phasing out - it becomes very cheap. That holds until the new memory generation gets to mainstream, because the volumes of the older gen go down then. There are rumors that AMD will support DDR5 in 2022 with Zen 4. Intel might do too with their new architecture (not the Lakes), but I don't follow that and have no idea what are the rumors. Going 2x8GiB for now and 2x16GiB when it's dirt cheap sounds like a great idea.

 

In regard to the SSD, Samsung is rock solid, EVO line is just fine, no need for the PRO series - sure, it's faster but it doesn't really matter that much. With the current state of architectures, it won't show in system performance. I literally cannot see any difference between my old SATA SSD and the new NVMe one. I kind of regret that I didn't go with a bigger and cheaper one 1TB is a sweet spot for dualboot IMO, for Linux only it might be a little overkill but bigger is better.

 

I think that your best bet is to hit up the forum again right before picking up the parts since the situation can change (link this thread in the topic). Also, according to PCPP, it looks like nothing is available in Ireland so someone familiar with the market might be able to find the sellers and/or better prices.

[koptr]

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2020 at 10:17 PM, gtludwig said:

I'm looking to buy the gear before Christmas, possibly on or around Black Friday. 

So please ask again ~1 week till then. Prices and products will change.

 

EDIT: Not nice sentence, what I tried to say I'll show you in an example: You're buying on the 16th July so ask on the 9th July and not months before.

[gtludwig]

On 6/29/2020 at 8:47 PM, koptr said:

So please ask again ~1 week till then. Prices and products will change.

 

EDIT: Not nice sentence, what I tried to say I'll show you in an example: You're buying on the 16th July so ask on the 9th July and not months before.

Thanks, @koptr! The whole purpose of me putting this question now was to get an idea of whether I was going overkill (and poorly allocating budget) by attempting at RAID. I understand it is a case of, when the time comes, biting the bullet.
By my research, I think I might go with either a top-notch B450 or B550 chipset motherboard, budget CPU and less memory than what I want to end up with, so I can span my spending over two or more months.
I'll likely get the case, PSU, motherboard, storage, budget cpu (likely a ryzen 3 3200G) - so I'll get a working system. Then, get the GPU. And, finally, the top-notch CPU and an AIO option last.