Call for advice - Planning a major overhaul on the good ol' rig

[Giocol]

As my poor i5-2500k keeps asking to be retired, and with some extra income coming near the holidays, I finally decided to give a big update to my PC, and I thought that I could get some feedback on my choices and some tips  here on the forum!

 

What do I need this rig for:

• It will be dual booting some flavour of GNU/Linux (arch, if I don't randomly change distro in the next few weeks, which is not that certain) and Windows (at least until gaming on Linux finishes to catch up)
• 1080p 60Hz gaming, from indy stuff to AAA titles
• Coding, virtualization, unit testing, container hosting and other fun stuff. I'm majoring in Computer Engineering, and lately I've been feeling the need of those sweet extra cores that the Ryzen 2700x can give me
• Photo editing and light video editing (mainly 1080p)
• Some 2D and 3D rendering, mainly using game engines like Godot and UnrealEngine

 

Hardware that I'm going to keep from the old rig:

• ASUS STRIX GTX970: I know, it's not that new, but I only game at 1080p, and it still holds up pretty well. I could consider changing to a 1060/1070ti, but I'm not super sold on that
• EVGA 600W 80+ GOLD PSU: I don't have a lot to say on this, it's just a solid, reliable PSU
• 4TB (2xTB) WD Black HDD: almost brand new, they are more than enough for long-time storage (planning on putting them in a RAID 1)
• 250GB SanDisk SSD: really hold drive, it still holds up pretty well. It will probably become my Star Citizen drive (don't hate me too much for that, please) or go in a small media server
• Dual 1080p monitors, mechanical keyboard and gaming mouse

 

New Hardware: (prices in euros from italian Amazon)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor	$320.15
Motherboard	Gigabyte - B450 AORUS ELITE ATX AM4 Motherboard	$138.60
Memory	Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$138.99
Storage	Western Digital - Blue 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$87.18
Case	Fractal Design - Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case	$95.47
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$780.39
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-12-24 12:25 EST-0500

 

 

I want to thank in advance anyone that will waste a tad bit of his time to give me some tips/share some thoughts on this config :3

[Master Disaster]

For Ryzen it's really recommend (though not actually essential) you get Samsung B Die ram.

 

See this Reddit page for more information -

 

[LIGISTX]

I would consider more than 16 GB of RAM for virtualization and such. Granted, if your doing this under linux you can likely keep resource loads pretty low, but depending on how many VM's you want to spin up and how hungry they each are, more RAM is never a bad option.

[PurplDrank]

3 hours ago, Giocol said:

As my poor i5-2500k keeps asking to be retired, and with some extra income coming near the holidays, I finally decided to give a big update to my PC, and I thought that I could get some feedback on my choices and some tips  here on the forum!

 

What do I need this rig for:

• It will be dual booting some flavour of GNU/Linux (arch, if I don't randomly change distro in the next few weeks, which is not that certain) and Windows (at least until gaming on Linux finishes to catch up)
• 1080p 60Hz gaming, from indy stuff to AAA titles
• Coding, virtualization, unit testing, container hosting and other fun stuff. I'm majoring in Computer Engineering, and lately I've been feeling the need of those sweet extra cores that the Ryzen 2700x can give me
• Photo editing and light video editing (mainly 1080p)
• Some 2D and 3D rendering, mainly using game engines like Godot and UnrealEngine

 

Hardware that I'm going to keep from the old rig:

• ASUS STRIX GTX970: I know, it's not that new, but I only game at 1080p, and it still holds up pretty well. I could consider changing to a 1060/1070ti, but I'm not super sold on that
• EVGA 600W 80+ GOLD PSU: I don't have a lot to say on this, it's just a solid, reliable PSU
• 4TB (2xTB) WD Black HDD: almost brand new, they are more than enough for long-time storage (planning on putting them in a RAID 1)
• 250GB SanDisk SSD: really hold drive, it still holds up pretty well. It will probably become my Star Citizen drive (don't hate me too much for that, please) or go in a small media server
• Dual 1080p monitors, mechanical keyboard and gaming mouse

 

New Hardware: (prices in euros from italian Amazon)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor	$320.15
Motherboard	Gigabyte - B450 AORUS ELITE ATX AM4 Motherboard	$138.60
Memory	Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$138.99
Storage	Western Digital - Blue 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$87.18
Case	Fractal Design - Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case	$95.47
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$780.39
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-12-24 12:25 EST-0500

 

 

I want to thank in advance anyone that will waste a tad bit of his time to give me some tips/share some thoughts on this config :3

if you are only gaming at 1080p you could go with a 2600x just to save you a bit of money. I personally do not like gigabyte, they are sometimes unreliable and have read some bad reviews regarding some of their motherboards. I think the asus rog strix b450-f would be much better, especially paired with the 2600x. Since you would be saving money on that i would sell your gpu and combine your money to get a newer gpu or I would spend and extra $20 and get a 3200 ddr4 ram.

 

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Wbn3kd
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Wbn3kd/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($207.99 @ Walmart)
Motherboard: Asus - ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($128.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($130.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital - Blue 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($87.18)
Case: Fractal Design - Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case  ($95.47)
Total: $650.61
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-12-24 15:51 EST-0500

 

I have a meshify C myself i am building a Ryzen with and i absolutely love the meshify C

[Giocol]

On 12/24/2018 at 6:46 PM, Master Disaster said:

For Ryzen it's really recommend (though not actually essential) you get Samsung B Die ram.

 

See this Reddit page for more information -

 

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/62vp2g/clearing_up_any_samsung_bdie_confusion_eg_on/?ref=share&ref_source=embed&utm_content=body&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_name=e3492891895a491b8803eb3e0d741ce4&utm_source=embedly&utm_term=62vp2g

 

 

Thanks! I'll read the post, and I'll probably follow your advice!

On 12/24/2018 at 7:02 PM, LIGISTX said:

I would consider more than 16 GB of RAM for virtualization and such. Granted, if your doing this under linux you can likely keep resource loads pretty low, but depending on how many VM's you want to spin up and how hungry they each are, more RAM is never a bad option.

I see your point, but I think that 16 GBs will be enough. If the situation demands it, I can always try to distribute the workload on a server (since I don't think I'll need THAT many VMs for more than a few hours at a time)

On 12/24/2018 at 9:35 PM, PurplDrank said:

if you are only gaming at 1080p you could go with a 2600x just to save you a bit of money. I personally do not like gigabyte, they are sometimes unreliable and have read some bad reviews regarding some of their motherboards. I think the asus rog strix b450-f would be much better, especially paired with the 2600x. Since you would be saving money on that i would sell your gpu and combine your money to get a newer gpu or I would spend and extra $20 and get a 3200 ddr4 ram.

 

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Wbn3kd
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Wbn3kd/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($207.99 @ Walmart)
Motherboard: Asus - ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($128.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($130.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital - Blue 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($87.18)
Case: Fractal Design - Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case  ($95.47)
Total: $650.61
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-12-24 15:51 EST-0500

 

I have a meshify C myself i am building a Ryzen with and i absolutely love the meshify C

You have a solid point, but I'm still not sold on giving up on those two cores, but I'll surely think about it. The MOBO you suggested seems way better than the one I picked though, thanks!

[PurplDrank]

25 minutes ago, Giocol said:

Thanks! I'll read the post, and I'll probably follow your advice!

I see your point, but I think that 16 GBs will be enough. If the situation demands it, I can always try to distribute the workload on a server (since I don't think I'll need THAT many VMs for more than a few hours at a time)

You have a solid point, but I'm still not sold on giving up on those two cores, but I'll surely think about it. The MOBO you suggested seems way better than the one I picked though, thanks!

Actually the MSI b450 tomahawk is way better than the strix b450 and a bit cheaper. Tomahawk has solid reviews everywhere online. The tomahawk is even sold out in some locations. 

 

Most games don’t need that many cores. If you want to stream or have some major production multitasking plans for your pc then go with your original post.  

 

Also so keep in mind you could go with a 2600 (non x version) and invest that money in a x470. The new ryzen 3000 coming out should be compatible with x470, most likely with a bios update. So you could get a cheaper cpu and better motherboard like the x470 for now. 

 

Or holdout all together. January 8th to the 11th at CES 2019 AMD is announcing the Ryzen 3000