Thoughts on this rig?

[OnionRings]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3 GHz 8-Core Processor	$168.89 @ OutletPC
Motherboard	Asus - STRIX B350-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard	$114.90 @ OutletPC
Memory	Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$114.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Western Digital - Blue 250 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$49.89 @ OutletPC
Storage	Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$44.89 @ OutletPC
Case	Fractal Design - Meshify C TG ATX Mid Tower Case	$99.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply	EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$59.89 @ OutletPC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$693.43
	Mail-in rebates	-$40.00
	Total	$653.43
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-02-08 00:36 EST-0500

 This is a rig for my brother in law, he's new to pc gaming. He plans to play all types of games and stream. Below ill post my reasoning behind each part and why I picked it, but I'm up to possible changes.

 

I chose the R7 1700 because its amazing price to performance, and he plans to stream eventually.

 

The motherboard I mainly choose for looks but I know asus makes good boards, we do plan to overclock so we need a good board that can support overclocking and has proper VRM cooling.

 

16GB of ram, kind of needed nowadays, especially since he wants to stream.

 

Now the drives are going to be the part I request help the most of, I am not sure if this set up is best, or if I should get the crucial MX500 1TB ssd instead? This layout is about 30 bucks cheaper, but only has a 250g ssd, and 1 TB hdd, where as the MX500 is a 1TB ssd. Thoughts on that?

 

I chose this case as a recommendation from another user, It's sexy, and has great cooling they said.

 

550w is enough for his spec setup as mentioned by other users.

 

No GPU as he will be taking my 1060 when I upgrade to a 2060.

[KarathKasun]

Seems legit for the price (assuming its in CAD).

[OnionRings]

Just now, KarathKasun said:

Seems legit for the price.

Glad to see I'm not completely incompetent.

[Herman Mcpootis]

Grab a 240gb EX900 instead of the wd blue ssd, and a B450-A pro or gaming K4 instead, otherwise it's fine.

[Psittac]

Random thought, 2x 500gb 2.5" ssd's in raid 0? Not sure how the price compares (sandisk makes excellent ssd's)

[OnionRings]

2 minutes ago, Herman Mcpootis said:

Grab a 240gb EX900 instead of the wd blue ssd, and a B450-A pro or gaming K4 instead, otherwise it's fine.

The 1TB isn't a good idea? I never used crucial so no idea how well they work. And I'll check out those boards yall mentioned.

[OnionRings]

Just now, Psittac said:

Random thought, 2x 500gb 2.5" ssd's in raid 0? Not sure how the price compares (sandisk makes excellent ssd's)

Not familiar with raid, isn't that when 1 drive fails they both fail?

[KarathKasun]

2 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

Not familiar with raid, isn't that when 1 drive fails they both fail?

Yes, well 1 fails and all data is lost.

[Psittac]

3 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

Not familiar with raid, isn't that when 1 drive fails they both fail?

yes but unless you're pushing clock's hard it shouldn't fail.  Raid 0 mean's both disk's operate as one disk with the size of the two added together, also means the speed is "doubled" because it split's the data transfer to two drives at once.  I have my OS drive as a 970pro and my second drive as a raid 0 2.5" setup, have had no issues in two years.

 

*edit: for ssd's failing, namely sandisk, I have a number of them in my own builds and builds for friends and family and over the past several years I have only had data corruption due to user error..... namely a loss of power to the system without a proper shutdown.  All of them were still useable except for one crucial ssd because the power strip was switched off when I was trying to unplug something else.  I've only had one or two ssd's fail out right in many years over almost a dozen systems.

[OnionRings]

Alright so these are the 4 motherboard options then. How do I tell which would be the best? They are all about the same price.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Hy97YJ/msi-b450-tomahawk-atx-am4-motherboard-b450-tomahawk

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/ZHyxFT/asus-strix-b350-f-gaming-atx-am4-motherboard-strix-b350-f-gaming

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Pq97YJ/asrock-fatal1ty-b450-gaming-k4-atx-am4-motherboard-b450-gaming-k4

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/pBWfrH/msi-b450-a-pro-atx-am4-motherboard-b450-a-pro

 

In terms of looks, I like the asrock the least, but the rest all seem fine. I'll ask my brother in law his opinion.

[KarathKasun]

Just now, Psittac said:

yes but unless you're pushing clock's hard it shouldn't fail.  Raid 0 mean's both disk's operate as one disk with the size of the two added together, also means the speed is "doubled" because it split's the data transfer to two drives at once.  I have my OS drive as a 970pro and my second drive as a raid 0 2.5" setup, have had no issues in two years.

Its not the "2-3 year reliability" that is the problem.  I would not keep anything important on a RAID 0 array.

[Herman Mcpootis]

2 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

Not familiar with raid, isn't that when 1 drive fails they both fail?

That's raid 0, if one drive dies both will lose data. The other drive doesn't fail with it.

 

3 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

The 1TB isn't a good idea? I never used crucial so no idea how well they work. And I'll check out those boards yall mentioned.

I was referring to the ssd.

[OnionRings]

I'll re-visit the storage later, won't be doing raid though, even though it has benefits, the risk is too much for my borther in law and personally me to handle, I'm not an expert and he's new.

[Psittac]

7 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Its not the "2-3 year reliability" that is the problem.  I would not keep anything important on a RAID 0 array.

agreed, but a gaming rig shouldn't hold anything that can't be downloaded on a whim.  Cloud and off system backup should be for anything important no matter the initial setup

 

*edit: a google drive account can hold all important document's and I'd imagine any music or photo's someone has.  It's when you get into legacy software that you have an issue, IE: programs that can't be easily replaced.  At any rate if you aren't comfortable with a potential fresh install from time to time then don't go raid0

[Psittac]

Is the corsair memory on the QVL of the board? I know first gen ryzen had issues with memory operating at full speed.

[OMGITSAMACGAMER]

Just Saying...

I've had the Crucial MX500 500gb ssd for half a year now and its still going strong and is extremely fast for the price i got it for!!!

[OnionRings]

1 minute ago, OMGITSAMACGAMER said:

Just Saying...

I've had the Crucial MX500 500gb ssd for half a year now and its still going strong and is extremely fast for the price i got it for!!!

Thank you.

 

Regarding motherboards, he's going with either the tomahawk or asus for the looks. Does anybody have a picture of the tomahawk glowing? Does it even have rgb or do the words not glow? I can't find a picture online.

[ch3w2oy]

1 hour ago, OnionRings said:

Thank you.

 

Regarding motherboards, he's going with either the tomahawk or asus for the looks. Does anybody have a picture of the tomahawk glowing? Does it even have rgb or do the words not glow? I can't find a picture online.

The only RGB on that board is in the right upper corner.

[191x7]

Go with the tomahawk. Or the Gaming Pro Carbon. Alternatively, the Gigabyte X470 Ultra Gaming, but that has a bit weaker VRM while the other parts are superb (Intel LAN, Realtek 1220 audio, dual bios, diagnostic LED-s, RGB support, decent board layout, ...).

[KarathKasun]

Gigabyte tends to have sub-par BIOS/UEFI, options if tweaking is your thing.

[OnionRings]

Thanks guys, if his budget stays the same, we will be going with the tomahawk, he likes it the most.