High End Programming Workstation/ 3840x1440 at 75FPS+ with Most Settings on Ultra Gaming Rig.

[AFK]

Hi, I need some advice on putting together a (fairly) high end programming/3840x1440 gaming rig. You can assume it will divide its time between these two activities equally. I have a 1TB traditional HDD, 650W Corsair TX PSU and a sh**ty old no-name ATX case that I can reuse, but I am open to upgrading everything. I need you guys' wisdom on the value of the some of upgrades I'm considering. My budget isn't limited, but every Euro over roughly 2500 is coming out of my hookers-and-cocaine budget, so I don't want to pay more than I must to achieve the following goals:

 

- blazing fast C++ compilation (mostly CPU bound work that benefits from many cores and multithreading)

- fast indexing in Eclipse CDT (it LOVES RAM, but doesn't really need a lot of bandwidth)

- 75+ frames at 3840x1440 (UWQHD+) with everything except the most taxing settings maxed out (I'm fine with raytraced shadows, hairworks, etc. at medium/high instead of ultra if necessary). I mostly play shooters, Battlefield series is my favourite, but I intend to try some of the other titles popular today - PUBG, Far Cry series, I want it to handle the next Crysis game when it comes out too

 

Parts I'm pretty sure about:

-- CPU --

AMD Ryzen 3900x (can't be bothered to wait for 3950x to come out)

 

-- RAM -- 

32GB Crucial Ballistix Sport LT Gray (2x16GB 3200MHz CL16) - is there a point in dropping lots more cash for 3733Mhz RAM?

 

-- MoBo --

Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero Wi-Fi (x470) or Asrock x470 Taichi (Asrock if guys at the computer store flash the bios for me, Asus otherwise. I want both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth)

 

-- Monitor --

Acer Predator Z35P (35" 3840x1440 UWQHD+ 120Hz) or something better with at least 100Hz refresh rate at UWQHD+ and 35" size.

 

-- CPU cooler --

Scythe Mugen 5 Rev.B - I've been using it for over a decade with at least 3 CPUs. It's quiet, reliable and very capable, so why change it?

 

Parts I'm not at all sure about:

-- GPU --

Gigabyte Windforce RTX 2080 (I think it's enough for what I want from it, but I can step up to a Windforce 2080Ti if you convince me that vanilla 2080 is too weak at that resolution)

 

-- SSD --

WD Black SN750 1TB M.2 NVMe 3.0x4 (with heatsink) - replacement for my old school spinning 1TB HDD. Is it worth the money? Is it overkill performance-wise? How noticeable would this upgrade be in daily usage and games? Will it make my dreams come true? I'm not sure if compiling and indexing C++ benefits significantly from SSDs, I doubt it but I'm open to have my mind changed.

 

-- Case --

Corsair Obsidian 750D Airflow - It's stylish, understated and has tons of airflow, but again, does my setup need it? My current case has no extra fans, is ugly as holy hell and just as ancient, so it won't take much prodding to get me to buy it. You know what? Forget I asked, just give me a few other options worth considering at this price point and I'll pick the one I like best.

 

-- PSU --

I have a 650W Corsair TX that is a few years old, but should be more than enough for this build, even if I go with the 2080Ti, no?

 

Any advice is appreciated, on the monitor, CPU, RAM, GPU, SSD, all of of it. Even things I didn't think of buying. Maaaaan I'm looking forward to having a high(ish)-end PC again

Edited July 13, 2019 by AFK
Corrected the name of the WD SSD

[brob]

I'm not clear on what you mean by C++ compilation benefitting from many cores. Are you talking about build/make process?

 

DDR4-3600 makes a small difference. I don't think it's enough to justify the cost, but that is subjective. See https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-zen-2-memory-performance-scaling-benchmark/2.html for some hard data.

 

Did you consider the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro WiFi motherboard? In any case, given the investment I'd suggest matching the cpu with an X570 motherboard. They tend to have better power distribution and you can take advantage of faster storage offerings.

 

I'm a believer in getting the best gpu I can afford. My reasoning is that the more powerful the gpu the longer the useful life.

 

Fast storage makes a significant difference in compiling and building projects. The process is much more storage intensive than most other applications.

 

Instead of the WD NVMe ssd, consider Corsair - MP600 Force Series Gen4 1 TB M.2-2280. It takes advantage of the PCIe 4.0 lanes available on X570 motherboards. 

 

The psu should be fine.

 

Case options: Fractal Design - Meshify S2 ATX Mid Tower Case and Fractal Design - Define R6 USB-C ATX Mid Tower Case. Both have a USB-C front panel port.

[AFK]

Sure, building source files in parallel is the most significant way to speed the building process up. Nothing comes close to parallel computation in this case - the compilation cloud we have set up at the office has about 40 cores spread over 20 or so PCs, even despite the network latency it builds our project in 3-4 minutes from scratch while my i5 quad core laptop without HT that I use when I work from home does it in about 40 minutes... It has an SSD .

 

I want this new machine to rival the cloud at the office all on its own - it will have about half the cores, but they will be clocked significantly higher, and have massively more cache, which IMO is the real bottleneck when building c++ projects.

 

Anyway, I considered buying a MoBo with the newest chipset, but benchmarks show no real benefits to doing so, while at the same time the x570s tend to run hot requiring little fans on their heatsinks... I'm not very convinced of their longevity.

 

I don't believe in future proofing, at least not when it comes to things that age as quickly as GFX cards - when you feel your old card is starting to show its age just get the latest and greatest a few months after its released, when the prices become more reasonable. Or a year and a half before the next big release, on impulse, like I'm doing now

 

PCIe 4.0 isn't useful to me - neither of the two GFX cards (2080 and 2080Ti) I'm considering will benefit from it, they won't even saturate PCIe 3.0. and I won't buy the bleeding edge SSDs that could potentially take advantage of the extra throughput because I don't think I would even notice the extra speed - I'm already hesitant to buy that WD SN750 because I think it it's probably overkill - buying an SSD of the same capacity and half the speed, for half the price and putting the savings towards upgrading the GFX to a 2080 Ti might be a better choice... God ,I hate these types of choices, if I compromise I end up feeling unsatisfied, if I don't, I end up spending all my coke-and-hooker money and get depressed. I can't win. WHY GOD?! WHY?!

[AFK]

I really like those Fractal cases BTW. The Define R6 is right up my alley and my store has a great deal on it, thanks for the recommendation!

[coffeejn]

I ran into an issue with the RAM with my new build.  I'd check to make sure either other people had no issue with 32GB Crucial Ballistix Sport LT Gray (2x16GB 3200MHz CL16) or make sure the Part No. is on the QVL list of the manufacturer mobo otherwise you might be walking into a headache.  Also, create a new windows 10 installer on USB before the build, don't use an old version, it was one of my main cause for blue screen of death.

 

I would agree with brob, DDR4-3600 makes a small difference, so for the price difference it might be worth it in my opinion, but it depends if your x470 will run at 3600 easily or not.

 

Here is my build:

Gigabyte x570 Master

Ryzen 9 3900x

2x16GB 3200mHz Cl14 G.Skillz Ripjaw V RAM  (F4-3200C14D-32GVK)

2x16GB 3600mHz Cl17 Hyperx Predator Black

M.2 Corsaire MP510

Noctual NH-D15 SE-AMD

 

Reused   :

PSU 750w EVGA P2

ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 STRIX-GTX1080-8G-GAMING 8GB

 

Intended use is for photo editing with games as secondary (tired of waiting for encoding time for RAW files).

 

I changed the case since I wanted more space to work with, but it was not critical.  I actually used less cables for power with this build then the prior which surprised me.  For the heatsink, you should be good since it's got 6 heatpipe, but keep in mind that the 3900x has 3 hot spot on the speader, 2x 6 core and 1 IO which if it truly is the same as the x570 chipset, than the IO likes to cook a bit above 50c easily. Unless you plan to TRY to OC the setup, then I do not see an issue with the cooler.  And I do mean try, since I do not think there is much head room on the 3900x.

 

P.S. Without trying to OC, my 3900x runs all cores at either 4.275 or 4.300mHz.  Which to me if plenty for now, been using the i5-3570k for +6 years.

[AFK]

12 hours ago, coffeejn said:

P.S. Without trying to OC, my 3900x runs all cores at either 4.275 or 4.300mHz.  Which to me if plenty for now, been using the i5-3570k for +6 years.

That's what I have right now  my 3570k has been running 24/7 at 4.1GHz for years now, but it's the time to upgrade is definitely overdue with these new AMD CPUs...

 

Thanks for the heads up on the RAM, Asus doesn't specifically namy my RAM as compatible, but they support most other Crucial sticks, so I hope there won't be any issues. Fortunately the internet store I'm buying from happens to have a physical store near my house, so swapping out RAM or MoBo won't be an problem.

 

What do you think about the GFX - does the Ti make sense at this resolution - I'm not a fan of buying GFX horsepower for futureproofing, because with every other generation of GFX cards some new cool features come out, so it's generally better to get the 2nd or 3rd best for half the price of the top dog card and just upgrade it more frequently.

 

Well, at 1080p/60Hz that was true. Now I'm stepping up to a resolution 2.6x larger and a screen with 120Hz refresh rate, so that makes the 3rd best card no longer viable, but I'm still not sold on the Ti over the vanilla model. People recommend the Ti for 4k and the 2080 for 1440p. 3840x1440 sits in the middle of these resolutions and choosing the GFX for it is giving me a headache - the Ti fast but it's also absurdly overpriced... It will hurt my pride to let Nvidia rob me like that!

 

With that said, I will buy it if it really makes sense at my desired resolution and framerate... I just need to be convinced that it does make sense and benchmarks at that res are nowhere to be found. Reviewers tend do jump from 1080 to 4k, every now and again throwing in 1440p into the mix. Super-ultrawide doesn't get the love it deserves - once I saw one of these 35" monitors at an electronics store my 28" 1080p monitor lost all of it's luster   

[AFK]

Ok, I'll allow myself to close this thread

 

I've decided to buy only the screen right now. In two weeks I'll grab the 2080 Super which will be just right for 3440x1440. Finally, when Ryzen 3950x drops in September I'll grab it along with the rest of the gear. Thanks for the input guys, It helped me resist the impulse to buy now and saved me from having regrets as soon as the new GPU and CPU are released.